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Captured, caged, and controversial: a Congolese man’s tragic journey to America.
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The Life and Times of Ota Benga

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$29.75

  • Paperback

    224 pages

  • Release Date

    23 March 2027

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Summary

In 1904, Ota Benga, a young Congolese ‘pygmy’ - a person of petite stature - arrived from central Africa and was featured in an anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Two years later, the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging the slight 103-pound, 4-foot 11-inch tall man with an orangutan. The attraction became an international sensation, drawing thousands of New Yorkers and commanding headlines from across the world.

In the novel, we follo…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780349702117
ISBN-10:034970211X
Author:JJ Bola
Publisher:John Murray Press
Imprint:Dialogue Books
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:224
Release Date:23 March 2027
Dimensions:153mm x 234mm
A-Format
B-Format
C-Format
The Life and Times of Ota Benga by JJ Bola - ISBN: 9780349702117
153 × 234 mm
A4
mm / in
About The Author

JJ Bola

JJ Bola is an established writer, poet and UNHCR Ambassador. His three poetry collections - Elevate (2012), Daughter of the Sun (2014), and WORD (2015) - were published in one collection, Refuge (2018), which was read out in the House of Commons during Refugee week in 2018.

He was one of Spread the Word’s Flight Associates 2017 and a Kit de Waal Scholar for the Birkbeck University MA in Creative Writing. As a former refugee, JJ Bola was invited to the Davos Economic Forum 2018 and held a discussion with Cate Blanchett.

His debut novel, No Place to Call Home, was published in the UK in 2017, and in 2018 in North America. His non-fiction book Mask Off: Masculinity Redefined, which exposes masculinity as a socially conditioned performance, was published in the UK in 2019.

JJ speaks and performs both internationally and in the UK.

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