The Ethiopian American writer Meron Hadero has been announced as the winner of the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story “The Street Sweep.” Hadero’s story was published in ZYZZYVA (2018). Hadero is the first Ethiopian writer to have won the prize.
“The Street Sweep” tells the story of Getu, an Ethiopian boy at a crossroad of his life as he negotiates the imported power dynamics of foreign aid in Addis Ababa. Set against the backdrop of personal trauma, threatening displacement and forced expropriation, the young narrator weighs his opportunities and soon understands the game of survival that leads the story to culminate in a hopeful twist. In this beautiful tale, the street sweep accounts for the young, ingenuous generation, determined to push open the doors previously closed on them.”
Here is what the judging panel has to say about the winning story:
“The genius of this story lies in Hadero’s ability to turn the lens on the clichéd, NGO story in Africa to ‘do good and do it well.’ It takes us away from the external organisation coming to Ethiopia to help the poor, and focuses the narrative on Getu, an eighteen-year old street sweeper, figuring out ways to navigate the nuances of the rich and poor. Utterly without self-pity, it is Getu’s naivety that endears us to him.
The Street Sweep’ is superbly crafted, the language fluid, and weighted with colour and memorable symbolism. Optimism, trust and betrayal ride side by side; but ultimately, this is a story about the redeeming power of hope: ‘Hope is the greatest asset a man can have.’ What stood out for the judges was the story’s subtle, but powerful ending, and how everything comes brilliantly together in a clever twist, that sees Getu transform; and the reader pushed to question the thin line between ‘making it’, and the necessary subjugation of the soul.”
Hadero will receive the cash prize of £10,000, while the shortlisted writers will receive £500.
Joining Meron on this year’s shortlist were:
Doreen Baingana (Uganda) for her story “Lucky” published in Ibua Journal, Online in Kampala, Uganda, 2021. Read here
Ngamije (Rwanda and Namibia) for his story “The Giver of Nicknames” published in Lolwe, Kenya, 2020. Read here
Troy Onyango (Kenya) for his story “This Little Light of Mine” published in Doek! Literary Magazine, Namibia, 2020. Read here
Iryn Tushabe (Uganda) for her story “A Separation” published in EXILE Quarterly, Canada 2018. Read here. Read here
Joining Goretti Kyomuhendo on the 2021 judging panel were Razia Iqbal, Victor Ehikhamenor, Georgina Godwin, and Nicholas Makoha.
The anthology containing the five 2021 AKO Caine Prize shortlisted stories will be published along with two short stories from the Prize’s Online With Vimbai programme, respectively by Rafeeat Aliyu and TJ Benson.
Meron Hadero is an Ethiopian-American writer who was born in Addis Ababa and came to the U.S. via Germany as a young child. She is the winner of the 2020 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. In 2019, she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for her story “The Wall.” Her short stories have been published in ZYZZYVA, Ploughshares, Addis Ababa Noir, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, New England Review, Best American Short Stories, among others. Her writing has also been in The New York Times Book Review, The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, and will appear in the forthcoming anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us. A 2019-2020 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, she’s been a fellow at Yaddo, Ragdale, and MacDowell, and her writing has been supported by the International Institute at the University of Michigan, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and Artist Trust.
Hadero is an alum of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she worked as a research analyst for the President of Global Development, and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, a JD from Yale, and a BA in history from Princeton with a certificate in American Studies.
You can read Hadero’s story here
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