Rise from the Blue

By Boade Mandeng

The book tells us the story of John Nobola, an immigrant of color who came to the United States of America with high hopes of finding refuge and happiness in a noble society. Once there, he realizes that many things have changed, over the course of a few years, from promising to deteriorating.
Nobola witnesses various scenes of social violence and destruction; he is then critical of one wing of the political hierarchy which in particular favors those behind the social unrest.
At the end, he feels the disappointment that the America he had dreamt of may be leaning backwards. Often, Nobola takes his frustrations out through public events, social media and conversations with friends and family. Still he remains hopeful for a better future of the country and praises the efforts of some very patriotic politicians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664162808

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 by Boade Mandeng.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/09/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

822202

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Newest Avenues into Minority Peoples’ Politics

Chapter 2 Starfood Café—UCL Finals Game

Chapter 3 Forum for Grassroots and Emerging Patriots

Chapter 4 Vote Check

Chapter 5 Pleas on Broken American Experiences

Chapter 6 Where Do We Stand?

Chapter 7 What’s in a Name?

Chapter 8 Mars Vegas

CHAPTER 1

Newest Avenues into Minority

Peoples’ Politics

NOBOLA: I find it an extremely quisquous thing, sometimes confusing, to be a person of color while facing and trying to figure out issues we have to deal with, especially with recent social developments. It appears as if many efforts from minorities in general, and black people in particular, to handle such problems as police brutality and racial discrimination end up creating more troubles for these people than they bring them solutions.

On a quiet Thursday afternoon, John Nobola was on a routine phone call with his best friend, Isaac Abenda, as he drove home from work. The day at his business planner office had been busy, and he would have wanted to talk about this first thing. However, these days didn’t seem ordinary to life as it was known to most people in Magaville. The news was filled with events that, time after time, brought about constantly changing developments and subsequently left few people indifferent. At the end of his workday, Nobola could not help trying to catch up with Abenda on the hottest topics of the time.

ABENDA: I totally agree with you, John. Protests against injustices to vulnerable franges of the American society have been used by extremists to advance Marxist-like political agendas while other anarchist groups have succeeded to infiltrate waves of demonstrators and turned them into violent hoards. Many black people though, as well as their supporters, while adhering to making the voices of the victims of injustice heard, don’t agree on the means because they don’t want to be part of criminally and unethically charged activities.

NOBOLA: True. Other aspects of the problem reside in who the common opinion want to blame for issues that face minority groups in general, and blacks in particular. I will point out to cases where black crime results from black perpetrators. In other instances, you have these communities where cries for injustices and discrimination are commonplace, but most leaders there are black or minoritarians themselves; how do you explain or handle that? It is troubling, OMG!

Every social or political discussion these days seemed to always turn into an altercation. Debates filled with confrontational and defiant language was commonplace. Most people, for the sake of civic expression and political participation, had decided to seal allegiance to one or the other of the two American political parties, Republican and Democrat. The first was generally considered to be on the right side of the society while the Dems were mostly known as leftists.

Few on one side wanted to agree with ideas emanating from the other, and this contributed to the polarization of opinions with every debate. In the midst of such social circumstances, Nobola had found an understanding viewpoint partner in his best friend, Abenda. Despite living here in Magaville, a town where most identified as Dems, Nobola was a defender of Republican positions for reasons he was not shy about explaining.

ABENDA: Well, I have another one for you, John: while the mainstream media like to incense all irregular encounters of a black person with police, not to diminish the importance of individual and social trauma that such encounters entice, it is easy to ignore that more murders to blacks by black criminals happen in black neighborhoods at the same time. I tend to think that nobody cares because such incidents are nothing new so they don’t make news anymore.

NOBOLA: Exactly, mainstream media want information that captures most, be it fake news don’t matter, as long as it gets them the audience that will take care of their bottom line. It doesn’t matter to them if the forgotten reality has more social impact. Mainstream media like to feed us with the news that advances their financial and political plans, not necessarily actual