ON FRIDAY JUNE 30TH, WE’RE RETURNING WITH BEYOND FT. ZEYNAB ALI!

Zeynab Ali is an author and youth activist originally from Kenya. Below, we caught up with Zeynab to get to know her better.

What do you typically eat for breakfast? Typically, my family eats traditional Somali breakfast food such as: injera, marwax, jabati, or seasoned fried eggs with bread.Besides that, since I’m not really a breakfast person. I like to eat leftover dinner.

But most days I don’t eat breakfast, especially during school days. I just leave school hungry, which isn’t healthy, but I’m used to it now.

What do people know you for? At school I’m known to be very shy and quiet, but outside of school people see me as very driven, caring, respected and someone who has a great future ahead of them.

How is Milwaukee special to you? I’ve lived in Louisville, KY which is not a great city compared to Milwaukee. What I love about Milwaukee is that there’s always something going on. Despite the poverty and violence rate, there are always youth and community members organizing events and meetings to better our city. That’s something I never saw in Louisville. I love how we get together and support each other in times of crisis rather than not taking action just because they don’t know the family that was effected by a bad situation. Also, Milwaukee is the only city I know that has numerous of youth organizations unlike other cities who don’t have programming for youth.

What may people not know about you? I wish people knew more about me to be honest; it would make my life easier. I think people should know that I don’t like to be in the center of attention. It gets awkward for me and I just never know how to respond back. I really enjoy hearing about other people’s success. I feel like everywhere I go and even at school, people get so surprised that I wrote a book. And to me it’s really not a big deal, because honestly anyone can write a book. So, I wish people didn’t see it as a big deal because for me writing is just a therapeutic thing I do to let emotions out, because I faced a lot of hardship at a young age and I still do till this day.That’s another thing. I often smile a lot even when I’m dealing with personal issues. I think others get the impression that I’m a happy person, but in reality I’m just hiding my pain. Also, I want people to know that the issues I talk about as an activist are issues I either faced or go through right now. Therefore, I can connect with residents who go through that which is why I take it so serious.

What drives your creativity? Sometimes I see things or hear about things that make me mad usually related to current issues and it inspires me to come up with all sorts of ideas.

What are you going to talk to us about this month? I am going to be speaking about my personal experiences with “Survival,” part of which prompted writing my book “Cataclysm: Secrets of the Horn of Africa.” Some of the book serves as a memoir of me and my family’s struggle fleeing Somali during the horrific civil war there in the 90′s and living in Kenyan refugee camps before coming to the United States. One thing I think we don’t focus enough on too is what immigrant children face, especially as first generation English speakers. When we talk about immigration we often talk about the issues facing adults and immigrant parents, yet young immigrants and children of immigrants are often facing a variety of emotional and mental health struggles too. Sometimes this is due to kinds of responsibilities they hold at a young age for their families too. I would like to speak to this too.Ticket registration opens Monday, June 26th at 11 AM CST. Grab a ticket as fast as you can — they are free but limited!