Episode 2140: Kimberly Meyer on five refugee women's invention of a new American dream

Keen On

Yesterday, we were in rural Virginia interviewing the pioneering regenerative farmer, Joel Salatin. Today, we are on an equally innovative farm in Houston, Texas, in conversation with Kimberley Meyer, author of Accidental Sisters. It’s called Shamba Ya Amani (Farm of Peace) and, as Meyer explains in her new book, it’s a place where five immigrant women are attempting to build their own American dream. As Meyer notes, American invention comes in all shapes and forms and what these five immigrant women are doing at the urban farm of Shamba Ya Amani is just as innovative as anything one might find in Silicon Valley.

Kimberly Meyer is the author of Accidental Sisters: Refugee Women Struggling Together for a New American Dream (University of California Press, 2024) and The Book of Wanderings: A Mother-Daughter Pilgrimage (Little, Brown, 2015). Her work explores displacement, political and spiritual, and the ways that the relationships among women and between mothers and children can become a hopeful act of resistance against human suffering. She is a 2019 MacDowell Fellow and has received grants from the Houston Arts Alliance and writing residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. In addition to her work as a writer, she helped found and helps manage Shamba Ya Amani, the Farm of Peace, alongside a collective of refugee and immigrant women and other local Houstonians.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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