An Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar

"Olympic Dream is the story of Samia Yusuf Omar. If you watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she was the young Somalian woman who came in last. It was one moment when we all watched this woman. She doesn’t have the right clothes, she doesn’t really have the right shoes. But she runs, and she doesn’t give up. Everyone in the stadium was on their feet applauding her, because she had to defy her nation and defy her culture to get to be able to run. No one left the stadium before she finished, they’re all sitting there watching her, not a dry eye in the house. After that, she’s really determined to train as an athlete, and go to the Olympics in London in 2012. But where she is in Somalia the rights for women were decreasing, she has to run around a bombed-out track. She wants to go to another country to get a better opportunity for herself, but in order to do that she has to go through an underground route and use the smuggling rings. Finally, she decides she needs to get to Italy because from there she can get a trainer in the West. She tells it all through Facebook. Reinhard Kleist traces this whole story of hers, and her family at home: how people gave up a lot to get the money so she could be smuggled. I’m not going to tell you what happens. It’s just the incredible story of this woman. I really recommend this book. It’s extraordinary. Reinhard Kleist is a German graphic novelist and one of the finest graphic story tellers there is. He is also the creator of the Johnny Cash biography , and a wonderful graphic novel about Castro . An Olympic Dream was originally a Carlsen Comics book, so it was translated from German."