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Mihret Sibhat

Biography

Mihret Sibhat

Mihret Sibhat was born and raised in a small town in western Ethiopia before moving to California when she was 17. A graduate of California State University, Northridge and the University of Minnesota’s MFA program, she was a 2019 A Public Space Fellow and a 2019 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grantee. In a previous life, she was a waitress, a nanny, an occasional shoe shiner, a propagandist and a terrible gospel singer. She’s currently a miserable Arsenal fan.

Mihret Sibhat

Books by Mihret Sibhat

The History of a Difficult Child
by Mihret Sibhat - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Even before she is born, Selam Asmelash has a wry, bewitching omniscience that animates life in her Small Town in southwestern Ethiopia in the 1980s. Selam and her father listen to the radio in secret as the socialist military junta that recently overthrew the government seizes properties and wages civil war in the North. The Asmelashes, once an enterprising, land-owning family, are ostracized under the new regime. In the Small Town where they live, nosy women convene around coffee ceremonies multiple times a day. As Selam’s mother grows ill, she embraces a persecuted, Pentecostal God and insists her family convert alongside her. The Asmelashes stand solidly in opposition to the times, and Selam grows up seeking revenge on despotic comrades, neighborhood bullies and a ruthless God.