Arts & Entertainment

From Timbuktu, to Park Slope

Two Slopers journeyed the world (and then wrote a book about it) before winding up in Park Slope.

Before settling in a one-bedroom apartment on a leafy block of Eighth Street, Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg thought they would check out a few other places – that is, nine different countries and three continents.

The pair chronicles a post-college voyage that begins in Beijing and ends in Mali in “To Timbuktu,” a book written by Scieszka and illustrated by Weinberg that’s part travelogue, part romance and part coming of age saga.

The book begins on a college study abroad semester in Morocco, where Weinberg and Scieszka meet. They stay in touch, even though they live on opposite ends of the country, and after graduating decide to embark together on a two year trip that would take them to teach English in Beijing, meander through South Asia and Paris and finally end up in Mali, where Scieszka would research the rolls of Islam in the education system and Weinberg would work on his art.

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Park Slope even makes an appearance in the book – Weinberg is visiting Scieszka, a born and bred Sloper, when the pair makes the decision to head abroad over beers at .

“We both knew we wanted to travel everywhere before settling into a career path. We decided it was sink or swim,” said Scieszka. “We were definitely a different kind of couple by the end of it.”

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The book is a series of illustrated vignettes – short stories about the two’s travels ranging from the trials of teaching English to rowdy first graders to encountering giant parties on the Mae Kong River in Laos and musings on Malian fashion.

In one moment early on in the book Weinberg accidentally winds up getting a haircut in a Chinese brothel, where the women in the shop repeatedly point to his head, chuckling that it resembles a dumpling. The story is illustrated by an image of Weinberg, sitting in a hairdresser’s chair, his head replaced by a dumpling.

“It is kind of fun to treat your life like a story,” said Scieszka.

Interestingly, the idea for “To Timbuktu,” came not from Scieszka and Weinberg, but from their agent: the pair pitched him a graphic novel about Timbuktu, with a cover letter detailing a little bit about their background.

“He wrote us back and said, ‘I want to read that book,” said Scieszka. “I’d always kind of dreamed of being a writer, but I thought that it was a little to dreamy.”

The pair’s travels have led them not just around the world, but also to found a nonprofit, Local Language Literacy. The organization works to promote local language literacy in West and North Africa by creating and printing books in local languages. Their first project was a middle school-level fiction book called “Sababu Man Dogo,” written by Scieszka and translated into Bamanankan by a Malian friend. They’re currently working to print a bilingual Wolof and French picture book with Senegalese author Daour Wade for students in Senegal.

Next up, the pair hopes to take a heritage tour that would lead them through much of Europe, and write a book about uncovering their roots.

But for now the two are happy calling Park Slope home – as long as they can still take long vacations, of course.

“Any neighborhood we’ve lived in the world has been somewhere you can just stroll around in,” said Scieszka. “Park Slope is definitely like that.”

“I think Park Slope will now always be our home base,” added Weinberg.

 

“To Timbuktu” will host a Sixpoint tap takeover and book signing at

 


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