August 22, 2015
Hannah Pool: For my father I am always Azieb Asrat
by Tsigye Hailemichael | Hannah Pool is, in her own words, British-Eritrean, Eritrean-British. She was born in Eritrea in 1974 and was adopted at the age of six months by a British scholar who lived and worked in the Sudan. She was raised in Manchester, England, believing that both her parents had died shortly after her birth. She now lives in London where she works as a columnist for The Guardian.
At the age of nineteen, she received a letter from her brother informing her that her father was alive and she had a sister and several brothers who lived in Eritrea. It took ten years for her to make the decision to meet with her birth family. She then embarked on a journey which took her back to her origins and which she recounts in her book titled My Fathers’ Daughter (Hamish Hamilton, 2005.)
