Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Algiers, Third World Captial
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.elainemokhtefi.com/
CITY:
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2002026652
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2002026652
HEADING: Mokhtefi, Elaine
000 00897cz a2200169n 450
001 5593773
005 20180424073537.0
008 020305n| azannaabn |n aaa
010 __ |a n 2002026652
035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca05705547
040 __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC |d IEN
046 __ |f 1928 |2 edtf
100 1_ |a Mokhtefi, Elaine
370 __ |c United States |c France |c Algeria |2 naf
670 __ |a Mokhtefi, Elaine. Paris, 2002: |b CIP t.p. (Elaine Mokhtefi)
670 __ |a Mokhtefi, Elaine. Algiers, Third World Capital, 2018: |b ECIP title page (Elaine Mokhtefi ) ECIP data view (Elaine Mokhtefi, an American woman immersed in the struggle and working with leaders of the Algerian Revolution; journalist and translator, instrumental in the establishment of the International Section of the Black Panther Party in Algiers; lived in Paris, Algiers, and various locations in the U.S.) ECIP galley (b. in December 1928
953 __ |a lf11
PERSONAL
Born December, 1928, in NY; married Mokhtar Mokhtefi (writer; deceased).
EDUCATION:Attended college.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist, painter, and translator. Exhibitions: Lincoln Center, Cork Gallery, New York, NY, and West Side Arts Coalition, New York, both 1998 and 1999; Lincoln Center, Cork Gallery, New York, Westmoreland Art Nationals, Greensburg, PA, Artsfest, Bainbridge, GA, and West Side Arts Coalition, New York, all 2000; Main Street Gallery, Dobbs Ferry, NY, and West Side Arts Coalition, New York, 2001; solo show, Main Street Gallery, Dobbs Ferry, 2002; Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and Taller Boricua Gallery, both New York both 2003; solo show, Espace le Scribe-l’Harmattan, Paris, France, and Black History Month, West Side Arts Coalition, New York 2004; solo show, The Gallery, Cazenovia, NY, 2006; Promenade des Artistes, Larchmont, NY, 2007 and 2008; Gallery M, Harlem, NY, 2008; solo show, Broome Street Gallery, New York, 2009; Solo show, Chapelle des Célestins, Avignon, France, solos show Shelburne, VT, and El Taller Latino-Americano, New York, 2010; Taller Boricua Gallery, New York, NY, Gallery Martinez, Troy, NY, and Atrium, Chaville, France, all 2011; solo show, Centre George Sand, Montpellier, France, 2012; solo show, La Petite Galerie, Paris, France, 2013; solo show, La Petite Galerie, Paris, France, 2014 and 2015.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Elaine Mokhtefi was born into a a secular, working-class New York Jewish family. She ended up working with the leaders of the Algerian Revolution and was also instrumental in helping establish the International Section of the Black Panther Party in Algiers. She married Mokhtar Mokhtefi, a writer who was also a liberation war veteran. In her memoir titled Algiers, Third World Capital: Black Panthers, Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Mokhtefi recounts her time working for Algeria’s independence from France and then living in Algiers. In the process, she describes the historical political formations she witnessed and the various people she met as a journalist and translator living among guerrillas, revolutionaries, exiles, and visionaries.
Born in New York, Mokhtefi joined a youth movement for world peace and justice and became the director of a militant student organization. Mokhtefi moved to France in 1951 and worked as a translator and interpreter for international organizations. She subsequently joined a small group in New York in 1960 that was part of the Algerian National Liberation Front. The group lobbied the United Nations for Algerian independence from its colonial rulers. “In the ’60s, we had the impression that what we did could have an impact,” Mokhtefi told Publishers Weekly Online contributor Alex Crowley, adding: “We felt that we were on the edge of a new world. It was the end of colonialism; the Cold War had only begun.”
Although Algiers, Third World Capital focuses largely on Mokhtefi’s work for the liberation of Algiers and her time living there, the memoir starts off in 1951 after Mokhtefi finished college and moved to Paris. She discusses how the French trade union confederations blockage of Algerian laborers from marching with them in a parade led to her shocking realizations about the impact of colonialism and racism. Mokhtefi’s jobs as a translator and interpreter led her to travel around the world, including India, Italy, Mali, and Sweden, where she worked at international meetings. During these travels she met various people associated with the Algerian independence movements. Meanwhile, France was waging a horrific war against Algeria, which was seeking its independence.
Meanwhile, Mokhtefi’s abilities as an interpreter and translator led her to become involved in the Algerian immigrant labor struggle. She worked with the Front de Libération Nationale until 1962 as Algeria fought for and eventually gained independence. This work would change Mokhtefi’s life dramatically. She eventually ended up living in Algiers, which gained its independence from France in 1962. She eventually helped organize the Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers in 1969. The festival marked another momentous event in Mokhtefi’s life. The Black Panthers came to Algiers a month prior to the start of the festival. The Black Panther’s leader, Eldridge Cleaver also came to Algiers, which had become a type of refuge for revolutionaries following its own successful struggle for independence.
Mokhtefi became involved in numerous adventures with the Panthers and its exiled members, including Cleaver. Mokhtefi writes about the controversial Cleaver, who she found attractive and larger than life. Even though Mokhtefi admired Cleaver, she recognized his many failings. She notes that Cleaver made Mokhtefi off limits sexually to all his fellow Black Panthers in Algeria, including himself. According to Mokhtefi, Cleaver physically abused his wife and also murdered a man who had sex with her. Mokhtefi writes that Cleaver often pushed things too far. The memoir also recounts how she was deported from Algiers in 1974 and ends with a chapter on her life after leaving.
Mokhtefi “makes palpable the turmoil and fervor of her experience there while sharing unbelievable stories previously known only to their participants,” wrote a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Algiers, Third World Capital “a firsthand account of a time when so much seemed up for grabs.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2018, review of Algiers, Third World Capital: Black Panthers, Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries.
Publishers Weekly, May 21, 2018, review of Algiers, Third World Capital, p. 61.
ONLINE
Elaine Mokhtefi website, http://www.elainemokhtefi.com (September 5, 2018).
Publishers Weekly Online, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (July 27, 2018), Alex Crowly, “You Say You Want a Revolution? Elaine Mokhtefi Has One For You,” author profile.
You Say You Want a Revolution? Elaine Mokhtefi Has One For You.
By Alex Crowley | Jul 27, 2018
Comments subscribe by the month
Elaine Mokhtefi has waited 44 years to return to Algeria. It’s not that she lacked the ability to travel; in fact, as we speak she’s preparing to head to Brazil. Rather, in 1974, she was deported under suspicious circumstances—barred from reentering the North African nation that defines a core period of her life and of which she writes in her stirring memoir, Algiers, Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers (Verso, Aug.). So how did a young American woman, born to a secular, working-class New York Jewish family and raised during the Depression, end up in Algiers during such a heady period of revolutionary fervor?
“In the ’60s, we had the impression that what we did could have an impact,” Mokhtefi says as we talk in her Manhattan apartment. “We felt that we were on the edge of a new world. It was the end of colonialism; the Cold War had only begun.” Mokhtefi has lived here since 1995, around the time she and her late husband, Mokhtar Mokhtefi, returned to the U.S. after two decades in France.
RELATED STORIES:
PW issue Contents
More in Authors -> Profiles
Want to reprint? Get permissions.
FREE E-NEWSLETTERS
Enter e-mail address
PW Daily Tip Sheet
subscribeMore Newsletters
Algiers begins in 1951, as Mokhtefi finishes college and heads to a Paris that she describes as “still bandaged and suffering from the loss of status and self-respect” inflicted during WWII. On May Day 1952, she writes that she experienced an “enlightenment” regarding colonialism and racism that stemmed from seeing the French trade union confederation block Algerian laborers from marching with them in the parade. “I was shocked into reality,” she says.
Not long after, Mokhtefi began work as a translator and interpreter, which allowed her to travel to India, Italy, Mali, and Sweden. “At international meetings, you would always meet representatives of Algerian independence movements,” she says.
In the background, France had commenced and continued to wage a brutal war, which would last nearly eight years, against Algeria, which was bent on independence. In 1960, Mokhtefi landed in Brussels at the World Assembly of Youth headquarters. “I organized the international conference in Accra, and as a result I met these people from all around the world.”
The hustle took its toll and Mokhtefi soon returned to New York, where she worked with the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale until 1962, when France finally conceded to Algeria’s demands for independence. “Our role was to convince the world that Algeria had to be independent and France had to stop this crazy war,” she says. “It was difficult, but very fulfilling. Once Algeria was independent, I decided I would go there. I had never been.”
Algeria was an underdeveloped rural nation pillaged by generations of French settlers, nearly all of whom left at the end of the war. “It was really a new country,” Mokhtefi says. “They had to become a real country, not just an appendage to France.”
Mokhtefi became a journalist, and in 1969 she was tapped to help organize the Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers that year. “How we did it I really don’t know, but it came off and it was a beautiful event,” she says. “Every single country of Africa came, with theater groups, musicians, dancers; it was absolutely extraordinary. And from the African diaspora as well—from Brazil, from the United States. It was a total success.”
It followed on the heels of another momentous occurrence: “The Panthers arrived one month before the festival opened. Eldridge arrived in early June 1969 and the festival took place in July,” Mokhtefi says. Facing attempted murder charges, Cleaver fled the U.S. to Cuba, then headed to Algeria, which, since obtaining independence, had become a haven of sorts for revolutionaries.
Over the next few years, Mokhtefi, Cleaver, and other exiled Panthers engaged in an array of over-the-top adventures and international intrigue. Her descriptions of Cleaver shed new light on the controversial figure. “He was very smart, he was funny, he was very attractive as a man,” she says. “He was bigger than life. I think I served as a kind of conscience for him. He could tell me whatever he wanted to tell me, he could ask my advice, he could talk to me and it had no consequences.”
But Mokhtefi has no illusions about Cleaver’s dark side. “Eldridge was an operator,” she says. “He liked to push things further than they should go.”
Did Mokhtefi ever doubt his revolutionary zeal? “He changed his life when he had to,” she says. “He became a revolutionary, and when it was no longer useful for him, he became something else. He became a born-again Christian, and he became a drug addict, which he wasn’t when he was in Algiers, of course—not at all.”
As Mokhtefi explains, in the revolutionary milieu of the time, there was much more to liberation than just political institutions: it was about living in a way that felt liberatory and new and open. “Independence isn’t just a question of a flag,” she says. “Independence was learning how to talk, it was learning how to build, it was learning how to accept others. Concretely, how is this country going to survive?”
In the midst of the liberation war, oil and gas were discovered in Algeria. “They didn’t know they were going to be one of the suppliers of gas and oil to the world,” Mokhtefi says. “So they had to build that industry. And they had to build other industries. Imagine a country without any doctors, without any teachers—a university with no professors. They were tough times but very exciting. When something succeeded, it was so wonderful.”
Mokhtefi runs through the numerous quandaries the Algerians faced. “The main tendency was toward socialism,” she says. “So they started taking over everything that the French left behind, which were apartments, small industries, small businesses, but then they had to manage it all.”
“I personally felt very involved,” Mokhtefi says of her engagement with nation building. But in 1974, she was forced to leave, suspecting that a refusal to inform on a friend tipped the Algerian police apparatus against her. She returned to France, where she was technically also banned, but through some fortunate connections was able to rectify her residency status. She and Mokhtar lived in Paris making and selling jewelry, among other things, until family circumstances brought them to the States.
Mokhtefi no longer makes jewelry, but paints instead, and some of her portraits hang in her apartment. “I was always interested in art, but I never drew or painted during that period of time,” she says. One day, she walked by the Art Students League in Manhattan and said, “That’s it—I’m going there.”
Mokhtefi’s painterly eye is apparent throughout the book, and she describes her experiences in painstaking detail. Yet she never kept journals. “All of those memories are stuck in my mind,” she says. “They’re rich and full; they’re not things you forget. I can’t remember who I met yesterday, but I can pull all that stuff out. And with my husband, we would talk about it all the time. A main topic of conversation was Algeria and everything that happened to him and to me. It remains with me.”
Mokhtefi informs me that she recently received clearance from the Algerian consulate in New York to enter Algeria again. She has already made plans to visit in the fall, after she launches the book. “It’s a magnificent feeling that I can get to go back,” she says.■
A version of this article appeared in the 07/30/2018 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: You Say You Want a Revolution
About the Author
Elaine Mokhtefi was born in New York. After the Second World War, she joined the youth movement for world peace and justice, becoming director of a militant student organization. In 1951 she settled in France as a translator and interpreter for international organizations in the new postwar world. In 1960, she joined a small team in New York as part of the Algerian National Liberation Front, lobbying the United Nations in support of the government in exile and working for Algerian independence. When the struggle was won, she made Algeria her home, working as a journalist and translator. She married the Algerian writer and liberation war veteran Mokhtar Mokhtefi, who died in 2015. A painter as well as a writer, she lives in New York.
2015 Solo show, La Petite Galerie, Paris
2014 Solo show, La Petite Galerie, Paris Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, New York NY 2013 Solo show, La Petite Galerie, Paris
2012 Solo show, Centre George Sand, Montpellier (France)
2011 Taller Boricua Gallery, New York NY
Gallery Martinez, Troy NY
Atrium, Chaville (France)
2010 Solo show, Chapelle des Célestins, Avignon (France)
Solo show, Shelburne VT
El Taller Latino-Americano, New YorkNY
2009 Solo show, Broome Street Gallery, New York NY
2008 Gallery M, Harlem NY
Promenade des Artistes, Mamaroneck NY
2007 Promenade des Artistes, Larchmont NY
2006 Solo show, The Gallery, Cazenovia NY
2004 Solo show, Espace le Scribe-l'Harmattan, Paris (France)
Black history month, West Side Arts Coalition, New York NY
2003 Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, New York NY
Taller Boricua Gallery, New York NY
2002 Solo show, Main Street Gallery, Dobbs Ferry NY
2001 Main Street Gallery, Dobbs Ferry NY
West Side Arts Coalition, New York NY
2000 Lincoln Center, Cork Gallery, New York NY
Westmoreland Art Nationals, Greensburg PA
Artsfest, Bainbridge GA
West Side Arts Coalition, New York NY
1999 Lincoln Center, Cork Gallery, New York NY
West Side Arts Coalition, New York NY
1998 Lincoln Center, Cork Gallery, New York NY
West Side Arts Coalition, New York NY
8/7/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1533699704751 1/3
Print Marked Items
Mokhtefi, Elaine: ALGIERS, THIRD
WORLD CAPITAL
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Mokhtefi, Elaine ALGIERS, THIRD WORLD CAPITAL Verso (Adult Nonfiction) $24.95 8, 7 ISBN: 978-
1-78873-000-6
Mokhtefi (Paris: An Illustrated History, 2002) offers a memoir of international radical activism, from
helping Algeria and Africa shake the yoke of colonialism to helping the Black Panthers establish a
revolutionary outpost in exile.
The narrative sometimes reads like a memoir of high society, though the glamorous names include Eldridge
Cleaver (with whom the author had a close and complicated relationship), Timothy Leary, Frantz Fanon,
Jean-Luc Godard, and Simone de Beauvoir. It was an era derided by Tom Wolfe as "radical chic," when
revolutionary militancy became a fashion statement and a New York girl who presented herself as innocent
as well as idealistic could find herself in the center of it all. "Life was exciting and eventful," writes
Mokhtefi. "I was the fly on the window, looking in, beating its wings." As a translator and facilitator whose
adventures took her from New York to Paris to Algeria to elsewhere in Africa, the author found herself
getting relationship tips from Fanon, who had asked her what she wanted; she replied, "to put my head on
someone's shoulder." Not revolutionary enough, he responded and counseled her to "stay upright on your
own two feet and keep moving forward to goals of your own." Thus she did, though one senses that the
sexual tension with Cleaver might have amounted to something if he hadn't declared her off-limits for
everyone, including himself (making her apparently the only female to whom he was attracted that he
considered off-limits). Mokhtefi has mixed feelings about the man whose life he credited her with saving
and whom she considered a great revolutionary leader early on. He beat his wife, he murdered a man for
having a sexual relationship with his wife, and he "had a reputation for throwing fat on the fire," taking
dangerous situations and making them more dangerous. Still, "despite the things about him I despised--his
killer instinct, his womanizing--I admired the man."
A firsthand account of a time when so much seemed up for grabs.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Mokhtefi, Elaine: ALGIERS, THIRD WORLD CAPITAL." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2018. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A540723202/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=56750074. Accessed 7 Aug. 2018.
8/7/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1533699704751 2/3
Gale Document Number: GALE|A540723202
8/7/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1533699704751 3/3
Algiers, Third World Capital: Black
Panthers, Freedom Fighters,
Revolutionaries
Publishers Weekly.
265.21 (May 21, 2018): p61+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Algiers, Third World Capital: Black Panthers, Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries
Elaine Mokhtefi. Verso, $24.95 (240p) ISBN 978-1-78873-000-6
The behind-the-scenes work of post-WWII liberation movements comes to the fore in this gripping memoir
from Mokhtefi, an "innocent American" whose 1951 move to Paris after college leads her into an
unexpected and awe-inducing life of revolutionary activity in Algeria and beyond. After renting a room in a
cheap hotel on the edge of the North African quarter in Paris, Mokhtefi (nee Klein) becomes involved in the
Algerian immigrant labor struggle and soon an essential fixture in the Algerian war for independence thanks
to her skills as a translator. Algeria's war of liberation from France (1954--1962) changes the course of
Mokhtefi's life, rerouting her in 1960 to a New York City office where the "hands and feet" of the Algerian
revolution operate, and eventually to Algiers, which becomes a hub of activity for numerous liberation
movements. The arrivals of Eldridge Cleaver and several fellow Black Panthers as the party splits triggers a
tumultuous period of clandestine activity and international intrigue that concludes with Mokhtefi's 1974
deportation from Algeria. Despite her pivotal role aiding various leftist movements, savvy handling of
delicate situations, and connections to world-historical persons, Mokhtefi remains humble throughout, even
when describing hobnobbing with singet Miriam Makeba during a Pan-African music festival while trying
to convince a drunk Nina Simone to perform. Mokhtefi has never been back to Algeria, but she makes
palpable the turmoil and fervor of her experience there while sharing unbelievable stories previously known
only to their participants. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Algiers, Third World Capital: Black Panthers, Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries." Publishers Weekly, 21
May 2018, p. 61+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541012643/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8974dbe7. Accessed 7 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A541012643