Book Club Resources

This section contains posts, downloads, interviews, and background information for No Heaven for Good Boys.

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Supporting Content

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Keisha talks about the days of film photography and entrepreneurial ingenuity of the street photographers of Senegal.

The Talibé boys of Senegal

Keisha talks about her connection with the talibé and how they inspired her novel No Heaven for Good Boys.

No Heaven for Good Boys

Set in Senegal, this modern-day Oliver Twist is a meditation on the power of love, and the strength that can emerge when we have no other choice but to survive.

Six-year-old Ibrahimah loves snatching pastries from his mother’s kitchen, harvesting string beans with his father, and searching for sea glass with his sisters. But when he is approached in his rural village one day by Marabout Ahmed, a seemingly kind stranger and highly regarded teacher, the tides of his life turn forever. Ibrahimah is sent to the capital city of Dakar to join his cousin Étienne in studying the Koran under Marabout Ahmed for a year, but instead of the days of learning that Ibrahimah’s parents imagine, the young boys, called Talibé, are forced to beg in the streets in order to line their teacher’s pockets.

Keisha’s Full Bio

Keisha Bush was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her MFA in creative writing from The New School, where she was a Riggio Honors Teaching Fellow and recipient of an NSPE Dean’s Scholarship. After a career in corporate finance and international development that brought her to live in Dakar, Senegal, she decided to focus full-time on her writing. She lives in East Harlem.

Praise for No Heaven for Good Boys

“No Heaven for Good Boys is a compelling, devastating novel with unforgettable characters. Keisha Bush doesn’t shy away from portraying the shattered lives of the children on Dakar’s streets and the injustices that they suffer, but she does so with great compassion and empathy.”—Deepa Anappara, author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

COVID-19 and Children’s Rights

In Senegal, an estimated 100,000 Talibe children – Quranic students often forced to beg on the streets – are experiencing increased hunger as donations become scarce. Shelters for children and homeless families may quickly become overcrowded, making physical distancing impossible.

“These Children Don’t Belong in the Streets”

“If abuse occurs in the daara, talibés often prefer to stay in the street rather than return to a daara where they are always beaten, mistreated, with no freedom, no rights… or it’s the marabout who sends them out begging and exploits them… I always say, and I maintain this position: these children don’t belong in the streets.”

Senegal

This is from Wikipedia, Keisha will be adding her own reported experiences soon. Senegal has a wide variety of ethnic groups and, as in most West African countries, several languages are widely spoken. The Wolof are the largest single ethnic group in Senegal at 43%; the Fula[61] and Toucouleur (also known as Halpulaar‘en, literally “Pulaar-speakers”) (24%) are the second biggest group, followed by the Serer (14.7%),[62] then…

Keisha and Friends in Senegal

Here is a selection of pictures with Keisha and friends in Senegal. They were taken back when film cameras were being used, so these are scans of original paper prints.