| > |
Writers:
- Adekeye Adebajo
is the Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict
Resolution in South Africa.
- Daniel Bergner
won a 2004 Lettre-Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage
for his most recent book, Soldiers of Light (Penguin),
published in the US as In the Land of Magic Soldiers:
A Story of White and Black in West Africa (Picador USA).
- Philip Alcabes
is an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Hunter College
who has written extensively on the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS
and other community-acquired infections. His work has
appeared in the American Scholar, the Chronicle of Higher
Education, Newsday and the Washington Post.
- John Ryle is
Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Human
Rights at Bard, Chair of the Rift Valley Institute,
and author of Warriors of the White Nile.
- Binyavanga Wainaina
was born in Kenya in 1971. He moved to Cape Town, South
Africa, where he worked as a freelance food and travel
writer. He won Caine Prize in 2002. He lives in Nairobi,
where he is the founding editor of Kwani?
|
| > |
"Africa is too large and diverse for
generalisations. It has 54 nations, 5 time
zones, at least 7 climates, more than 800
million people, and, according to the latest
diligent research, maybe 14 million proverbs.
This series of talks and readings seeks to
present some fresh voices from all corners
of Africa, in all their differences."
From the Tour website
How To Write About Africa
by Binyavanga Wainaina
Always use the word 'Africa'
or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles
may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai',
'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big',
'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'.
Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas',
'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'. Note
that 'People' means Africans who are not black,
while 'The People' means black Africans.
Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African
on the cover of your book, or in it, unless
that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47,
prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these.
If you must include an African, make sure
you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.
In your text, treat Africa as if it were
one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling
grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall,
thin people who are starving. Or it is hot
and steamy with very short people who eat
primates. Don't get bogged down with precise
descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries,
900 million people who are too busy starving
and dying and warring and emigrating to read
your book. The continent is full of deserts,
jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other
things, but your reader doesn't care about
all that, so keep your descriptions romantic
and evocative and unparticular.
Make sure you show how Africans have music
and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things
no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and
beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's
cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake,
worms and grubs and all manner of game meat.
Make sure you show that you are able to eat
such food without flinching, and describe
how you learn to enjoy it—because you
care.
Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes,
love between Africans (unless a death is involved),
references to African writers or intellectuals,
mention of school-going children who are not
suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female
genital mutilation.
<click
here to read the entire piece>
<click
here to see the contents of the Granta issue> |
Calendar 