Books: David Goldblatt’s ‘Futebol Nation: The Story of Brazil Through Soccer’
In his book Futebol Nation, British journalist David Goldblatt explores the history of Brazilian football and how it links to the social, economical, cultural and, especially, political life of the...
View ArticleNovelist Taiye Selasi doesn’t like passports or nations.
The videos of the TED Global 2014 lecture series are not out yet. But if the follow-up blogposts are anything to go by, we can anticipate what Taiye Selasi will tell us in her presentation. As far as I...
View ArticleWhat If We Publish Children’s Books African Kids Could Relate To?
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,” wrote Toni Morrison. Imagine a world with no Hobbits, no Aslan, no Dr. Who. These English mythologies,...
View ArticleHow do we talk about the memory of Apartheid
In 1966 the South African government declared District Six—a high-density, mostly coloured residential area intrinsic to the fabric of downtown Cape Town for at least a century and situated on prime...
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Angola’s Forgotten Massacre
In her famous tract on literature and trauma, Cathy Caruth writes: “If Freud turns to literature to describe traumatic experience, it is because literature, like psychoanalysis, is interested in the...
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Ba re e ne re: The rebirth of a literary dream in Lesotho
In Sesotho, the language of Lesotho, the words “Ba re e ne re…” mean “They say it was said…” Similar to once upon a time, this is how folktales begin in Sesotho. The words have another deeper meaning...
View ArticleInterview with Ishtiyaq Shukri on his new novel, “I See You”
Shukri: “Imagine a world in which the first question you would be asked is not ‘Where are you from?’ but ‘What have you read?’ Why should the borders of the nation state into which I was born forever...
View Article‘The Italian Joseph Conrad’
Described by the literary press as the “Italian Joseph Conrad” and “a 20th century Balzac”, Alessandro Spina–the pen name of Basili Shafik Khouzam–was a Syrian Maronite who was born in Benghazi in 1927...
View ArticleThe Contemporary Mark of Assata Shakur
This past July, icon of Black American activism Assata Shakur’s autobiography was re-pressed by Zed Books in London. At times thought to be dormant, black American activism has seen a resurgence in...
View ArticleWhat Binyavanga Wainaina thinks of the Caine Prize
This is Africa is prone to tabloid headlines (they’ve been running tons of sex related posts lately), but Nigerian journalist Chiagozie Nwonwu‘s interview with Binyavanga Wainaina (writer, commentator,...
View ArticleThe Resurrection of Nat Nakasa
“This is Simply a Personal Statement from Me to You” On August 18th I attended the memorial service for Nat Nakasa at the Broadway Presbyterian Church in Harlem. What began as a somber event quickly...
View ArticleJames Matthews being James Matthews
The film, Diaries of a Dissident Poet, follows poet James Matthews around Cape Town, tracking him during a year, from his 83rd to 84th birthday. It opens with a small celebration of his 83rd at the...
View ArticleObituary: Nadine Gordimer
My first introduction to Comrade Nadine was through her writing during my student activist days in the mid-1970s and later when I was serving five years on Robben Island as a political prisoner from...
View ArticleDreadlocked Rapunzel
Lately, there’s been some good rumbling about the dearth of stories that include characters of color (a New York Times critique, a “Top 10 Guide” in The Guardian, 30 Classics on The Griot) . As a...
View ArticleAfrica is a Country Video–The Editor of New Book on Brenda Fassie on ‘Letting...
Often the biographical genre puts the burden of accountability on the subject written about than it reveals about the writer. Bongani Madondo craftly debunks that in his sophomore project, I’m Not Your...
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Brenda Fassie: a revolution without harmony
In 2002 when it debuted, I went to see ‘Amandla: a Revolution in Four-Part Harmony,’ American Lee Hirsch’s film about the role of music in the anti-apartheid struggle. Uplifting and solemn at the same...
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Lesego Rampolokeng’s Elegy To Robo The Technician
“Raise your hand up if you’re a hip-hop head” said Lesego Rampolokeng, rallying a house full of poets at a gathering in Melville on a wet Sunday afternoon in 2013. I put mine up, as did a few audience...
View ArticleJames Baldwin at 90, Part 3: Black Style in an Age of Sights for the Speechless
In Take This Hammer, Baldwin’s guide, Orville Luster, positions him in San Francisco’s Lower Fillmore District across the street from the Booker T. Washington Hotel. As they approach the hotel on...
View Article‘Thinking About Genocide’— An Extract from Mahmood Mamdani’s Seminal Book on...
I visited Rwanda roughly a year after the genocide. On July 22, 1995, I went to Ntarama, about an hour and a half by car from Kigali, on a dirt road going south toward the Burundi border. We arrived at...
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The Dangers of a Single Book Cover: The Acacia Tree Meme and “African...
“Like so many (wildly varying) writers on Africa, Chimamanda Adichie gets the acacia tree sunset treatment. Whether Wilbur Smith or Wole Soyinka, Rider Haggard or Bessie Head, apparently you get the...
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