Merry Wanderer of the Night + nonfiction

Awesome Essays: How to Write About Africa

I haven't read a lot about Africa or a lot of postcolonial literature, but I was really struck by this satirical essay in my essay film class this week. How to Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina is a look at the Western perception of Africa and how Westerners portray Africa in literature, film, and other media. I'm not a big fan of satire, but Wainaina does a great job of controlling his comments and returning to ideas over the course of this very short essay. He talks a lot about the African landscape; it has to be portrayed as beautiful, orange, and rolling, but people on the landscape must be black, thin, and starving. The following passage encompasses a lot of the feelings that come out in the essay:

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.
Africans are often associated with music, and while there is some truth to that there are other cultures that are highly musical that we don't pay as much attention to. With the bit about food I think he is trying to point out how Westerners push the differences between the West and Africa and really dehumanize it. Earlier in the essay he says we "should" talk about Africa as if it were an entire country, which of course Africa is not. It's a continent. The final sentence is what really interests me though-- "because you care." As Westerners we feel the need to talk about Africa and discuss it to show that we care about it. But we only care about it in a cultural sense.

You can go to Granta to read the essay, or you can listen to it by watching this video. I like the video, but I'll warn you that some parts of the essay are missing-- not a lot, you'll still get the idea.

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Awesome Essays: How to Write About Africa + nonfiction