Africa Is a Country

The Stories We Tell About Africa

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Stories We Tell About Africa

By
Sonja Sugira

Chris Abani's musings on telling African stories gets at just about everything Sonja thinks about as she encounters "Africa" every day, and then attempt to write about it.

A relief from the cover of Chris Abani's 2005 novel, "Graceland."

I’ve been meaning to post a brilliant talk from 2007 by the Nigerian writer, Chris Abani. It’s a TED talk. At one point, he says  “… the problem isn’t really the stories that are being told or which stories are being told, the problem really is the terms of humanity that we’re willing to bring to complicate every story, and that’s really what it’s all about. Abani’s talk gets at just about everything I think about as I encounter “Africa” every day, and then attempt to write about those encounters. Another excerpt:

“… There’s been a lot of talk about narrative in Africa. And what’s become increasingly clear to me is that we’re talking about news stories about Africa; we’re not really talking about African narratives. And it’s important to make a distinction, because if the news is anything to go by, 40 percent of Americans can’t — either can’t afford health insurance or have the most inadequate health insurance, and have a president who, despite the protest of millions of his citizens — even his own Congress — continues to prosecute a senseless war. So if news is anything to go by, the U.S. is right there with Zimbabwe, right? Which it isn’t really, is it? …

The truth is, everything we know about America, everything Americans come to know about being American, isn’t from the news. I live there. We don’t go home at the end of the day and think, “Well, I really know who I am now because the Wall Street Journal says that the Stock Exchange closed at this many points.” What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture …”

The talk is a couple of years old so you may already have run across it but it doesn’t hurt to hear it again. It’s worth your 19:34. (Update: This is a higher resolution version than that on Youtube.)

On another note, Chimamada Ngozi Adichie, another personal favorite has been chosen as one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” list of fiction writers worth watching, the first such list in more than a decade. I like this (even though we don’t much care for lists around here).

Further Reading

After the uprising

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Binti, revisited

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The bones beneath our feet

A powerful new documentary follows Evelyn Wanjugu Kimathi’s personal and political journey to recover her father’s remains—and to reckon with Kenya’s unfinished struggle for land, justice, and historical memory.

What comes after liberation?

In this wide-ranging conversation, the freedom fighter and former Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs reflects on law, liberation, and the unfinished work of building a just South Africa.

The cost of care

In Africa’s migration economy, women’s labor fuels households abroad while their own needs are sidelined at home. What does freedom look like when care itself becomes a form of exile?

The memory keepers

A new documentary follows two women’s mission to decolonize Nairobi’s libraries, revealing how good intentions collide with bureaucracy, donor politics, and the ghosts of colonialism.

Making films against amnesia

The director of the Oscar-nominated film ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently.