A question of desperation
Black popular culture has gained two new heroes in Queen & Slim—a film about desperate violence.
Culture
Vanquisher of troubles or light of our home
The music of Albalabel, a pioneering women’s group in conservative and patriarchal Sudan, endures over decades of struggle.
Reading List: Ainehi Edoro
English Professor and Editor of Brittle Paper, recommends five books she’s been reading.
Linda Ronstadt is still playing Sun City
Nearly four decades later, Linda Ronstadt’s arguments against the cultural boycott - repeated in a new film - ring hollow.
The epidemic of thinkfluencers
For this group, politics is often framed as a series of never-ending discussions about social justice: The experience from South Africa.
Will the colonized ever speak?
New French film on decolonization in Africa and Asia incapable of avoiding the Eurocentrism the filmmakers wanted to steer clear of.
The unfinished business of the Tunisian revolution
Meryam Joobeur’s film, Brotherhood explores Tunisia's outsized role in the Syrian conflict.
The art washing of Sindika Dokolo
The art world largely Isabel dos Santos’s husband despite him being caught up in large scale corruption.
There is no one way to talk about migration
Beyond news headlines, African artists complicate common migration narratives.
Fela enshrined
Fela Kuti’s friend, Carlos Moore, the black Cuban emigre writer, is the subject of a film about their at times difficult relationship. The result is complex.
The pitfalls of symbolic decolonization
Mukoma wa Ngugi's opening remarks at the launch (today) of the 2020 Writers Unlimited International Literature Festival in The Hague.
When bad reporting mirrors the thing it wants to criticize
A new film about Kony 2012 is a lesson in how not to fight simplification with more simplification.
The black son shines
Masauko Chipembere's first solo album is a remarkable achievement and a timely musical reminder of the circular nature of pan-Africanist consciousness.
Time travelin’
The Chimurenga arts collective explores the relevance of FESTAC, a near forgotten, epic black arts festival held in Nigeria in the mid-1970s, for our age.
Detritus of revolution
Nthikeng Mohlele’s novel Small Things (2013) provides a rejoinder to J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), depicting a black man’s perspective on the failures of South Africa’s transition.
Lagos in its filthy glory
Filmmaker Akin Omotoso shows the Lagos that pushes the sane to insanity, the meek to thuggery and the lawful to anarchy.
At the edge of sight
One of the few books about photography to come out of the continent and where the majority of contributors are African and work on the continent.
Pan-Africanism and the African artist
Meleko Mokgosi’s multimedia works offer complex views of history and powerful critiques of pan-Africanism and the postcolonial moment we are currently living.
Music is the weapon
During Christmas 1980, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba performed at a concert in Lesotho that deeply challenged and disturbed South Africa’s apartheid regime. The record of that concert is being reissued.
Difference and belonging
No child should choose between having food, love, and a roof over their head or being their full self.