What kind of ancestor do you want to become?
Medical anthropologist Julie Livingston argues that the conditions of capitalist modernity in which we live are not sustainable and are leading to increased rather than lessened inequality.
Lit
The poetic revolution will not be anthologized
Black Women’s poetry has been largely ignored or denigrated in the world of South African letters. They have to do it on their own.
The mysterious ways of The Black Jacobins
C.L.R. James' book about the Haitian Revolution, had an impact far beyond the Caribbean.
The beautyful ones
A personal reflection, by the daughter of a fighter in Zimbabwe's Second Chiumurenga, on the death of President Robert Mugabe.
Now is our time to tell our own stories
The celebrated Mozambican writer, Mia Cuoto, argues, among others, that it is essential that governments think in terms of the nation, not its elites.
Black authors, maids and madams
How black South African authors have written about domestic workers. There's a rich archive there.
Like family
An excerpt from a new book published by Wits University Press that explores how domestic workers are depicted in South African historiography and literature.
Durban gets a new literary festival
What happens when ike's, a legendary bookstore in Durban, South Africa, creates a literary festival? For one, synergy.
From Mogadishu to Toronto
The novel The Youth of God offers fresh perspectives on Somali assimilation and struggle in Canada's largest city.
Arabic literature and the African other
Racist, anti-black stereotypes persist in Arabic literature. It reveals a racial anxiety and othering of Africa among celebrated Arab authors.
The crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front
Judi Rever's account of the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath challenges the official narrative.
Sex, lies and Lagos
Everyday Lagos and Lagosians fill the pages of Leye Adenle's thrillers, but fail to fill some holes in the plots.
A meditation on home
A new memoir by South African-American Stephanie Urdang offers a remarkable and feminist view of love, longing and revolutionary struggle.
Friday Black
The wild metaphors, stark imagery, and boundary-pushing hyperbole in Nana Kwame Agyei-Brenyah writing.
Others made of kindness
Ed Pavlic's new novel follows two lovers trading Chicago for Mombasa.
Abantu Book Festival as an archive of the future
A radical feature on South Africa's literary calendar, Abantu celebrates black intellectual labor, and resists the tropes that marginalizes it.
The power of telling our own stories
When we as Africans tell our own stories, we re-write the stories in the history books that our children are still taught in schools.
The ways in which movement can and cannot heal
An interview with author Emmanuel Iduma on traveling through twenty African cities.
The house of exile
Edward Said once said of the usefulness of exile for intellectual work: it involves adopting “a spirit of opposition, rather than accommodation.” James Baldwin and Sisonke Msimang took it to heart.
African history on its own terms
There are far richer and complex stories to the Africa's history than we think we know; especially the perspectives of African women.