...In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.Written by Binyavanga Wainaina, and worth pondering.
...Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation...
"[You must imply that] without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed."
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Meat-Ghost
Meat-Ghost by Christopher Walsh, 11/13/2023 Becoming a Meat-Ghost: unseen, untracked, You and UnYou, seemingly There and Not-There at once, a…
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A short, short poem
Mea Culpa by Christopher Walsh, 6/23/2023 I used to care about that? Really? Really? …really?
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A poem, thinking of flames
From a Coast by Christopher Walsh, 2/19/2023-3/15/2023 A night, a beach, a fire: We pull in from larger to smaller to you. The sky and the…
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