HOW TO REALLY WRITE ABOUT AFRICA

Last week I dove in, writing about noir & auto-tune in new sloth-positive South African fiction (author approved), then taking a look at the UK riots via Frederick Douglass and some dubwise reggae, an article which reverberated and sparked a nice Motherboard writeup. Next came many airports. After folding into economy seats (always a screaming baby nearby), the discomfort heightened not mitigated by a string of $15 fruit cups in the Frankfurt or Zurich or Zaghreb airport, I found myself on the breathtakingly beautiful Croatian coast. You land at a town called Split. Then drive 30 minutes further out, to the party on the grounds of a former Yugoslavia military installation! Really cool vibes there. Repurposing. Life is strange. Snails on the walls.

Point is, my friend Binyavanga wrote a book. One Day I Will Write About This Place. A memoir about growing up in & around Kenya and South Africa. And it’s great. “How to write about Africa?” Binyavanga knows. NYT’s review positively glows.

binya

The memoir is even better than his afro-glam / sci-fi (?) author’s photo, although that, too, is inspirational.