How To Write About Africa

by Erik Olsen on

As the good folks at Boing Boing point out in this post, the article they reference here from Granta is not a new one. But it’s still a really excellent read. Or at least the excerpt is. What’s funny, is that I had this exact same notion recently when I was reading the newspaper. I realized that nearly every article I’d seen recently fulfilled some stereotype mentioned here. To wit: every picture I could recall had either an AK-47-toting soldier, skeletal children or tribesmen in it. Also, everyone of them seemed to refer to “Africa” as this singular entity. I am as guilty as the next person for holding on to these generalized notions of a whole continent, but it is true that the media are also to blame. How can we hold different perspectives when we are unable to consume different perspectives in our daily consumption of journalism? Anyway, I’m going to pull a part of the excerpt here from How to Write About Africa…an excerpt excerpt:

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

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.

Well worth a moment of self-reflection.

One for the Road: Living in a Foreign Language

by Kelly Amabile on

L.A. Law fans may be interested to learn about an upcoming travel memoir by actor Michael Tucker. He and his wife, actress Jill Eikenberry, were vacationing in Italy when they fell head over heels for a rustic Umbrian cottage. They impulsively bought the place and Tucker has now chronicled their “under an Umbrian sun” experiences in a lighthearted travelogue.

Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine and Love in Italy tells the story of how the couple embraces the culture of their new home — including the gourmet delights of Italian cooking and the challenges of learning how to communicate with local neighbors and friends. “Our goal,” writes Tucker, “was to slow down our hearts and minds until they synched up with the circadian rhythm of the Italian countryside.”

The couple will begin a series of book tour appearances with an event in New York on July 10.

One for the Road: The Complete Walker

by Kelly Amabile on

Colin Fletcher, author of the “hiker’s bible” died this past Tuesday at the age of 85. His bestseller, The Complete Walker, first appeared in 1968 and has sold more than 500,000 copies. Known for popularizing hiking and backpacking in the US because of his books on the subject, Fletcher has been called ‘the father of modern backpacking”.

Born in Wales, Fletcher was educated in England and served in the Royal Marines. After spending time in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Canada, he moved to the US in 1956. Two years later he walked the length of the state of California, a journey that was chronicled in The Thousand Mile Summer. In 1963 he became the first man to walk the length of the Grand Canyon below the rim, which he wrote about in The Man Who Walked Through Time. Backpacker magazine printed a touching eulogy, and here’s a short interview done with Fletcher ten years ago.

One for the Road: Journey to the Land of Flies

by Kelly Amabile on

Apart from Playboy’s new travel-inspired book, One for the Road focused on international literary translations this week. And to wrap things up, here’s a final suggestion that I spied over at Critical Mass. The National Book Critics Circle blog is asking writers to recommend foreign translations in support of Reading the World, and yesterday’s interview unearthed another travel-related translation from an Italian writer:

Journey to the Land of Flies and Other Travels is a collection of stories by former architect and publisher Aldo Buzzi. These witty musings about food, philosophy and 19th Century Russian literature are not what some would consider traditional travel writing. But Buzzi’s journeys to places like Jakarta, Sicily and Moscow do evoke his experience of each particular place, as he ponders vodka, cabbage and cockroaches from these distinct corners of the globe. I really like the sound of this one. Thank goodness for translators–Ciao!

One for the Road: Japan – A Traveler’s Literary Companion

by Kelly Amabile on

Whereabouts Press publishes a small but well-done series of literary guides for only a dozen countries (like Mexico, Chile, Israel) and a few cities (Amsterdam and Prague). A few months ago I devoured their 2006-released Japan edition: Japan: A Traveler’s Literary Companion is a magical collection of original works by Japanese writers that have each been translated into English.

The stories are organized geographically, taking readers along on journeys to places like Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Kumano, Okinawa and Tokyo. Donald Richie’s foreword points to the concept of “furusato”, a term that carries more meaning than its translation “hometown”. This theme of revisiting or returning weaves through all the stories, as each one paints a picture for the reader of the deep relationship that exists between person and place.

There seems no better way to explore the culture of another country (besides actually being there) than by reading literature from a variety of voices native to the land. This is an excellent place to begin any journey through Japan.