6/25/2023 0 Comments Wainaina how to write about africaFurthermore, he lays out a dichotomy of African characters. In describing African people, Wainaina emphasises the distinction between using ‘The People’ for Black Africans and ‘People’ for Africans who are not Black in order to maintain the idea of sameness of Black African identity. Its intended audience is Western journalists who continuously reinforce narratives of Africa as being on the one hand, dependent and weak, and on the other, a place of significant natural beauty and culture, ideal for a holiday to escape ‘reality’. Wainaina’s diction plays into a Eurocentric fetish for exoticism, issuing instructions to use words like ‘Darkness’, ‘Safari’, ‘Zulu’, and ‘Shadow’ when talking or writing about Africa. As a tool for reinforcing a singular narrative, he consistently promotes the usage of ambiguity and generalizations when describing the continent. ‘How to Write about Africa’ provides a Westernized view of the continent as a homogenous place and people, dependent on the charity of the Occident. This piece exposes the Orientalist narrative on the continent and highlights the neo-colonial tendency to reinforce structural stereotypes and prejudices. Summed up in two sentences, this is the representation of Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina in his ‘scathingly satirical’ piece, ‘How to Write about Africa’. One must treat Africa as if it were one country… 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book.
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