“How to Write about Africa”
“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…Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.”
http://www.granta.com/Archive/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1
It’s obvious how detrimental these narratives are to people identifying as Africans or descended from Africans – and similar things can be said about writing of most low-SES places (ex. rural Mexico, the “inner-city”, etc…) but I wonder if the style was first invented by Europeans writing about the continent of Africa.
