From the Archive: FUNNY WOMEN #139: Gap Year To-Do List
Water is a precious resource; my portable soda stream honors that fact.
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Posts Tagged: Africa
American, Not Blonde
I was finally going to fit in in this foreign country.
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Your Schooling Is Your Voice: Talking with Abi Daré
Abi Daré discusses her debut novel, THE GIRL WITH THE LOUDING VOICE.
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Afrofuturist Triptych for My Mother
This is what I think of when I think of home; Africa is my altar.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #186: Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
“I love play, I love playfulness, play is fun and extremely serious.”
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Trudging Down Death Road
Reveal yourself. Reveal yourself. You cannot be dead. Reveal yourself.
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Four Continents, Three Families, One Nation: Talking with Namwali Serpell
Namwali Serpell discusses her debut novel, THE OLD DRIFT.
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Redefining Manhood: A Conversation with James Hornor
James Hornor discusses his new novel, VICTORIA FALLS.
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Voices on Addiction: The Honeybee
She never stopped, a bee buzzing from flower to flower to flower, collecting all the sweetness she could.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #81: On Cultural Preservation
The Lost Boys had their moment in the media, but these people, these survivors, not boys at all and not lost now either, are still here, living lives, growing and changing and thinking and reflecting.
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“Language Orthodoxy,” the Adichie Wars, and Western Feminism’s Enduring Myopia
Adichie is far more significant than her accusers seem to know.
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Caroline Chege Is the Politician the World Needs
Against all odds, Caroline Chege is fighting for female representation in Kenya.
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TORCH: Growing Season
I ask Hussein if he’s proud of the work he’s doing. He says that he is. We stop talking. For a moment, the market feels like peace.
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The Rumpus Interview with André Alexis
André Alexis discusses his latest book The Hidden Keys, puzzles, chance, divinity, and the Toronto literary community.
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The Rumpus Interview with Imbolo Mbue
Imbolo Mbue discusses her debut novel Behold the Dreamers, teaching herself how to write a novel, and the price of the American Dream.
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The Rumpus Interview with Raphael Cormack
Raphael Cormack discusses The Book of Khartoum: A City in Short Fiction, a collection of short stories he co-edited and translated, the editorial process, and the responsibilities that accompany translating writing.
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Jonas Keller (no relation) offers valuable advice on stepping back when engaging with other cultures’ art. Despite what you might assume from the headline, he sidesteps instructions on how to watch African films and confronts Western paternalism head-on.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Rhino Girl
But these were not men, she realized. They were a cackle of spotted hyena, bright-toothed in the dark, and they were laughing at her.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Sandra Meek
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Sandra Meek about her new collection An Ecology of Elsewhere, writing landscapes, and the power of syntactic density.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Thoughts on My Ancestry.com DNA Results
There were chains. History books always describe the chains.
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The Rumpus Interview with Chinelo Okparanta
Chinelo Okparanta talks about her debut novel, Under the Udala Trees, her upcoming appearance at Portland’s Wordstock book festival, and LGBTQ rights in America and worldwide.
...moreAfrican/American
Although all-things “African” had been exalted in my house, this was not the case for project kids at P.S. 40, nor the “best of the brightest” at P.S/I.S. 308. It was at those places where I learned that there was a world’s difference between how we’re raised, and how we grow up. Yahdon Israel writes […]
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: A Coney Island of the Mind
My money is no good here. I may wear the clothes or speak the language, but something in my manner always betrays me as foreign. Despite my chosen title, I do not belong in Brooklynstan.
...moreWriting Homosexuality in Africa
Within the past five years, we’ve seen a sea change in attitudes towards homosexuality by writers, in part a response to virulent anti-homosexual legislation in key locations. Writers such as Chimamanda Adichie and Binyavanga Wainaina have been very open about their personal views on homosexuality and have gone on to challenge and change how homosexuality […]
...moreTeju Cole Made You a Mixtape
This is a Lasgidi of the mind, representing a meld of many club nights in Lagos and alternate Lagoses through the past decade. It is a cauldron of that vertiginous self-confidence that anyone who knows any Nigerians knows well. Put down the New Yorker—Teju Cole is here with his selection of Nigerian dance jams, ready to […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Kara Richardson Whitely
Author Kara Richardson Whitely discusses her new memoir, Gorge: My Journey Up Kilimanjaro at 300 Pounds, surviving food addiction and the trauma of being molested, and what comes next.
...moreNollywood in Vogue
Nearly a decade ago, Binvayanga Wainaina wrote an essay for Granta that changed his whole life. Now, he looks at the interior of African publishing, the landscape of literature on the continent, and the “Nollywoodification of the book market”: “I am least interested about how Europe, the West, represents Africa. The essay I wrote – ‘How to […]
...moreFinding Kurtz
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is driven by the search and discovery of Kurtz, the man turned mad by Africa. Kurtz is the pale white colonizer who rapes the continent, is also worshiped by the native population, and provides fodder for an endless stream of undergraduate English papers. However, there remains the question of whether […]
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: love/Woman/thirty
They did not tell us that love was not something you could throw away once finished. That it would remain on us like blackened scars, underneath blouses and in those places only we could see.
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Here Be Dragons
For anyone from the global fringe, the flattening expectation created by a cultural stereotype is pervasive and familiar.
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