Books & Audiobooks
Dipo Faloyin’s book Africa is Not a Country is one I would recommend to anyone who enjoys reading a book about history, social movements, politics, and economics with an unparalleled cultural commentary served up on a platter of the funniest way you’ll hear some things worded. So basically all non-fiction readers. Its chapters tell the story of the histories of Africa from the perspective of a writer who grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, for whom the standard incapacitation narratives are hilarious for their inaccuracy. He (rightly so) creates a caricature of the white European settler colonizer and then dismantles the house it built to reveal, layer by layer, Africa’s actually existing vibrant culture and history as told by Africa.
Dipo Faloyin has a shimmering wit that brings the book to life in burst-out-laughing ways. He writes on Granta magazine and Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina for example, that “Arguably Wainaina’s most celebrated work started as an angry email send to the editors of the literary magazine Granta, which had published an ‘Africa Issue’ that forgot to feature writers from the continent” (p. 198). The acerbic wit and pristine comedic timing made his book a laugh-out-loud delight between delineations of frustratingly harmful Global North interventionist policies. Another example is of the movie Independence Day, where world-ending doom looms on the interstellar invading horizon but no one informs Africa of how to stop the aliens, an oversight that Faloyin infuses colonizer-roasting humour into perfectly: “You would think with our apparent penchant for genocide, Africa would top the list of places you would call when the aim is to eradicate an entire civilization” (p. 203). His equally precise takedown of Bob Geldof’s white saviour jam sessions turned fundraising spectacles are a must-not-miss take on the colonial mindset that just won’t quit. His humour reminded me of the way a Haitian ex and I would make fun of white supremacy, even placing bets on who would get the “random search” at the airport gates on a trip. She was laughing on the walk into the boarding area because my suitcase and self were the unexpected lucky random winners (metal detector, x-ray style bag search, pat down and rapid-fire interrogation questions) when both of us placed open bets on her Blackness being the probable target that we braced ourselves for by joking about it. It was a way that we were making fun of the system, because of its penchant for brutality towards Blackness. The book was a reminder too, of the way that despite her being a proud Haitian on both sides, the world still also, reducibly, and relentlessly read her as just Black. Nowhere was this more evident than when thinking about the politics of patties. There are Jamaican patties, and there are Haitian patties; For those who do not read cultural diversity but instead just see “Black”, the subtle differences do not exist. It is, however, absolutely present, and a point of pride when done well. The same could be said, as the author notes extensively, of jollof rice (most popular are Ghanian, Nigerian, and Senegalese jollof and one would do well not to mix them up lest you be lovingly roasted with the heat used to season it). Faloyin’s perspective reminded readers that it is the same singularizing, reductive mentality that would see Africa as a country instead of a continent. The necessity of humour to survive anti-Black racism makes it all the more important, and it’s one of the things I appreciated most about Africa is Not a Country. Its brilliance is in its refusal to be anything but African, and Nigerianly so.
As an aside, I don’t often bring up stories about Black people I’ve met or known when speaking on platforms like this blog. It doesn’t do much to disrupt the idea of cultural capital accumulation that takes place when people do an equivalent of “I have a Black friend” punctuation in their discourse by speaking on or for Black people they’ve known, rather than asking systems why there are no Black people to speak for themselves where they are situated (or doing the work to consult the community ethically). It is basically where someone not Black uses a proximity to Blackness to gain authority or power by acting as an expert on Black experiences without actually being Black. Part of decolonization includes (at least for me, in the past few years) asking why we are speaking on a subject and interrogating our reasons for offering our opinions of it. It goes a long way to upholding a silencing power of white supremacy that invisibilizes narratives highlighting the actually-existing diversity of Blackness (African, Caribbean, Afro-Latine, and Afro-Indigenous for example) and culture while claiming to uphold it by mentioning it (as with museums and artefact collecting which Faloyin dedicates an entire chapter to a history of in Africa). I try to be aware of that dynamic now more than ever, because it only reinforces the acceptability of those who aren’t Black speaking on a Black person’s experience. I share the stories about the airport and patties above, because I wanted to outline one of the really great things about the book, in terms of its insistence in honoring the rich diversity of African-ness. It meant something important to me, but I also wanted to offer the caveat in this paragraph to explain the need to be very caring and reflexive about the context of doing so.
Building on culturally relevant works and creators I was introduced to through Africa is Not a Country, is the aforementioned writer Binyavanga Wainaina, whose first book One Day I Will Write About This Place I’m looking forward to reading. His most recent and final release, How to Write About Africa: Collected Works, is not in any public libraries, nor academic libraries within a 2 hours or more drive from where I live, but you can be sure I’m putting in a purchase suggestion for his posthumously published book. A hilarious preview of the book can be found in the Granta article online, by the same title. I’m grateful to have read Faloyin’s book to learn of culturally significant African writers like Wainaina, and entertainers on African terms instead of from a North American view. Several times throughout the book he notes the harmful stereotypes laden in popular media narratives of Africa (still). He goes as far as listing a few in the chapter “There is No Such Thing as an African Accent” with clarity that reminds readers that much of the movies written for Black actors limit the portrayal of Africans as anything but diverse, and the African landscape as anything but a terra nullius of grassland waiting for civilizations good graces if not the saving grace of American intervention and technologies. He talks at great length about the ongoing importance of Black Panther. He also shares details that seem pretty wild to consider, wherein the creators of the movie wanted Boseman to adopt a British accent, which would render the uncolonized Wakanda as obviously still a British subject in the cultural imaginary of colonialism. Boseman refused, and the movie as well as African consciousness is so much better for it according to Faloyin. It also reminded me that though it has been many years since I was introduced to, and watched more Nollywood films, I am well overdue for a marathon. There are so many artists, political figures, and perspectives that easily forego mention in North American media. Reading books like Faloyin’s are as much about resistance to narratives that monolithize as they are about wanting to read a cultural commentary as and on African entertainment.
Faloyin’s book accomplishes a lot in just under 400 pages. It tells readers about important colonial injectures into a what-could-have-been imaginary of African history, while infusing his own narratives into the story with a relentless sense of humour that reminds readers: Africa is neither damaged, nor in need of any intervention at the level of consciousness or policy. It deserves being understood on its own terms not as a gesture of politeness but because that’s what you do when you respect someone or a group of people; You listen. Readers are treated to the gift of African brilliance, incandescently writ large. It is a prescient commentary on the ways that such brilliance can be challenged by colonialism fighting for a once de facto grip on an otherwise vivid and indeed, as the title states, bright continent. It is a standalone work in what I selfishly and bookishly hope will be an oeuvre.