Is Afropolitanism Africa's new "single story"?
A Response to Helon Habila's Review of We Need New Names (November 2013)
Behind the scenes of the story.
To launch this newsletter, which will be a one-stop library for the online cultural and political commentary I published online, between 2013 and 2019, I have chosen to start this week, nine years ago. This week, nine years ago, Asterix Journal republished a response I wrote, to Helon Habila’s review of NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel, We Need New Names. The comment had been first published by This is Africa.me on October 29, 2013 and did the numbers online. It is one of my more often cited publications, to date.
Although I had published a rare essay and short story offline and online by this point (had stopped writing for Readers Cafe Africa a column that was themed around my time in Budapest, Hungary, had contributed to Saraba Magazine, and published some things in The Observer, Daily Monitor and Sunday Vision newspapers), the comment below launched my cultural and political punditry in the African blogosphere. In particular, I’d write for This is Africa.me regularly for about five years following this comment. I’d also write for Chimurenga Chronic, Africa in Words, Africa is a Country, African Arguments, among others. This body of work is what I will share over the next one plus year, on this substack newsletter. Where I publish something new/fresh, I will also share it here. I may include some work that was never published, for various reasons.
It all started with a conversation with Ihozo Paula in the lead-up to the inaugural Writivism Festival in August 2013. It was Paula who said that she thought my views on books, politics, culture generally were interesting enough to deserve publishing by the various Africa-facing platforms she wrote for / edited. And so, she introduced me to Siji Jabbar who edited This is Africa.me at the time. Other introductions followed. This comment, which follows was the first fruit of Paula’s mentorship and guidance. I will share one post a week, and will preface each with a “behind the scenes” background. Little or no edits will be made on the commentary, to preserve its original context. The subscription contributions from readers will go towards sustaining me as I work around resuscitating many creative initiatives of mine, from the Writivism Literary Initiative to individual writing projects. I hope this reminiscing is of value, to you, as it is, to me.
Reading Helon Habila’s Review of “We Need New Names”
It is now a trend that any story out of Africa that deals with deprivation, misrule and suffering is met with loud outcries of poverty-porn from a group of Africans Taiye Selasi defined as Afropolitans. Writing in Lip Magazine in 2005, Taiye Selasi described Afropolitans as “the newest generation of African emigrants … (known by a) funny blend of London fashion, New York jargon, African ethics, and academic successes.”
The Nigerian writer and academic Helon Habila is one such Afropolitan. Born and raised in Nigeria, Habila teaches in a North American university, has achieved success in the literary world, with a slew of writing prizes to his name. His review in The Guardian of NoViolet Bulawayo’s Booker prize shortlisted book We Need New Names represents the classic Afropolitan response to any story dealing with a reality many Africans living on the continent are familiar with. Habila wrote of the book:
… it has fraudulent preachers and is partly set in a soul-crushing ghetto called Paradise, somewhere in Zimbabwe. Yes, there is a dead body hanging from a tree; there is Aids – the narrator’s father is dying of it; there is political violence (pro-Mugabe partisans attacking white folk and expelling them from their homes and chanting “Africa for Africans!”); there are street children – from the ranks of whom the narrator, Darling, finally emerges and escapes to America and a better life. Did I mention that one of the children, 10 – or 12-year-old Chipo, is pregnant after being raped by her grandfather? There is a palpable anxiety to cover every “African” topic; almost as if the writer had a checklist made from the morning’s news on Africa.
What should an African writer, who is very concerned about the conditions in which the majority Africans live do, according to commentators like Habila? Do the victims of misrule, those who have suffered, those who know pain, disease, war and violence and happen to have experienced this misfortune on the African continent deserve a share of the literary space? It does not seem so, to Habila. Habila’s rejection of issue-based African literature has a history, beyond NoViolet Bulawayo’s book. In an introduction to the Granta Book of the African Short Story (which he edited), Habila argued that the generation of African writers, to which he belongs is “post-nationalist.” They do not concern themselves with the nation and national politics and they live and work outside their countries, mostly in the West.
The shift towards post-nationalist subject matter can be seen in recent African novels favoring the themes of travel and individual identity, like Brian Chikwava’s “Harare North”, about Zimbabweans in London; Chika Unigwe’s “On Black Sisters’ Street”, about African prostitutes in Belgium; Dinaw Mengestu’s “The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears”, about Ethiopians in Washington, DC; E.C Esondu’s collection of stories, “Voice of America”, about Nigerians in America; Teju Cole’s “Open City”, set in New York …
Habila’s message to the African writer is clear enough: Do not write about your people, who are living on the African continent. Do not write about the issues that affect them on the continent, especially if they be political. In Habila’s world and the Afropolitan’s generally, there is only space for stories about the African of the world, where the world is the West. What about the Africans who do not see themselves in the image of their positioning in the West? The Africans who are keen on dealing with home issues, those who look to literature to articulate their pain, as a form of catharsis? What about them? Have they lost their Africanness?
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