Promotion Fest: Africa

[dark_administrator]

Last year, wistfuljane presented pie charts showing the breakdown by region of nominated fandoms qualifying for Chromatic Yuletide 2010. Africa, along with Latin America and First Nations, were at the bottom of the list. We hope that we can do better this year by encouraging Kaleidoscope participants to brainstorm and discuss fandoms that originate in Africa.

Like every world region, Africa is not a monolith: it’s the second-largest and second-most populous continent in the world, with 54 nations populated by hundreds of ethnicities speaking over a thousand languages. In light of this incredible diversity, we encourage participants to think carefully about cultural context and issues of representation when creating fanworks for these sources.

Starting Points

• How to Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina (article in Granta)
• The danger of a single story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (video of TED talk)
• 100 things that you didn’t know about Africa (page 2, 3, 4) by Robin Walker (excerpt from When We Ruled)
• This is Africa (Tumblr)

Brainstorming

Here are some African sources that we think would be great fandom nominations for Kaleidoscope:

• Awesome historical women: Nana Asma’u, Kimpa Vita, Queen Nandi, Yaa Asantewa (special thanks to eccentricyoruba, who wrote all of these interesting posts)
• Nollywood films (Nigeria): trailers at Nollywood.com, full movies licensed for streaming on Youtube
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria): literary fiction
• Willie Bester (South Africa): sculpture
• Toumani Diabaté (Mali): music at myspace
• Fela Kuti (Nigeria): music at last.fm
• Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt): literary fiction
• Nnedi Okorafor (Nigeria): speculative fiction
• Shailja Patel (Kenya): poetry and performance art
• Oumou Sangare (Mali): music at myspace
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (Kenya): literary fiction
• Ali Farka Touré (Mali): music at last.fm, World Circuit Records

Also check out the African source fandoms mentioned in the comments to Chromatic fandom collecting!

Suggestions from commenters:

• gloss recommends Uganda Skateboard Union (Uganda): official website, promotional video
  
• livrelibre and allchildren recommend Pumzi (Kenya): science fiction film available at Amazon, trailer
  
• livrelibre recommends Ben Okri (Nigeria): speculative/literary fiction, especially The Famished Road
  
• sophinisba recommends Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie (Ivory Coast): graphic novels especially Aya: The Series
  
• devilc recommends Luanda Magere (Luo peoples): folklore/mythology
  
• tree recommends 678 (Egypt): film
  
• troisroyaumes recommends Magdy El Shafee (Egypt): graphic novels at personal website and Words Without Borders
  
• troisroyaumes recommends Christophe-Ngalle Edimo and Simon-Pierre Mbumbo (Cameroon): graphic novels, especially Malamine, un africain à Paris
  
• troisroyaumes recommends Leo (Kenya): trailer

Share your squee for these fandoms or give other African fandom suggestions in the comments below!

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Comments

[sara]

I have recently very much enjoyed South African novelist Lauren Beukes' science fiction/magic realism novel Zoo City.

Beukes is, I think, Afrikaaner; the heroine of this novel is black; I am not sure how this fits into the chromatic fandoms scheme of things, but I liked the story and Zinzi, the heroine, is quite fabulous. Fucked up and smart enough to know how fucked up she is, and stubborn enough to be trying to go straight but not quite stubborn enough to get there...and then there's a take on animal familiars which turns a lot of that concept on its head. Anyhow, it's a good story, and I'm still stunned to have found African genre fiction on the shelf at my local Borders.

(I am so far less impressed by Beukes' debut novel Moxyland, which I read the first third of and then abandoned on my nightstand. I may yet come back to it, but...enh, she's sort of trying to do Cory Doctorow in Johannesburg, and I'm not real enthused.)

[troisroyaumes]

For the Kaleidoscope exchange, Zoo City would not qualify, but it's definitely a fandom worth keeping in mind for later in the year when we run our Chromatic Yuletide challenge!

[sara]

Ah, sorry -- I have been skimming-rather-than-deeply-engaged-with the parameters of this one, given various other attention-demanding constraints, and am at that, "Story! Story in Africa!" stage. *g*

[troisroyaumes]

No worries! I think the book is still worth mentioning because it still is a book featuring black characters by a South African writer, but I thought I'd leave a reminder comment just in case anyone had their hearts set on nominating it for the upcoming exchange. I bought the book a while ago and have been meaning to read it for a while now, and your comment makes me want to start it right away! :)

[sara]

I think it's probably the best spec-fic novel I've read this year. And it really made me want more good international genre fiction in my life.