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

[troisroyaumes]

For Kaleidoscope itself, we will only be allowing chromatic creators, but her works would qualify for our other challenges, such as Chromatic Yuletide.

But I'm glad you brought up Nancy Farmer anyway because I think it opens up discussion of the issues that can result when chromatic people and cultures are represented by outsiders, especially when that outsider POV is privileged. The sentence you quoted is very saddening--before seeing it, I would have argued that The Ear, the Eye and the Arm was a fairly good example of an outsider taking pains to write specifically about Zimbabwe and Zimbaweans rather than about a nebulous "Africa".

Also, in the light of the Amina Arraf hoax, I think a related issue is how we as consumers are given greater access and may even pay more attention to such privileged outsider accounts. The Ear, the Eye and the Arm was certainly one of my childhood favorites, but I also wonder how much I missed out by not reading a children's novel by a Zimbabwean writer instead.

[eccentricyoruba]

I was really disappointed when I learnt that The Ear, the Eye and the Arm was written by a white American, it was also one of my childhood favourites.