Nesrine Malik writing in Tank Magazine:
More hereThe tyranny of the mzungu prize is also arguably a phenomenon of postcolonialism: as far as western readers are concerned, it seems, Africans are either to be gawped at with a handkerchief to the nose, in queasy awe at the nobility of pain and poverty, or to be rescued from the swamp and transformed into salsa-dancing, Ivy League facsimiles of the white man. To criticise this tendency is not to make some trite and romantic demand for “authenticity”: it would be patronising and fetishistic in itself to put such an onus on all African writing. It is the very claim of authenticity, of bearing witness to some deeper African truth, that chafes and should be challenged. That way lie the likes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has made a career of telling the West what it wants to hear, while dangerously misrepresenting Muslim Africa and the Muslim world in general. Writers such as Selasi appoint themselves spokespeople and focus their work around a claim of representation. She declares as much in the Guardian: “I was Afropolitan, dammit! I spoke for the Body AfroPolitic!”
Illustrations by Olivia Meier
