This month’s Words Without Borders has a special issue on graphic novels from around the world.

I loved this short extract from series by Pahé (Patrick Essono) whose childhood experiences bring to life two myths. One the myth of a Europe with streets of gold and the other, the myth of returning to the glorious homeland.

The story starts with Pafe as a little kid in his small town in Gabon, playing with his friends, sharing in the stories of relatives returning from far off places and dreaming of going to France. His dream comes true and off he goes with his family to Paris where he is the only Black kids in the class. Here he has to endure the racist mockery from his white class mates. The irony is back in school in Gabon, he is once again introduced to his class mates, this time as Mr Frenchy to which all the kids start shouting “whitey” “whitey” but the taunting doesn’t stop there. Eventually tired of the “slaughter” he challenges another kid to a fight which he looses and has to return home feeling ashamed having got his face “rearranged”.

Tags:
Life of Pahé
Gabon
African Comics
Africa + Graphic Novels

the run
from qoaling to grootvlei

by lantern light we snuffed out
when sound leapt at us
(or seemed to leap
as it does when the wind heaves forth)
we left, travelling the terrain wintered with contempt,
ears tuned for the sound of foot, boot, the snap
of dog on our tail.

beasts are oblivious to this, to
things that knot us, questing always for acceptance
surviving the dark.

I believe in the only spirit, the faces
of people who’ve walked this way.

as for us, we
held our lantern and crossed the river into azania,
knowing the order of the cycle:
winter turns to spring,
dead leaves make russet apple cheeks,
kernels keep internal life.
© Rethabile Masilo

A Memoir by Edwidge Danticat

Brother, I’m Dying” is above all the story of Danticat’s uncle. As unrest intensified with each regime change, Mira urged Joseph to leave Haiti and the church he had built. It was only in 2004, when gangs including members of his own flock turned on him, that he was forced to flee.

“I wanted to tell my uncle’s story to honor him, to honor my family, but also to share that experience with people,”

`If our country were ever given a chance and allowed to be a country like any other, none of us would live or die here,” he said at Joseph’s funeral…………..Continue Review.

Democracy Now interview

Also check out Raj Patel’s book “Stuffed and Starved” reviewed here and here

Tags:

Edwidge Danticat
Haiti
Stuffed and Starved

* Jessica Stern of the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program” writes an open letter to President Thabo Mbeki on “Homophobic Violence” in South Africa

In recognition of National Women’s Day, we urge you to ensure that the criminal justice system is capable of responding sensitively, effectively, and promptly to incidents of sexual and hate-based violence. A full investigation of these murders, weighing the possibility that the women’s gender and sexual orientation may have been motivations for their murders, is vital not only to achieving justice but to building trust between the South African Police Service and lesbian communities broadly. Police and other authorities should work closely with groups working for LGBT and women’s rights both in pursuing investigations and developing effective strategies and policies to improve protection.

* Science and Development has a special issue on Climate Change in Africa. One topic we don’t read about very much and maybe we should be just a little concerned?

Africa has contributed less than any other region to the greenhouse gas emissions that are widely held responsible for global warming. But the continent is also the most vulnerable to the consequences.

What are the concerns? Water supplies, food security, health (some countries are seeing increases in malaria). On the positive side there are local adaptive strategies being adopted.

* Wangari Maathai also writes on climate change in the East African

In wealthy countries, the looming climate crisis is a matter of concern, as it will affect both the wellbeing of economies and people’s lives. In Africa, however, a region that has hardly contributed to climate change — its greenhouse gas emissions are negligible when compared with the industrialised world’s — it will * be a matter of life and death.

* Zucky comments on the Yearly Whiteosphere gathering of the Yearly Kos

Shockingly, just shockingly, the blinding whiteness of the liberal blogosphere, as represented at YearlyKos, is seen as a cause for some concern and alienation to people of color who happen to be involved, and merely an annoying tangential subject to white mainstreamers who have more important things to talk about.

* Afro-European Sisters Network - is a site run by Sandra Rafaela. She publishes short stories and poems by African women. She recently started a blog of the same name.

You will read about experiences of black women. Reading the stories of these women will hopefully motivate other black women to express their lives also. The more knowledge shared the more there is to learn. This will create a network where black women can improve themselves by achieving goals an having an overall better way of living.

* Hate speech, blog lynchings, publishing private photos/videos, outing bloggers, flaming, hacking sites, death treats, are some of the cyber nasties taking place on blogs . Joan Walsh of Salon.com writes about a particularly horrible attack on a female programmer. There are others I personally know of, but does anyone really knows how often this is happening? Women seem to be a major target group however anyone could be game for the anon crowd.

* Funmi Iyanda on “new” dress code mania by public officials in Nigeria alongside awful uneducated poor people.

For years, l have told the morality brigade that the average uneducated person who is resentful of his poverty and blames all above him does not know the fine line. Therefore, the subject of indecent dressing is so subjective and potentially prone to abuse it should not be trifled with. Indecent exposure (flashing your privates) yes but indecent dressing? By what standards, religious, ethnic, class? Are these not seeds of discord and disintegration?

* Haiti Liberte is a new monthly newspaper (print and online) which describes itself as a

new forum for the airing of new ideas on how to advance the struggle for Haiti’s liberation. We will do our best, under the difficult conditions of this fight, to defend not only the fundamental rights of the Haitian people, but above all to defend our national soil.

The first edition focuses on Haiti’s long history of foreign occupations and to demanding an end to the present UN occupation. The paper is published in Kreyol, French and English.

From Microscopiq “Note to commenters: I will delete your comment for name calling or generally being obnoxious. I will not delete your comment for disagreeing with me.” Ditto

A lot of excellent writers lose steam after their first novel. Tsitsi Dangarembga came out with the excellent Nervous Conditions, and then very recently published The Book of Not, which in my opinion— and opinions are personal and subjective— was not so excellent.

Khaled Hosseini began with The Kite Runner, an expertly woven tale about family and loyalty. The Kite Runner is emotional in a genuine way, and regardless of one’s familiarity with the different settings, Afghanistan and the US, at the very heart of it, one is able to relate to the characters, the story, on a basic, human level.

As I have stated before, opinions are personal and subjective and usually up for debate. Khaled Hosseini’s new novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, is at the very least as good as The Kite Runner, if not better. Set mostly in Afghanistan, Hosseini charts the herstories of two women, Mariam and Laila, from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, through to the outbreak of war among the different Mujahideen factions, right up until the moment when the Taliban forcefully pushes its way onto the world’s radar. The stories are not new: war, domestic violence, politics, loyalty, and through all these love. It is the nature of the narrative that is new. The stories are separate for a while, until the two women cross paths. Here the tales become intertwined, most times painfully so. Hosseini deftly shifts from the macro level politics to the micro level familial struggles, and yet the two arenas clearly mirror each other. Individual pain and loss become a country’s suffering and reality.

Perhaps most striking about this novel, however, is its title. A Thousand Splendid Suns is taken from an Afghani poem. Lines of poetry float through this novel just as the reader floats through the author’s carefully chosen words, coming up for breath only when the story becomes too real to allow a continued personal detachment. Once in a while we are guaranteed to see our reflection in Hosseini’s novel. And even in the moments when we do not, the characters never lose their three-dimensional quality. They are always flesh and blood people challenging us to consider, always consider, before we conclude, judge, dismiss. A Thousand Splendid Suns is hard to put down, even after you have finished reading it.

Tags: Khaled Hosseini’; Tsitsi Dangarembga