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Multipleheaded Spirits

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Trevor Noah of the “Daily Social Distancing Show” on Comedy Central

The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, once wrote that the criss-cross of Africa to Euroamerica is a place of “a certain dangerous potency; dangerous because a man might perish there wrestling with multipleheaded spirits, but also he might be lucky and return to his people with the boon of prophetic vision.”

There are several people I could think of who have weathered that crossing and managed to have come out ahead in the process. Trevor Noah on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Social Distancing Show” is one such African. According to his autobiographical Born a Crime, Noah’s very existence as a mixed-race baby of South African and Swiss parentage was a violation of Apartheid at the time of his birth in Johannesburg in 1984. After his successful hosting of the 2021 Grammy Awards Show, his show biz career is looking up.

I watch his show on Comedy Central whenever I can.

Franco-Senegalese Novelist Marie NDiaye

One of the greatest contemporary French novelists is Marie NDiaye, who although born in France, has produced stunning body of work (My Heart Hemmed In, Three Strong Women, and The Cheffe, to name just three) that I think puts her on the track to the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s even harder to do this in France than here in America.

Nigerian-American Novelist Teju Cole

Finally there is Teju Cole, born in Kalamazoo, MI of Nigerian parents. He is the author of Open City, Every Day Is for the Thief, and Known and Strange Things.I have read the first two titles and found them a revelation, the first about life in New York City, the second about life in Nigeria.

It is my belief that Africa has a lot to give us. The old Anglo-Saxon literary and artistic hegemony is in tatters, and the same goes for Europe. It is infuriating that people see the Africans as a threat. The descendants of the slaves have given us our music and excelled in the performance arts. More recent Africans continue to make this a more interesting country to live in—if only we let them!

The White Savior Industrial Complex

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Poverty in South Africa

I am not one to like Twitter, especially as misused by the Trumpf as a way to short-circuit rational discourse. Sometimes, it is good to have one’s ideas overturned, in this case by a talented writer/photographer named Teju Cole. Although born in the U.S., Cole was raised in Nigeria and returned to this country to attend college. The following is a series of Tweets written under the name @tejucole that were published by The Atlantic in 2012. The subject? The White Savior Industrial Complex. Here are the tweets, min order:

1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.
2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.
3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.
5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.
6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.
7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

Teju Cole

These seven Tweets showed that the medium has the capability of carrying on discourse rather than just shutting it down. But then, not everyone is as witty and perspicacious as Teju Cole. I will write more about him as I investigate his books and photography.