Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Africa Is a Country Weekend Special, October 9th: The opacity of Fanon, Nobel notable, Pandora Papers in Kenya + more

I was not referring to you Chambi.

You have not adopted that stance but

one fellow poet ally dubbed us "self appointed "

critics  etc and I was compelled to respond.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chambi Chachage <chachagechambi@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2021 12:01 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Africa Is a Country Weekend Special, October 9th: The opacity of Fanon, Nobel notable, Pandora Papers in Kenya + more

 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

And who "are those" Gloria? I am just asking because you responded on top of my last email. My post was simply fact-checking Sean Jacobs. The (racial) history of Zanzibar, as you probably know more than me, is very complex.

The Nobel Prize for Economics have convinced me even more that their focus this year is the issue of migration/immigration. That is the main thing that makes me feel Gurnah deserves it i.e. because he addresses it in relation to the 'contentious' Zanzibar Revolution and Union.

But that should not stop you or anyone else for that matter to be critical enough to argue that he does not deserve it because of 'Paradise'.

I leave you with this take from someone I know personally who migrated to the UK like Gurnah:

"For Zanzibaris like me, empathic Abdulrazak Gurnah's Nobel literature prize is a tribute to our cosmopolitan homeland" - Ahmed Rajab,

https://www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/comment/114354/zanzibar-abdulrazak-gurnahs-nobel-literature-prize-tribute-ahmed-rajab

Best Regards,

Chambi

On Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 6:25 PM Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.emeagwali@gmail.com> wrote:

There are those who conclude that 

since the Nobel Committee declared

Gurnah to be great enough to be 

a winner, everyone else should 

fall in line. No questions asked.

This line of thought undervalues

critical thinking and  intelligence,

and prioritizes sycophancy and

naïveté. Not only that, many of 

us in this group are multidisciplinary 

and multidimensional. For example,

before  I became a historian I was 

a student of literature and languages.

The  racist innuendo in "Paradise "

disqualifies Gurnah, in my view, but

I hope to read more of his works -

to get the whole picture.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali 

On Oct 11, 2021, at 05:42, Chambi Chachage <chachagechambi@gmail.com> wrote:



Informative take from Sean Jacobs, but a bit inaccurate hence the importance or Gurnah's works in illuminating contentions on Zanzibar stemming from the Revolution and the Union.

First, Zanzibar is not in confederation with Tanzania - it has been in a Union with the then Tanganyika, the two forming the United Republic of Tanzania; the result was a unitary state with two governments - the union one (whole of Tanzania, including Zanzibar) and the semi-autonomous one in Zanzibar that deals with what are regarded as non-union matters, leading to strong contentions from Zanzibari nationalists that Tanganyika is wearing - under guise - the coat/mantle/cloak of the Union (as de facto Tanzania) by constraining Zanzibar's sovereignty i.e. by reducing non-union matters through doubling union matters from 11 to 22. 

Second, it was not really a debate between Tanzanians and Zanzibari, but a debate between pro-Tanzanian patriotism and pro-Zanzibari autonomy/nationalism, which includes Tanzanians from both sides i.e from Tanzania Mainland (then Tanganyika) and Zanzibar; so, there are both camps across.

To conclude, it is not black and white there.

Re: 

1.

https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/dispensing-survivors-justice-zanzibar

2.

https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/tanzania-tale-two-governments

On Sun, Oct 10, 2021 at 4:51 PM Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

more on gurnah, from africa is a country. all worth looking at

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: Africa Is a Country <auth@africasacountry.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2021 2:45 PM
To: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Subject: Africa Is a Country Weekend Special, October 9th: The opacity of Fanon, Nobel notable, Pandora Papers in Kenya + more

 

Nobel wins for Africans Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in Zanzibar and who has lived in England since 1968, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. This is big. It is a time to celebrate, especially as Bhakti Shringarpure, co-founder of Radical Books Collective, has argued in a post on our site, Gurnah is only the 6th African to win the prize since its inception in 1901: "... he is also only the fourth Black writer to have won the prize. Unlike the Booker Prize which has historically scored well on the diversity points, the Nobel has always favored the whitest and the most European of all literature." The first African to win the prize was Wole Soyinka in 1986; 35 years ago. In between, the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz won in 1988, then the two white South Africans—Nadine Gordimer (1991) and J.M. Coetzee (2003). Doris Lessing, who was born in Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), was the last African to win the prize in 2007. Initial appreciations of Gurnah's win, particularly on social media, have played up Gurnah's identity. His Africanness and Blackness. That is fine, but Gurnah is from Zanzibar, an island nation (now in a confederation with Tanzania) that is at the crossroads of the Indian Ocean, Arabia, and Africa. And, as a Tanzanian friend reminded me, yesterday Tanzanians and Zanzibaris exchanged words online over who could claim him. And, amid the celebrations, some hard questions also confront us. In another post for us, Nicole Rizzuto, an Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University, writes how Gurnah has rebelled throughout his writing career against being pigeonholed. That Gurnah's "... novels offer a running commentary and a skepticism toward the cultural politics of packaging African stories for global circulation and consumption." As for Bhakti, she asked:  "Gurnah's win pushes us to think about the role of the LitNobel and prizes, more generally, and the way in which they construct what we think of, read, engage with, and buy as African literature today." One small footnote: a less widely circulated fact about Gurnah is that his working life as an academic (he is now retired and lives in Brighton on the English coast) was spent as a scholar of literature and, that among others, he has done close readings of the novels and short stories of the South African writer, Zoe Wicomb. Congratulations! – Sean Jacobs Shop Africa Is a Country Elsewhere in our country Catch up on any of our posts you may have missed from the last week We don't need no education Colonial and post-colonial governments in Kenya have worked to separate education from access to culture and information. It is an outdated model. The opacity of Fanon This week on AIAC Talk, we speak with Leswin Laubscher and Derek Hook about the phenomenology of Franz Fanon and the ways he is understood throughout different eras of time. Louder in Lagos Africa Is a Country Radio continues its season focused on African club culture with a stop over in Lagos, Nigeria. EndSARS, workers' power, and war The working class that organized #OccupyNigeria should collaborate with #EndSARS. If these two boiling points burn together to produce the fire next time, a new Nigeria will be possible. Bono's vanity This #ThrowbackThursday piece from 2007 on Vanity Fair's famous "Africa" issue, makes for fun, at times depressing, reading of the debates we hopefully left behind. A matter that defies tears Wọle Ṣoyinka's new novel examines a country caught in the crosshairs of unimaginable events. The secret offshore world of the Kenyatta family The Pandora Papers connects Kenya's ruling family to secret accounts in offshore companies and tax havens. But, state looting started with Jomo Kenyatta. Something Extra We've mentioned it in this letter before, but OptOut is building a news aggregator app (think Apple News, Google News, etc) for independent news and media outlets. There is a diverse collection of outlets signed up for the service, and Africa Is a Country is one of them. Their app will be launching soon, so head to their site to sign up now. DONATE TO AFRICA IS A COUNTRY Africa Is a Country 388 Atlantic Avenue Brooklyn NY 11217

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