Posts

Showing posts from October, 2020

"How to Write About" Water and Food in Africa?

               After reading the article “ How to Write About Africa ”, by Binyavanga Wainaina, I started asking myself what my perception about food and water in Africa was, and what was expected from me to think as a white women, according to the mainstream sources of information. When I looked on Google Image, the first pictures that appear were totally matching with Wainaina’s description of the white gaze over Africa: “In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving.”; “Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty”. Even though I know that the management of water and food is not as caricatural, I yet realized that I remain relatively ignorant regarding of the different