Stories We Tell About Africa (And Those We Don\'t)

"“The first step to understanding African difference is to ‘listen’ to African cultures and attempt to discover Africa in its own words and in its own context. We should work at understanding how Africans conceive of reality and how that reality has been shaped by their environments and histories. In other words, we must allow Africans to be our teachers.”
To learn from Africans, in ways devoid of romanticism and the insidious projections that dominate the meta-narratives described in this essay, is serious work. For such a learning journey unites the personal and the political, the spiritual and the artistic, and is specific in its character. Such learning defies easy generalizations and categories. Inevitably, true stories about Africa are about individuals acting autonomously, standing outside of the stereotypes and pre-conceptions that even their own societies promote and protect. Only out of a heightened awareness of difference and a fidelity to the autonomy of Africans and their admirers alike can arise the raw material out of which new and necessary narratives about Africa."