Africa's Tarnished Name

In this small collection of essays, Chinua Achebe expresses the suffering and grievances of postcolonial Africa (and particularly his homeland Nigeria) with an ironic, assertive tone, which I am very fond of. The longest essays, “Africa's Tarnished Name” and “Africa is People” were the ones that touched me the most, exploring racist representations in the European literary tradition and daily practice, from the corridors of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism to those of the World Bank, where the Washington Consensus perpetuates the “tarnished” fate of African people.

“...he needed to hear Africa speak for itself after a lifetime of hearing Africa spoken about by others.”

“...the Bantu declaration ‘Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu' represents an African communal aspiration: ‘A human is human because of other humans.' Our humanity is contingent on the humanity of our fellows. No person or group can be human alone.”