How to write about Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina PDF

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scrittore Wainaina...

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How to write about Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina It’s an essay which was born as an email he wrote after reading the Africa issue of Granta magazine (1914). Waiaina was angry and indignant; therefore, he wrote an email to the magazine’s editor in which he gave vent to his anger. This email became so popular that Wainana decided to readapted it in an essay. It’s a list of suggestions and recommendations to follow when writing about Africa. The imperatives in the text are used with irony and sarcasm; in fact, he means the opposite of what he wrote (antiphrasis). In the first paragraph, he lists a series of clichés and random words to reinforce reader’s presuppositions and conventional common places about Africa. Wainaina’s essay shows how the structure of prejudice works: - Sensationalise  create an opposite category (binary opposition based on the it’s either .. or.. principle), show them as completely different - Generalise  treat Africa as if it was one country - Stereotype  make their story the single story - Idealise/sympathise  make it unreal The subject is the European writer, who is the person who speaks and judge; so, he has power. The object is African people who have no voice; consequently, no power. Wainaina points out that literature of colonialism is based on the imaginative fabrication of ‘the other’....