Half of a Yellow Sun
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MJ.com: So what do you see as the role or responsibility of the United States and Europe in Africa today?
CA: I find it kind of exhausting how Africa is always this basket case of chaos and war and starvation. If you depended on the American media for a portrayal of Africa, you would end up thinking, “These people are so stupid, how do they get themselves into these things?” One thing that never pushes through is a view of Africans as entirely human. On the one hand, the West recognizes that we’ve had really horrible leaders. On the other hand, the money that the leaders steal from our countries is stashed away in the West. And we’re lectured on free trade by the same countries whose governments very often subsidize things like their farmers and such. I’m also really uncomfortable with the focus on aid. I don’t like the idea that somehow Africans are people that we have to keep giving out gifts of money to. I feel that one has to make it easier for Africa to participate in global trade. I mean, it’s so complex, but I just get so uncomfortable watching Africa portrayed like this.
MJ.com: Right, the “Save the Children” commercials.
CA: Right. And I sort of think to myself, “God, if I were not African, I wonder what I would think about these Africans.” You know?
MJ.com: So where do you see yourself in the great tradition of Nigerian political writers? Are you a political writer?
CA: For me, I’m writing a story about human beings. But then, when you’re talking about the Biafran period in our history, you can’t write without it becoming political. There are some countries where politics doesn’t really play a direct role in the life of people, so people can carry on without really knowing what’s going on. Nigeria isn’t that kind of country. I think the U.S. is becoming more and more like that too, where more and more people are interested in what’s going on than before. Now that there’s Iraq and there’s 9/11, people are more in tune. In Nigeria, people are more like that. Young people who are 15 talk about politics and know about politics and know the name of the ministers because it’s so important—the things that happen affect them. If the government doesn’t fund education, which they often don’t, students are going to stay home and not go to school. It affects them directly. But I’m really not interested in writing explicitly about that. I’m really interested in human beings, and in love, and in family. Somehow, politics comes in.
Rina Palta is a freelance writer in San Francisco.
