African Studies Resources: Home

Ethiopian photographer Aida Muluneh has lived the majority of her life in the Northern Hemisphere. Having left Ethiopia at a young age, Muluneh spent her early years bouncing between Yemen, England, and Cyprus before moving to Canada and later the United States, where she took up a position as a photojournalist for the Washington Post. Muluneh developed her skills as a documentary photographer at the Post, but found herself gravitating toward a more artistic mode of expression as she simultaneously nurtured a growing desire to reconnect with the land of her birth.

Backtalk: Artists on Native, African, and African American Stereotypes is part of a collaborative, broad-reaching examination on the persistence of racial and cultural stereotypes. Following the vision of Johnnetta Betsch Cole, director emerita, National Museum of African Art (NMAfA), to examine stereotypes across cultures, this online exhibition explores how select visual artists interrogate and engage racial and cultural stereotypes in their creative practice. The curatorial team chose to focus on a diverse group of artists from various backgrounds, geographies, and contexts who are represented in Smithsonian Institution collections and have addressed intersecting themes and subjects relevant to the impact of cultural and racial stereotypes. A by-product of the 2017 symposium “From Tarzan to Tonto: Stereotypes as Obstacles to Progress Toward a More Perfect Union,” sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museums of African Art, African American History and Culture, and the American Indian, Backtalk features works by nine 20th- and 21st-century artists who capture, reflect, and/or speak back to the stereotype.

"You are fighting against a huge system of western knowledge that says, if you write a story about something, they won't believe that it's true, because there's no physical book with a reference or an ISBN number. This is a huge problem for Africa and African narratives, because obviously, our stories do not have ISBN numbers.

Oral tradition is a mainstay in Africa, and for the longest time, that's how we've passed down our knowledge. Do you think the West looks down on that as a historical source?

Absolutely. There are Wikipedia scholars, scholars from the West, actually deleting whole articles because to them as long as it's not documented, it has no sources, it's not a story, it's an anecdote. To them, it's not real. It's something that really needs to be addressed because western knowledge is not the only system of knowledge that exists.
"When the colonists came in, women leaders existed side by side with male leaders and a lot of power was situated in the women."

Colonialism has played out very differently in a lot of African countries. Looking at Christianity, colonialism and patriarchal structures, what do you think is unique about Zambia's narrative?

Yeah, I think patriarchy has done a number on Zambians in a lot of ways. I mean, one of them is the whole Christianity, because it came with colonialists. And Christianity's now so entrenched in our culture. It's almost like a part of us, you know. It's like, nothing else has ever existed.

One of the things that I find fascinating, is that Africans are often, in the narrative or in the discourse of gender equality, criticized for being abusive and discriminatory and abusing women—which is true. I mean, all of that is happening. But if you think of the genesis of it, you know, it came with patriarchy. When the colonists came in, women leaders existed side by side with male leaders and a lot of power was situated in the women. But when the colonists came, they didn't allow women as leaders. Now we no longer address the woman. We just address the man. That's a colonial legacy we think is ours."

Image description: A vintage photo of a Zambian woman seen from the neck up, wearing many necklaces and a long facial adornment in the middle of her face.

There has never been a better time than right now to be a reader of African literature, especially in the United States (historically, an underdeveloped nation in this regard). Of course, we’re still playing catch-up; many of these books have already been published in South Africa, Nigeria, or the UK, or in their original language. But that just means that old classics are becoming suddenly available alongside emerging new voices. So if you’re looking for something to read, and you want it to have the word “African” attached to it, here are my top 25 suggestions for the first six months of the new year. All dates are for U.S. publications. Chain bookstores won’t carry most of these, so you might have to do something as laborious and difficult as click a link–or ask your local bookstore to place a special order–but the one thing you can’t do, any longer, is complain you have nothing to read. You have your orders; go forth and read.