Folk Dancing for Beginners
By Karen Press (He sets the tone) In my country the president rises from a bed of red carnations and then the children sit down each with a goldfish on their desk. Their task is to teach it to swim better than it does already. At the end of the year […]
Hanging Participle
By Anna Kente I am becoming. I have the proof. Documents, photos, evidence. Raise the right and you are an American. They give you a passport. Your new identity. You are Tri-lingual. Name how many: one. two. three. Stripes are there on the U.S. flag? And you learn the Preamble, Bill of Rights, First Ten Amendments. […]
Justino
By Pedro Rosa-Mendes The news spread through the camp: Justino knew then that they would continue to hold him. The president was dead. His plane had crashed. Justino is a free man. All his years as a prisoner – half his life – no power has been able to hold him up. No one can. […]
Dansons Donc le Zouglou
By Henri-Michel Yere Déscolarisé In 1980s Côte d’Ivoire, exclusion from the schooling system became a possibility that many high school graduates had to face. An economic crisis had set in; the prices of the country’s main produce – cocoa and coffee – had undergone a sharp decrease in the late 1970s. Le succès de ce […]
Sermon on the Train
By Isabel Hofmeyer 11.45 am on a Tuesday morning in October and the train from Park Station to Phomolong, Soweto It’s is tolerably full. I am wedged against a train-pole in the compartment, a microphone in one hand, a sheaf of papers in the other. Aboard a moving train, I am lecturing to commuters and […]