Historically, epics are set in Africa or Asia or the Wild West, but if you make an epic today it's hard to disassociate from the contemporary realities of those places.
I've been to Africa three times. All right? You can't bring Western reasoning into the culture. The same way you can't bring it into fundamental Islam.
I've never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don’t like eating fish. And I know that's very popular out there in Africa.
Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.
Writing about Africa by Africans has been part of my literary apprenticeship, standing alongside works by authors such as Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Graham Greene as influences.
Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet. I'm always in Africa... And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere.
George W. Bush is very popular in Sub-Saharan Africa. Why? Because of PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief.
The Western stereotype of Africa and its black citizens as devoid of reason and, therefore, subhuman was often shared by white master and black ex-slave alike.
I think that Africa has made quite rapid progress and a lot of the conflicts that we saw on the continent have abated.
Blacks in the Caribbean, Britain, Canada and sub-Saharan Africa as well as in the United States have low IQ scores relative to whites.
Reality shows that, contrary to other countries in southern Africa, we have no basis for a classical guerilla struggle. We have never had a hinterland, and we do not expect to.
The whole of that part of Southern Africa which is controlled by racial minorities is experiencing either consistent and regular guerilla activity or is faced with advanced preparation for its commencement.
To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly.
This is my first visit to Africa, a region where President Bush has voiced a deep passion for fostering and encouraging economic development, investment and trade.
When I began 'All Our Names,' I did so wanting to create parallel narratives between Africa in the nineteen-seventies and America during that same period.
The richest persons in Africa are heads of state, governors and ministers. So every 'educated' African who wants to be rich - and there is nothing wrong with wanting to be rich - heads straight into government or politics.
What you and I understand as a government doesn't exist in many African countries. In fact, what we call our governments are vampire states. Vampires because they suck the economic vitality out of their people. Government is the problem in Africa.
I'd love to do a safari holiday somewhere in Africa - maybe Kenya or Tanzania. I have never been, and we've deliberately waited until the children are older so that they could appreciate it, learn something and come back with stories.
It was fortunate in looking back for South Africa and its entire people that Mandela and I found it possible to work together even though big strains developed between us from time to time.
In Africa, listening is a guiding principle. It's a principle that's been lost in the constant chatter of the Western world, where no one seems to have the time or even the desire to listen to anyone else.
Every Teen Challenge ministry is responsible for raising its own finances, but we assist these works with finances, prayer and counseling, especially overseas in areas such as Siberia, Africa, South America.
