Check out my new column today in the Detroit Free Press -- this time looking at the tension in emerging places between its "own" voices and the narratives that "outsiders" put upon them. The column begins:
Every last Saturday of the month, about 40 people gather at the Goethe-Institut in downtown Nairobi to talk about literature. Mostly twenty-something Kenyans, they discussed writing by Judith Hermann and T.S. Eliot at the last gathering, while munching on mandazi and sipping coffee. They also talked about a story submitted for critique by a fellow group-member: a tale about a Rwandan classroom, where elections for class prefect become divided by ethnic tensions.
One woman described this story as “almost NGO fiction” — which incited debate about Kenyan writers who pen poetry about matters like FGM (female genital mutilation) for publication and payment by foreign-based NGOs (non-governmental organizations). When is this selling out? When is this making the most of an opportunity to create space for Kenya’s artistic voices?
Coming from Detroit, a city sensitive to stories told about it, this was interesting. Detroiters will thrill to the “Imported from Detroit” ad campaign and point fingers at “ruin porn” in national media. Like this Kenyan group, Detroiters are painfully trying to balance the stories it has to tell with the stories that “outsiders” expect from it.
The question of "ruin porn" or "poverty porn" was more or less what we were discussing in the comment thread of Nana's post on "Dickens in Lagos". I hadn't thought that this could be applied to a city like Detroit.
There is a thin line between telling a story realistically and exploiting the pleasure we get from reading about other people's sufferings.
Posted by: Stefania | March 31, 2011 at 07:57 AM