TNC's readers go to school on this article by Jeffrey Gettleman. TNC follows up by linking to this old Granta article on how to write about Africa. He quotes this bit:
Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.
And adds:
One of my beefs against coverage of black people in this country is the inability to deal with the simple, ordinariness of black life. Over the past half-century something incredible was created in this country--a broad black middle and upper-middle class. But they're almost invisible to us. There is a dangerous line here--I'm not arguing for ignoring the black poor, or more "positive" articles or propaganda, ("Rich black people. Awesome.") but for stories and narratives that consider the context of our boring, ordinariness.
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