Books like Naturalizing Africa — picked by fans

Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate activist. The book title is a play on the story that catapulted her into the news. She was part of a youth climate change delegation to Davos that included Greta Thunberg and three other prominent young, white female activists. In their coverage, the Associated Press cut Vanessa from the photo.

Vanessa was outraged, and her video condemning the racist edit went viral. Africa generates the least carbon dioxide of all the continents, and it is most affected by climate change. In all subsequent photo shoots, the group placed Vanessa in the center so it couldn’t happen again.

This book is a personal story, an important African perspective on the crisis, and a good read. She ends the book with a "what can you do chapter." In her last paragraph, she says, "It doesn’t matter where you start or how; what matters is that you… show more.

I get bored when aliens always seem to land on the National Mall in Washington or hover over Los Angeles, so I was delighted to discover that at least one alien ship prefers to land in the lagoon off Lagos, Nigeria.

It’s a city as big or bigger than New York, after all. There is the challenge of dealing with very enigmatic visitors, but the time is the present and readers get a whirlwind tour of one of the world’s megacities. It’s like having the most highspeed guide you can imagine… who happens to be one of the most compelling SF writers today.

This is a wonderful and diverse cross-section of stories from a variety of African countries representing a thematic focus on a world facing Disruption, whether via climate change, global pandemics, or a plethora of crises, that challenges us all with the necessity to find ways to join with each other if we are to survive. Stand-out stories for me were Zambian author Mbozi Haimbe's "Shelter" (shortlisted for a NOMMO Award this year—best in African Speculative Fiction 2022) and Kenyan Idza Luhumyo’s "Five Years Next Sunday," winner of the 2022 Caine Prize for African Writing. I loved the vibrancy and range of these stories, all bristling with energy and providing novel ways of seeing and learning to confront our global challenges.  

The title says it all: It does not have to be this way—we can build a better, more just and kinder world together, if…we learn to act on our dreams/visions in order to make this happen. But this path—as Capetonian author Alistair Mackay outlines, in a passionate and riveting exploration of fraught existences in an increasingly divided and desertified Southern Africa—will always come at personal cost. What price are we willing to pay for a better and more inclusive human future? What artificial ways of seeing (and consuming) do we need to resist to see and value each other as we all truly are? I loved this book as it is both darkly funny and tragic, yet never loses hope for a new and better world.

The Fishermen is set in Akure, the first town I ever knew intimately, and a town I have fallen in love with once again as an adult. In Akure you will see hills and rivers and green scenery, you will see stories. This gives me rare insight into the childhood adventures of the protagonist, Ben, and his 3 brothers, whose lives were shackled by the rantings of a mentally disturbed man. I love the author’s use of historical figures and events of 1990s Nigeria as a backdrop for this tragic story about a normal Nigerian family.

I should start by saying that Thiong'o has recently been accused, by his son, of beating his former wife, claims I take very seriously (and which has put my reading of Thiong'o’s female characters in a new light).

In this book, I found a sharp, cunning satire of despotic post-colonial governments working with and shaped by international funders and Western policymakers. Having worked in NGOs, I found Thiong'o’s characterization of “development” to be darkly funny and cringe-worthily accurate.

This collection of six short stories, set in Botswana in the mid-1980s, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1987. It made my list because Rush puts a variety of privileged, well off and well-educated expats—Boers, Europeans, and Americans—under a microscope and provides a real and exquisitely detailed view of the expat life in Botswana in that era—it doesn’t always look good. Clearly, the expat lives are in stark contrast to those of the Batswana's, and Rush is generally careful to stick with what he knows; in only one story is the POV character Batswanan. It’s easy to see Rush’s experience as a poet in this literary fiction and the story lines are unique.

I found Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory a compelling and interesting book about Dr. Gess and his work as a doctor in Africa. Although he treated various medical conditions, his work focused on the plight of the blind in Africa. This dedicated Christian doctor brought not only physical healing to his patients, but also spiritual help and guidance to his patients and their families. The book includes many photographs of the events being described. By end of the book, I had a new awareness of the physical and spiritual needs of the people in this vast continent.

In 2004 I gave a presentation to a University of Adelaide faculty seminar on the need for historians to reclaim the “narrative” as a way of reaching a larger reading audience without resorting to “flourishes of the imagination.” Several sociologists and historians strongly disagreed, but a soft-spoken participant eloquently came to my defense.

At the reception that followed, my defender introduced himself as “John Coetzee.” Awestruck, I realized this was the 2003 Nobel Prize Winner, J.M. Coetzee, and I felt a bit like a starstruck fan of a rockstar as I told him that, for years, I had assigned this book to my class in African American history. 

Set in an unnamed colonial outpost, the story is an allegory narrated by an unnamed “magistrate” who task is to control the darker skinned “barbarians” beyond the gates. Its very mythical nature allows Coetzee to explore the universal: the way in which… show more.

It's the first of its kind, the first installment in a line of Year's Best African Speculative Fiction anthologies meant to spotlight the works of African writers and writers of African descent. Year's Best anthologies have been a genre thing for over 5 decades. This is an important installment in the development of African speculative short fiction. It was published by the editor as well in a small press he founded, Jembefola Press. The anthology made him the first African editor to be a Hugo award best editor finalist and a Locus award best editor and best anthology finalist.