Namwali Serpell

So the syllabus then was still being decolonized, as we like to say now.

And she really wasn't encountering African literature until she was living in New York working in publishing.

And she said that reading someone like Chinua Achebe, reading Bessie Head, reading Kamala, she encountered writing by Africans that did not assume that you needed to explain your culture to the white audience that you were writing for.

And this was something that felt very different to her from African-American literature, which, if you think about just the birth of the tradition and the slave narrative, was pitched to white audiences.

And because literacy had been denied to black readers, there weren't really black readers to read those slave narratives.

So the tradition starts in a very different place.

And she felt that reading African literature and seeing this new framework

it kind of gave her this sense of freedom.

I don't actually have to explain.

I don't actually have to translate all the elements of my culture.

Oh, goodness.

I mean, it's like a punch in the stomach whenever I read that.

The first time I read it, my jaw dropped.

I just, my mouth fell open.

I just thought, how could you possibly talk about anyone in terms like that?

A black woman in terms like that?

And a black woman of Toni Morrison's stature and genius?

It just felt, I mean, it just feels...

I don't know how to put it except just incredibly racist.

I think racism, however, as you know, often comes out of a kind of insecurity and a kind of resentment.