Excited to begin a creative project on Africa-China in conversation, approaching it through a cultural lens [read literature], producing stories, mine and others to be translated in Chinese. I’m not doing this alone. It is an initiative between the African Writers Trust (AWT) and the Global Digital Humanities at Shantou University. If you follow the news, the focus on China relationships in Africa and elsewhere emphasize the economic and political implications. But what about the cultural? The stories we might share, the literature that will certainly go beyond borders? Storytelling is as old as time itself, abounds in all cultures, and reveals the universality of human nature. Could we bridge most tensions if we create cultural exchanges and discover more commonalities between us than what divides? Could we generate more win-win situations via this approach and minimize unhealthy competitions? Could we find renewed capacity for aesthetic appreciation within the pleasures of language? I’m interested in what translates both at language and cultural levels, and may be able to facilitate new conversations.
Here is just a sample–let it begin with me–yet to go through more translation checks but couldn’t help sharing. To translations!
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