Alain Mabanckou

thumb|Alain Mabanckou in 2017 Alain Mabanckou (born 24 February 1966) is a novelist, journalist, poet, and academic, a French citizen born in the Republic of the Congo, he is currently a Professor of Literature at UCLA. Quotes Black Bazar (2009) Listen up, my boy, be realistic! Drop your sitting around and writing every day, there’s people much better at it, and those people, you see them on telly, they talk well, and when they talk there’s a subject, there’s a verb and there’s an object. They’re born for that, they’re raised in that, while us blacks, it’s not our thing, writing. pp. 13 Éditions du Seuil, 2009 He says that the African man was the first man on Earth and that the other races only came after. Therefore, all men are immigrants except African people who are right at home. A white guy who learns how to play tom-tom, it’s normal, it’s chic, it says I’m a man open to the other cultures of the world and I’m not racist at all. A Black man who plays the tam-tam, it sucks, it’s too much back to his roots, back to square one, back to his natural state, back to having the beat. It ain’t surprising that Europeans are interested in tom-tom that way. It is to understand how things went in our country when we had no other of communication. ....you’ve got to keep up appearances, as we say among the Society for Ambient People and Persons of Elegance, SAPPE, which, without wanting to be contentious, is an invention from back home, born in the Bacongo district of Brazzaville,towards the Total roundabout. We’re the ones who exported “Sappe” to Paris, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, because lately there are so many false prophets swarming these streets in the City of Light, to the point where it’s getting difficult to separate the wheat from the Making references to Le sap wears Black Moses (Petit Piment) (2015) I’m nothing, I’m everything,’ he declared. ‘The street is my mother. The sun is my father. What more should I ask of life?” The sweetness of honey does not soothe the bee sting. it would be fairer to say I have traveled widely, without ever leaving my own native soil, I've traveled, one might say, through literature, each time I've opened a book the pages echoed with a noise like the dip of a paddle in midstream, and throughout my odyssey I never crossed a single border, and so never had to produce a passport, I'd just pick a destination at random, setting my prejudices firmly to one side, and be welcomed with open arms in places swarming with weird and wonderful characters Singing in the old-fashioned language of this good-hearted man, who sold us Hope at the lowest possible price, A fly’s not a bird just because it can fly. When the white people came to Africa, we had the land and they had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed: when we opened them, the white people had the land and we had the Bible. I want to cry now, not later! I want to be the first because if I cry after the others how will we know that I cried too? External links Black Bazar Category:1966 births Category:Living people Category:Novelists from the Republic of the Congo Category:Essayists from the Republic of the Congo Category:Poets from the Republic of the Congo Category:Journalists from the Republic of the Congo Category:University of California, Los Angeles faculty