African literature has a long, rich history, but it has not always been written down in ways accessible to us, that is, people who prefer to read in English who live in Ohio. What we get to read and hear is filtered though English, but that is okay because many African authors choose to write in English. Nevertheless, they are writing in an English that we need to learn to read in a new way. There are lots of African words, names, and customs that you need to know when you read this literature. There are expectations and attitudes that you need to be familiar with. I hope that in this course, you can have a change to read these stories, novels, and films, and get to see huge variety of experiences you can learn from. Africa is an amazing place that often only appears on the horizon of the American mid-west when people starve, are bombed, or are bombing and starving each other. Literature has a way of presenting the human experience that the newspaper or the Unicef advertisements cannot. I hope that through working with this literature both logically and emotionally, you can begin to perceive the flavor of Africa in all its joy and beauty and sadness and anger.
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