“It is clearly the ambition of the Sudanese government to surpass the monumental race criminalities of the past, and the world appears to accept that it deserves to succeed, that it is right and just that an African nation join its name to the long catalog of racist infamy.”
—from Wole Soyinka's “The Avoidance Word Still Screams Its Name”
TRANSITION 97: Table of Contents
The Avoidance Word Still Screams Its Name
Half a century ago, the more optimistic poet-militants of decolonization imagined the world's races humanely detonated, then shuffled and reassembled into a hybrid creature of the universal. On one issue at least, today's African Union, Arab League, and U.N. have indeed become one: one monstrous chimera ready and willing to let Darfur be cleansed of Africa. Wole Soyinka has some words to say about this-well actually, just one.
“Change will come, of that I am sure”
If there's a bright spot in Sudan , the East would be it. Sarah Abbas talks to Dr. Amna Dirar—Eastern Front politician, tribal leader, college professor, and, oh yes, woman.
Measuring Time • Fiction
An excerpt from the novel by Helon Habila
Searching for Zion
They come from desert Ethiopia and mid-century America , and end up in the shadows of reggae clubs, reeducation courses, and the IDF. For the darker shades of Jew, settling in a harsh Promised Land is a dramatic leap of faith. Emily Raboteau goes hunting for black folks in Israel.
Paroles pour solder la mer • Poems
Poems by Edouard Maunick, Translated by Elizabeth Wilson
Crossroads Republic
Lester, meet Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Fela, meet Lester Bowie. Lagos, Chicago. Chicago , Lagos. Brent Hayes Edwards reconstructs the handshake summer of 1977.
Camera Obscura
Who can forget the innocence of those fin-de-siècle days? That halcyon time when Michael Moore was still a cult figure, the Taliban still had offices in Queens, and Afghan medical students still recoiled at the thought that Monica Lewinski was not the most beautiful woman in America ? From Flushing to Kandahar , Harlem to Kabul, Alan Edelstein was there—and he has the tapes to prove it.
Salamanca
In downtown Khartoum , a mom-and-pop souvenir shop provides a lazy retreat for the local cosmopolitans. But who's that German crone trawling through the merchandise with a half-naked tribesman at her side? Jamal Mahjoub recalls a strange day in the family store.
The Heimat Maneuver
After World War II, Allied horse-trading left Poland 's treasured eastern borderlands in the hands of the Soviets. As compensation, Stalin gave the Poles Silesia , an ethnically mixed region to the west that happened to be a province of Germany. Forced German expulsion and "re-Polonization" ensued, but, as Chris Bebenek discovers, even in a unified Europe ancient blood feuds die hard.