A worldly Nubian energy
The music and art of Lauryn Hill and Chiwoniso Maraire combined sexiness with political consciousness, offering Black women a way out of rigid categorization.
Zimbabwe
The new Zimbabwe soundtrack
Zimbabwe is not Mugabe, Nkomo, Mnangagwa or Chamisa. A new Afro-electronic music duo is giving the country’s complexity a soundtrack.
The projected versions of Dambudzo Marechera
With its new edition, Penguin Classics disfigures Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera’s novel 'The House of Hunger.'
The vanguard of Black American transnationalism in Zimbabwe
Tommie Sankange was the first black American public figure permanently residing in Zimbabwe who was not a missionary. Why don’t we know more about her?
The gods of liberation
The imperative to tell the untold stories of Zimbabwean freedom fighters during that country’s liberation war, especially their engagement with spirituality.
First as tragedy, second as farce
NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel 'Glory' forcefully evokes the Zimbabwean political landscape but struggles to stretch itself beyond the documentarian, vacillating between the journalistic and fictive.
The institution of Alex Magaisa
Magaisa, who died this month, set agendas, and demanded the highest standards from the political and intellectual classes in Zimbabwe.
Cricket, lovely cricket
This month on AIAC Radio, Boima invites Liam Brickhill to talk cricket, select some cricket related tunes, and glance at the game from the viewpoint of Zimbabwe.
Hope and optimism howled at full volume
A people’s history of Zimbabwe’s first mbira punk band, Chikwata 263, who wanted a soundtrack for the country’s post-post colonial blues.
A question of color
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu's novel "The Theory of Flight" may be the first to take seriously Zimbabwe’s complicated race politics, beyond the obvious black vs whites.
Hard times never kill
Gonora Sounds’ music gets at what it means to be a Zimbabwean: We might be crying, but we are also dancing.
Zimbabwe’s second innings
In November 2017, Robert Mugabe was toppled in a coup. Amid this epochal change, life—and cricket—simply went on for Zimbabweans, who are still in search of a better future.
My fellow Africans
On the next AIAC Talk, we talk with several AIAC fellows about their work. Tuesday on Youtube.
Essentialism and the making of African refugees
African “refugeeness” in the media, policy, and academia is an essentialist physical image conflating material deprivation and multiple victimhoods.
The life and times of Trevor Madondo
Trevor Madondo achieved a certain immortality in Zimbabwean cricketing lore precisely for the way in which he confronted cricket’s history as an instrument of empire.
The forgotten history of migration to Africa
While World War II was ravaging Europe, thousands of Polish people found a safe haven in British colonial Africa.
No one is coming to save us
The government of Zimbabwe has decided it does not care whether Zimbabweans live or die.
Born from the soil
Traditional chiefs and the politics of labor recruitment in Zimbabwe’s platinum mining industry.
Global finance and charity killed African healthcare
What happened to the once universally accepted idea of healthcare for all?
From cholera to corona: The politics of plagues in Africa
What lessons can we learn for today from the 2008-09 cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe?