Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric Dec 2024 Open Access

The Historical and Geographical Locations of Literature: What makes Western Literature Western and Superior and Non-Western literature Non-Western and Inferior

Benjamin Hart Fishkin

Abstract

African writers need to publish their own books in their own home countries. The silencing of ideas and elimination of dominant narratives from Black authors was not something that was supposed to happen. Black writers in the Diaspora and those on the African Continent want to tell a new and different story. Such an approach will allow new voices to transform negative coverage in Western media into a new form of reportage that tells a brand-new story. People of Color should not be left at the margin. It should not matter where an author comes from. The purpose here is to unearth biases that exist in publishing houses. This kind of external validation is not necessary. African literature exists within parameters that are drawn by someone else who is somewhere else. Somehow the literature that someone might read in the West (in regards to Africa) tends to emphasize violence and corruption with an inaccurate image of inferiority.

Journal
Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
Published
2024-12-20
DOI
10.59236/rjv24i1pp71-86
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