Djibouti
In the united states of africa
by abdourahman a. waberi (translated from the french by david and nicole ball)
Abdourahman A. Waberi’s IN THE UNITED STATES OF AFRICA asks the reader to accept an imagined reality in which international history and our contemporary world structure is subverted, and Africa is established as the dominant world superpower over the disease and poverty-stricken Europe and the USA. The story describes the life of a white girl, Maya, who has been adopted by a black African doctor and his wife and essentially rescued from the slums of Normandy, France to be raised in comfort and luxury in a wealthy city in East Africa. Maya grows up to become an artist and curious about her origins, returns home to France.
Published in the original French in 2006 as Aux États-Unis d’Afrique, and translated into English by David and Nicole Ball, the book does for Africa what Wakanda did in the Black Panther Marvel movie series—it presents the continent as creative, productive, and advanced, peopled with intellectuals, scientists, artists, and world-builders who do not need to rely on any other place for their wealth and prosperity.
“Still more dizzying is the flow of capital between Eritrea and its dynamic neighbors, who are all members of the federation of the United States of Africa, as is the former Hamitic kingdom of Chad, rich in oil; and also the ex-Sultanate of Djibouti that handles millions of guineas and surfs on its gas boom; or the Madagascar archipelago, birthplace of the conquest of space and tourism for the enfants terribles of the new high finance.”
Waberi approaches this subversion with a fistful of salt and satire. By flipping the narrative and applying generalizations and stereotypes of uncooperative, dangerous, corrupt, warmongering societies—usually associated with Africa—to places like Europe, Japan, and the United States, he exposes just how ignorant and damaging contemporary attitudes about Africa can be. While illustrating just how self-serving and flimsy racism against an entire continent or nation of people is.
The situation may be imaginary, but the politics are painfully familiar. A conservative African organization, determined to retain its racial superiority and privilege, campaigns hard against welcoming refugees and advocates for stronger borders. Soon, a local sherif in a small town takes this approach a step further and begins to arrest white immigrants, imprison them, and then force them to fight one another for their freedom. ”Every day he throws to Caucasian bandits, two sans-culottes from Prague, Trier, or Coimbra, into a ten-by-ten enclosure under a stone-breaking sun. Two men in quest of the African dream, … Sheriff Ouedraogo promises to spare the life of the one who kills the other at sunset.”
The Sheriff’s methods gain popularity and mounted policemen begin to hunt caucasian immigrants, who are seen as inferior in every way. A horrifying idea in this imaginary, turned-around world, were it not the actual lived experience of black people in our contemporary society. You don’t have to stretch your imagination very far when photographs of Haitian refugees being run down by Texan border guards on horseback were published only last year. Waberi, with a twist of humor, knocks back these armed forces with his description of posturing, ridiculous men, “Recognizable by their uniforms and badges, these new horsemen of the apocalypse crisscross the country day and night. They wear boots, thick khaki socks halfway up their calves, and impeccably ironed shirts over sweat-absorbent T-shirts, elegant ties. With their pectorals swollen with pride and prejudice, their brains in their lunch box.”
In a reversal of the ‘eroticization’ of black and asian women in today’s culture, white women in Waberi’s book are fetishized for their blue eyes, their blonde hair, their flat backsides, and their ivory skin.
IN THE UNITED STATES OF AFRICA, like many of the other books I’ve read in translation this year, reads more like a series of vignettes or contemplations on life than a plot-driven story. Despite being the central character through which this distorted society is supposed to be viewed, Maya’s scenes are presented in second person. We never really hear from her from within her own skin, or see the world from her perspective, we are just told what she thinks. In fact, she’s told what she thinks! This may have been a very deliberate choice by Waberi to further disenfranchise this white girl in a black world, but it may also be a “lost in translation” thing. Whatever the reason, the reader is never really able to immerse themselves in the story and the world, instead, it feels more like being taken on tour by a slightly wry, sly narrator, winking at us about the stupidity of men.
