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WHAT’S UP!

There’s a letter making the rounds concerning a recent ‘100 Best Books of the 21st century’ list published by the New York Times. Ignoring the fact that the century is barely a quarter gone, the list was controversial because over 61 of the books listed were by American authors. The rest, apart from two Africans, were European.

The New York Times has had a book section since the 1890s, and it has been very influential in the English literature reading world. But in a world that is fast becoming one big global village, passing off American books as the ‘best in the world’ is a bit disingenuous.

What the newspaper did was to ask its respondents to consider only books published in the US, and the respondents were, of course, mainly American celebrities.

Nigerian academic and author Ainehi Edoro-Glines especially, took exception to the list, referring to it as a ‘replay of the cultural ethnocentrism that plagued 20th-century publishing’. She sees the exclusion of African writers from the list as an act of ‘cultural erasure’, and agrees with Bhakti Shringarpure, founder of Radical Books Collective, that the New York Times is ‘committed to preserving the last vestiges of white culture in a world that feels unmoored to them and saturated with so many diverse voices’.

Of course, the New York Times can publish whatever lists it wants, as can anyone. ‘Best of’ lists are basically subjective and the controversies raised and the debates that follow are as essential part of them as the actual choices themselves.

What ticked off people like Ms Edoro-Glines is the New York Times passing off what is essential an American list as a ‘world best’.

“The world is not limited to the US by way of New York City”, she wrote in an article published online by the Literary Hub. “The 21st century did not happen only in the US. You can’t ignore an entire global literary culture that has made the last 25 years a powerful era for literature.”

She insisted that the list does not reflect the diversity and scale of global publishing and misrepresents the 21st century, one of the most productive and diverse periods in the history of literature.

“An epoch wherein markets and reading publics have become so interconnected and crowded is reduced to the preferences of American literary celebrities,” she wrote.

We can feel and relate to Ms Edoro-Glines’ angst, it is not the first time Americans think what happens within the US is a global phenomenon. The World Series is actually a tournament between American baseball teams and it has become something of a laugh when the winner of the US’s NBA club league refers to themselves as ‘world champion’. It is even a bigger laugh that the last time the Americans participated in an actual world basketball championship, they came out fourth-placed.

American sprinter Noah Lyles took some stick for calling out the NBA referring to the winners as ‘world champions’. After winning multiple gold medals at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest last year, Lyles insisted that the best basketball players in the world are no longer American. He pointed out Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic from Slovenia and Serbia’s Nikola Jokic.

While the American basketball team might most probably take the gold medal at the Olympics for the fifth straight time, they got a huge scare when they played debutants South Sudan in a warm-up game, winning by one point at the buzzer. A more experienced South Sudanese side could have blown them away.

While the US is probably still the most dominant country in the world, both economically and militarily, it is not the ‘greatest’, as many Americans would like to think. Its place as the bastion of Western democracy is under serious attack by the Republican party and its wannabe emperor Donald Trump, a convict who hates the fact he has to be elected to become President.

If he has his way and gets into the White House again, he might never leave, as he has repeatedly said. He has recently called on American Christians to ‘vote for the last time’. And is it a coincidence that his rallying cry, ‘America first’, was also the rallying call for the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist terrorist and hate group responsible for the murder of thousands of American Negroes?

Several indicators have the US trailing many European countries in quality of life, and its cultural influence is waning. While Hollywood and American music dominated the 20th century, that’s all a dream now.

We still love the US and think Americans are great people; but they really have to get out of their bubble that they are the greatest country in the world. That comes off as both arrogant and ignorant, not very attractive traits.

Just last week the American actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish (she’s half-Eritrean) was at the centre of a controversy when she appeared shocked that Zimbabwe had ‘grocery stores’. She filmed herself touring a supermarket and was amazed at all the ware on sale.

She defended herself against the backlash that ‘back home in the US’, they have been told for ages that Africa is full of starvation and babies with flies on them; and that Africans kill each other every day.

I don’t know whether to pity Ms Hadish, or laugh at her. But I know what Boney M would say – “Oh those Americans!”