Literary Birthday – 17 March – Patrice Nganang

Happy Birthday, Patrice Nganang, born 17 March 1970.

Patrice Nganang Quotes

1. There are stories that don’t need a plot. Sooner or later they rise above the confusion and untangle their mysteries in a series of sentences.
2. There are many ways to write about Africa, but talent remains the compass.
3. For a writer is a whisperer before being a storyteller. Remember, a book can say to its reader: You simply have no obligation to accept the bullshit you are presented with. Remember that you have in you an inner strength that can defeat all the odds you see before you. Remember that the evil you see displayed under the sun is manufactured, and you can easily obliterate it the moment you apply against it an equal force housed in the good.
4. Writing enchants people’s souls by reverberating in them the multiple stories not yet lived, by resurrecting the tamed potentials of each one of us. It does so by showing a reader that one is never ever alone.
5. There is no beauty in despair, but the ability of the human spirit to transcend a history of domination is a flash of sunlight.

Patrice Nganang is an American writer, poet, and teacher of Cameroonian origin. He was educated in Cameroon and Germany and awarded a Ph.D. in comparative literature at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University. As a literature scholar, his research examines violence and post-colonial African literature and culture. He is the author of Mount Pleasant. He won the Marguerite Yourcenar Literary Award and the Black African Literary Grand Prize for Dog Days. He was expelled from Cameroon in 2017 after he wrote an article criticising the government. He is the head of Department of Africana studies at Stony Brook University, US.

Source for quotes / Source for image – website photos

by Amanda Patterson

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