Please don't air brush African teen fiction

Ellen Banda-Aaku has long battled with her African publishers to make her teen/YA books ‘suitable’ enough to print. Now she’s started to stand her ground for the sake of her teenager readers – and risks not being published at allPlus find out about #ProjectKala, a campaign to promote reading in African local languagesRecently a publisher in East Africa asked me to make some changes to the manuscript of my latest book for teenagers/young adults. The suggested change was for the teenage male protagonist to turn down a beer with the statement, “I do not drink alcohol because it is bad for children.” Granted, it is conceivable that an adolescent male can resist peer pressure and turn down alcohol on moral grounds (although if he did he wouldn’t tell people like that), but the character I had crafted in the story was not that kind of teenager. My character was a typical 17-year-old and he did what most teenagers his age would do. Related: Books for teenagers should reflect real life - and that includes sex and swearing Related: Chibundu Onuzo: what I read growing up in Lagos Related: Diverse voices: the 50 best culturally diverse books Related: Diverse voices: the 50 best culturally diverse books Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2015-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]

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Please don't air brush African teen fiction

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[ The Guardian | 2015-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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