Post-Colonial African Pop Culture

I have read several books that take place in modern-day Middle East and Africa:
- Things Fall Apart
- Kite Runner
- A Thousand Splendid Suns
- Shabanu, and Haveli (a series about the life of camel-herders that inhabit the desert in Western India)
- Habibi (set in Israel/Palestine)
- Poisonwood Bible (story of a pastor that moves to Congo in 1959, but that extends far into decolonization, too)
- Three Cups of Tea (story of a professional mountain climber who gives up climbing to found schools in Pakistan, starting with a school in the base camp village)

Coincidentally, this past quarter, my French class has been spent to watching and analyzing African films. Some films I've watched:

- Hotel Rwanda
- The Battle of Algiers
- Ali Zaoua (story of orphans who live on the streets in Casablanca)
- L'Enfant Endormi (story of the emigration of men from the Maghreb countryside to Europe, and the effect it has on those who stay)
- Yabba (one of the most interesting films I've ever seen; it depicts life in rural, rural, Burkina Faso)
- Moissons d'Acier (translation: Harvest of Steel; this movie, which I somehow downloaded off some obscure website for a project (it was once popular in the 1970's, but has since fallen into oblivion), describes the effect the mines left behind in Algeria by the French have on the people there)
- La Noirde (the story of a Senegalese woman who goes to France to work for a French family; she is so miserable there she ends up comitting suicide)
- Les Yeux Secs (the story of a certain village in the Moroccan countryside; perhaps the most touching of all the movies)

Pop Culture

I haven't read many books about Africa and the Middle East. The only two that I remember are the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini which we read in Freshman year, and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe which we read this year. The Kite Runner was about a boy who immigrates from the Middle East to America, and it follows him through his life and even involves conflict with the Taliban at the end. Things Fall Apart was about the colonization of a small village in Africa by the Europeans and explores the true relationship between the two cultures and the effects of the European's arrival.

Novels or Movies on Middle East and Africa

Much of the entertainment media today does not cover the Middle East or Africa.  I have, however, read a few books and seen a few movies with plots based there.  For English class, we read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.  And like most people in our class, I've seen Hotel Rwanda and Blood Diamond.

Books and Videos!

I have not read that many books by African or Middle Eastern writers because most of my English classes have nurtured my curiosity for American writers. These would include African American writers that I enjoy like Fredrick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, Henry Louis gates, and James Baldwin. However below are a couple books I have read depicting the life in Africa or the Middle East.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The series of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and a few more of his books


As for movies, there are also not many that I can remember but here are a few. (The last three I have a vague memory of but I know I watched them).
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
A couple episodes of the show and some great short videos of Botswana, Africa and its culture
Hotel Rwanda
Blood Diamond
African Queen
The Last King of Scotland

Movies and Books- Africa and Middle East

Like everyone has said before me, I have not read many books or seen many movies about or by people in Africa and the Middle East. These were the few I could think of, mostly by looking back on other's posts.

Hotel Rwanda, Babel, Blood Diamond, Things Fall Apart, The Kite Runner

MENA Oil vs. Topography

Looking at the map of the MENA region that Mama Pugs linked us to, the green regions are clearly near the major waterways because not that surprisingly, water tends to congregate in relatively low places.  These places have been inhabited by humans for tens of thousands of years, and it is there in Sumeria that the first sophisticated human cultures are said to have sprung up.  The areas are rich in culture and history, and still densely populated.  Most of the major oil-producing regions are in these fertile valleys and coastal areas, and as I see it, that is for two reasons:

One, oil is a liquid.  That being true, it will try to flow to the lowest possible place.  Seeing as the Earth's mantle is pretty impassable, those low spots are determined by where the mantle is or isn't.  As anyone who has studied plate tectonics knows, mountains are made when the mantle forces pieces of the crust to collide, and they both turn up.  Thus, the mantle is higher than average.  As a matter of fact, the same thing could be said of almost anywhere there is land sticking out of the water on Earth.  Thus, oil tends to flow and collect wherever the measured elevation is low.  So low altitude means more oil, as is reinforced by the maps.

Two, (which is a bit more of a stretch), the oil has been discovered in lowlands and in the Persian Gulf.  Perhaps that might be because it's a lot easier to drill for oil in water-churned sediment than mountains?  Nobody wants to drill through an extra 3000 feet of rock, so of course no oil has been discovered under the mountainous regions.  It would be expensive to find, gather, and transport.  Instead, companies have stuck with just finding oil in more cost-effective places, in order to make more profit.

Pop-Culture

As the numerous posts before this one have mentioned, the only thing that I have read from the Middle East/ Africa are Things Fall Apart and The Kite Runner. When I think of the Middle East or Africa I usually think of oppression and lack of free speech. This is probably the reason that not very many books/movies are published there are heard about world-wide. In countries such as Pakistan terrorist groups such as the Taliban control the nation and do not allow free speech. If someone wanted to say something that did not agree with the views of the people in power, it would result in severe consequences such as death. I think its sad that people in those countries have to be afraid to speak out.