This morning we drove to downtown Dakar. I really do need to get serious about speaking French, so a French-English dictionary was top of our shopping list. After finding the dictionary, I decided to check out the English fiction section. I found six titles. Three were by black writers: Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe and Mariama Ba. The other three were by a white American: Armistead Maupin!
Armisted Maupin in a Muslim-dominant country?!? After Nathalie and I stopped laughing, we started asking questions: Are the majority of English-speaking book buyers gay? Which of the bookstore employees is gay? Do those who persecute gay Senegalese—and there has been some extreme violence here over the past few months--visit their local bookstores?
No answers. More will be revealed.
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