Our Blog Posts
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Erasure
Mary Mba (Ph.D.) for Sony Labou Tansi, Martial, Chaïdana, and all the unspeakables; for those who remember what was said and what was unsaid What happens when words vanish from policy, from screens, from speech? “Erasure” is a poetic meditation on censorship, identity, and memory—drawing inspiration from Sony Labou Tansi’s La Vie et demie, the
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When Words Disappear: Sony Labou Tansi, Trump, and the Battle Over Language
By Mary Mba (Ph.D.) “To forbid words is to erase the world they describe.”—Sony Labou Tansi In 1979, Congolese writer Sony Labou Tansi published La Vie et demie, a surreal and grotesque novel that imagines a dictatorship so absurd and violent it makes language itself a casualty. Decades later, in a very different setting, the
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The Museum of Gods
Mary Mba (Ph.D.) A Lament for the Stolen Sacred They came with ships and sermons,crosses in one hand,guns in the other.They found altars we had made from stone and spirit,and called them blasphemy. They did not bow.They did not ask.They took. What they called idolswere our elders in wood.Our prayers in bronze.Our wisdom braided into clay.