Criteria for Evaluating Books & Materials on Africa

How do you know how to assess the books, texts, and materials you select on Africa? This list can guide you and it also can be used as a critical thinking activity with students.

Foundational Work on Selecting Texts about Africa

• A Guide to Selecting Multicultural Literature: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
  An article by Barbara Brown on using literature to foster an inclusive and culturally responsive curriculum.
• Selecting Books on Africa, A Response to “Safari Sojourns”
  This article, written by Barbara Brown, Lesego Malepe, and Jo Sullivan, published in Moral, Social and Civic Issues in 1996 discusses key criteria for using African children’s literature, including an emphasis on children’s lives, a focus on one country, and other useful approaches.
• Literature on Colonialism
  An annotated list of literature to use when teaching about colonialism and resistance.

Ajami Literacies of Africa

(Middle/High School Curriculum Unit)

This lesson about Ajami will be useful if you teach about:

• • The spread of Islam
  • Medieval West Africa 
  • Islamic cultures, literacy, and science (e.g. Timbuktu, etc.)
  • Global networks of trade and interconnectedness with Europe and Asia, and between North Africa & Africa South of the Sahara.
  • Literacy in Africa

Access our new Teaching about Ajami page here.

Language as Evidence: Using Swahili to Understand East African History

(Middle/High School Curriculum Unit)

World history teacher Eric Beckman created a resource-rich website for educators to teach about East African history and contemporary society through classroom study of the Swahili language. These lessons are useful for teaching about the Bantu migration, Indian Ocean trade network, imperialism, colonialism, and globalization. Includes multimedia resources and editable powerpoints and worksheets for classroom use.

Access Language as Evidence Lessons

South African Short Stories: Apartheid, Civil Rights, and You

(Middle/High School Curriculum Unit)

Created by high school teacher Carol Marshall, these lesson plans will not only introduce students to a diverse group of South African writers and literature, but also help students to begin to understand how apartheid created discriminatory and despicable laws, boundaries, and limitations for those who lived in South Africa during this time period. Additionally, students will explore how race in America impacted citizens here in a profound way through a lesson plan on the Little Rock Nine.

Access South African Short Stories Lessons

Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali Reading Guide

(Middle/High School Curriculum Unit & adaptable across grades)

This student reading guide features a timeline of the Empire of Mali, a character list from the reading, chapter by chapter comprehension questions, pulled quotations, and reading activities. 

Access the Sunjata Reading Guide

Poetry

• Rain Poems
• Spoken Word Poetry Unit Featuring Malagasy Slam Poet Caylah
  Created by high school teacher and 2018 Curriculum Development Grant recipient Lee Naughton, this unit plan on spoken word poetry emphasizes the importance finding one’s voice in order to affect change. The unit includes an overview of Madagascar and Malagasy Slam Poet Caylah as a means by which to globalize youth issues such as representation and gender rights, among others, and encourage students to develop their own slam poetry in a culminating class project. 

African Literature Events

• African Literature Group at the African Studies Center, Boston University
  This adult group has been meeting for over 18 years to read and discuss African literature in English. Click to see what books they have read over the years (with short summaries). In 2020, a book group discussion that gathers to read African literature in French meets online twice a year.