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Article: On reading as true travel. (Essential Books).(Column)
- Article from:
- World Literature Today
- Article date:
- March 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 University of Oklahoma. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It is in reading that I first found evidence of alterity. First it was in my childhood reading of the collected issues of the Journal des Voyages from the years 185-70, a present from a friend of my grandfather who bore the astounding name of Claudius-Veran. I read the journals as if they were about current news; they presented the world as a mystery to which the key must be found: unreal, ghostly Africa, where the other--the African--always wears a mask, stripped of humanity, belonging to the animal kingdom. Yet I had known Africa, at the age of eight, during a trip to the Ibo country, where I met my father for the first time, doubtless the only traveling I had ever done. ...