sanneh speaks: aloud
In the books I read sometimes I need to stop and ask Barby, "Can I read this aloud to you?"
Like when Sanneh speaks of an African childhood:
An African child hood such as mine was not littered with the kind of stimuli we associate with age-specific gadgets, including toys of every description and sophistication. An African child learns pretty quickly that playmates are not the same as playthings, and having friends is altogether different from possessing things. A childhood landscape in Africa is a pretty stripped-down scene, with not even the barest of things made for children. But what a child lacks in mechanical toys is more than made up for in the organic richness of human contact and relationship. Society was designed that way.
What to a Western eye looks like childhood of deprivation, then, is to the African a stage of life brimming with assets of childhood enrichment. The African child lives in a close, crowded world, a world teeming with faces and sounds and movements…
Like when Sanneh speaks of an African childhood:
An African child hood such as mine was not littered with the kind of stimuli we associate with age-specific gadgets, including toys of every description and sophistication. An African child learns pretty quickly that playmates are not the same as playthings, and having friends is altogether different from possessing things. A childhood landscape in Africa is a pretty stripped-down scene, with not even the barest of things made for children. But what a child lacks in mechanical toys is more than made up for in the organic richness of human contact and relationship. Society was designed that way.
What to a Western eye looks like childhood of deprivation, then, is to the African a stage of life brimming with assets of childhood enrichment. The African child lives in a close, crowded world, a world teeming with faces and sounds and movements…
