In this week of September, 22 years ago, life changed radically for many people. The World Trade Center was attacked. The world hasn’t been the same since. Was it anything like this for my Africans after Europe decided to divide it up into colonies in the mid-1890s? Was it a cataclysm, full of fire and brimstone, awful and overwhelming? Or was it an endless parade of small definitive moments, encounters first or last where someone brandished a decree in someone else’s face and declared them colonial subjects and people laughed, not knowing their world was ending?
We don’t have movies to imagine this past for us, we must do it ourselves.
