Some of my students have been Lost Boys of Sudan, and they wrote interesting essays about killing lions and marching for years. When I heard Dave Eggers was writing a novel about Sudan, I said, oh no. Aren’t there any navels left to gaze at in Brooklyn? Isn’t that some kind of literary blackface? And then I was waiting for someone to write a smart article about it, but no one smart did. And I can’t bring myself to read the novel and write one. Now this novel is out in paperback and the black face of Dave Eggers is everywhere. It’s creepy. Will someone please read it and write a smart article before Benjamin Kunkel becomes a Chinese person?
