James North has reported from Africa, Latin America, and Asia for four decades. He lives in New York City.
A revealing question: Why has V.S. Naipaul come to be much better known in the West than the great African writer Chinua Achebe?
Some years ago, I had the good fortune to befriend an extended family who lived in a poor shantytown in the southern reaches of Santiago, Chile.
All during the year 1984, those of us with firsthand experience in Africa knew that drought and famine were cutting across vast swaths of the continent.