Looking Forward to the Deep Valley Book Festival, June 28

Tomorrow, I will be at the Deep Valley Book Festival in Mankato, Minnesota. I look forward to visiting Mankato again, having been there a number of times. I participated in the Deep Valley Book Festival several times  a number of years ago.

I also gave talks there, including one to a gathering of immigrants and refugees, and, more recently, to audiences at South Central College. On all these occasions, I met people who have continued to be part of my network of friends and acquaintances.

The book festivals, of course, are a great opportunity to meet authors, publishers, editors, educators, and readers and learn from them. It is a great opportunity to share my ideas, talk about my work as an educator and cultural consultant, and to showcase my writings.

In these festivals, I discover the great wealth of writing that is flourishing around us, and experience the joy of buying books and having them signed by the authors. As I am writing this blog post, for example, I have next to me a copy of John Calvin Rezmerski's What Do I know? New & Selected Poems, which bears the author's inscription and signature:

for Joseph Mbele--
Wonderful to talk with you at Deep Valley Book Festival
John Calvin Rezmerski

I look forward to meeting people I know, such as author Becky Fjelland Davis, who will be participating in the Festival. She is an inspiring educator, who has taken Americans on study trips to South Africa, and who is one of my most faithful readers. Thank you, Becky.

A Visit to South Central College

Two days ago, on February 24, I visited South Central College in Mankato, to talk with students who were preparing to travel to South Africa on a study abroad program. Then I gave a well attended public talk, "Writing About Americans." Becky Fjelland Davis did a wonderful job of organizing my visit. She knew about me, and had even invited me to speak in her class in 2013, a visit she reported on her blog.

My conversation with the South Africa-bound class was part of the orientation for the trip. Since the class had been reading my book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences, I chose to dwell on answering questions stemming from the book and any other questions that might arise.

As it turned out, there were many engaging questions about cultural differences. One question that stood out arose from my observation regarding African work habits, which, I claimed, are rather relaxed, compared to those of Americans. I said that I feel Africans could learn something from the Americans and work harder.

An African American woman in the audience asked me pointedly whether I was implying that Africans are lazy. She observed that white people had historically described black people as lazy, and she wondered whether that was what I was implying.

I could sense that she was somewhat upset, perhaps very upset, even though she framed her question in a restrained and respectful manner. I thanked her for raising that question and assured her that I never meant to say, even suggest, that the Africans were lazy.

On the contrary, I said, I think the Africans apparent laziness reflects a culture of privileging social relations over anything else. With its stress on community and human relations, the African culture is an antidote to the kind of alienation that afflicts American society. Still, I said, l think it would be beneficial for Africans to adopt something from the Americans' work habits, if only in order to improve their material circumstances.

That gives a sense of what transpired during the class discussion. When the class ended, my hostess, Becky Felland Davis, escorted me into an auditorium full of people, where I gave a talk titled "Writing About Americans."

I shared the story of how I came to write my book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences, starting from the years when I offered advice and cultural orientation to Americans going to Africa as students, volunteers, tourists. I talked about how I wrote and rewrote the drafts for the book, and how that process enabled me to not only represent Americans but also  discover my own biases and prejudices.

I talked about how, eventually, I settled on a text that treated both the African and the American cultures respectfully, even though I chose humour as my strategy, in order to render palatable and enjoyable the things I was saying about both cultures.

I said quite a few things, and this might not be the place to report everything. Time flew past, and, as I concluded my talk, it was clear that people had enjoyed it. You can read a report about it that Becky wrote on her blog.

Forthcoming Presentations, Spring 2015

This is turning out to be a busy Spring in my work as a cultural consultant. I started the year with a meeting with students and instructors from Gustavus Adolphus College, who were preparing to travel to Tanzania on a study abroad program. Our conversation centered around my book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences, as I reported here, and as one of the students reported here.

Two more presentations are planned for this Spring. The first one will be to students from South Central College who are preparing to travel to South Africa on a study abroad program. This is going to be the second time I am speaking to students from that College, as part of their preparation for the South Africa trip. Their instructor, Rebecca Fjelland Davis wrote a report of that meeting on her blog.

I am looking forward to this occasion. I am used to speaking about cultural issues with American student groups going to Africa. I am used to speaking with individual Americans on their way to Africa.

What is going to be somewhat different is a conference in mid April with members of congregations from the Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Cannon River Conference, as it is called, will take place in Zumbrota, Minnesota. These people are not going to Africa, at least not as a group. There might be individuals who have visited Africa or who might visit in the future. On the contrary, these people find themselves enmeshed in modern globalization, having to deal with immigrants, some of them African.

The organizers of the Cannon River Conference have invited me to speak on "Incorporating Immigrants Into Our Culture and Worship." This is going to be a unique experience, with aspects not encountered in my talks with students going to Africa. The cultural focus will be there, but it will have to be tied to the issue of worship.

As I think about this, I recall a workshop I helped conduct on the issue of culture and companionship. The workshop brought together Lutherans from Minnesota and Wisconsin to explore evangelism in the global, multicultural context. I wrote about this workshop on this blog, and I might incorporate some of that commentary in my forthcoming talk.