Let’s fly away to Tlemcen and Sumba — come along! I was honored to be invited to speak again in beloved Algeria (at 3 am!) at a travel literature conference in Tlemcen. It had been a dream come true to fly to amazing Algeria from China just two months before the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan emerged to give a keynote at the Black Arts Movement Conference based on my interviews with American civil rights legends who made history at the 1969 Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers — so it was a total delight to speak again in Algeria.
I spoke about my research on travel literature related to the island of Sumba in Indonesia. As a fellow at the American Institute of Indonesian Studies, I’d turned my focus to Sumba last year, so in my Algeria talk I critiqued how westerners have exotified Sumba (branded as the new luxury Bali) — with its headhunters, human sacrifices, and murderous ritual jousts — and how the Sumbanese have resisted the tourist gaze and turned it back on itself. Hoping to return to Algeria again — to film my new screenplay!
