The idea for Readings Beyond Academia was born out of my experience that stories - be they fiction, autoethnographic, or faction - help us see things in other, new, and more ways. Readings Beyond Academia is an expansion of The Africa Bookshelf, where you find books, whose storyline is situated on the African continent. Stories allow us to travel and imagine beyond our own immediate experiences. Through the sensuous act of reading, we get to know a place or a situation, a people, a society differently, maybe from a whole new angle and viewpoint. We gain understanding.

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The place of fiction, of novels in the production of knowledge and for expanding your ideas on a particular historical moment, a specific place, or people, is not often on the agenda of academic researchers. Yet novels allow for a different, another access to reality, making certain and other things visible. Beyond scholarly visions, novels open up new ways of seeing. 

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In my work, I use stories and encourage my clients to immerse themselves in novels, in books, to prepare for their endeavors. Here are my ongoing recommendations.