Winning the Literature and Peace Nobel Prizes has been crucial to Black literature and resistance. But what does a history of omission in the other elusive categories mean?
Twenty-eight Nobel Prizes have been awarded to Africans, of the 621 prizes that have been awarded since 1901. This number begins to thin out without the necessary consideration of birthplace. Seven prizes have been awarded for literature including the 1958 win by the French Algerian-born and educated fabulist, Albert Camus. There have been thirteen peace prizes if you include the prize awarded in 1994 to the Egyptian-born Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Last year, Africa got its most recent Nobel Prize when the Tanzanian-born author of Paradise, Abdulrazak Gurnah, was announced winner of the prize in literature.
Of the prizes awarded in the hard sciences so far: Physiology or Medicine, Chemistry, and Physics, one has gone to an Egyptian and the others have been shared by people born in French Algeria and White South Africans...
