Gilbert Shang

Gil Ndi-Shang (Romance Literatures/Comparative Studies, University of Bayreuth) holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS). He is a member of the Young Colleague Programme, Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Munich-Germany). In the recent past, he has been Research Fellow with the Fritz-Thyssen Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for his literary research in Congo, Peru, and Colombia.

Meet Dr. Shang

On the traces of the African heritage in South America

“The people I met, the places I visited, the
mutual gazes, my hopes, and fears, the happy moments as well as dour occasions make up my travel diary. I write to represent the tracks and traces of my memory, perhaps also part of your memory, deeply convinced that there is America in you and me, and lastly, that America is human. I feel the impulse to write because no one visits America without having a slight and almost illusory sense of having made a discovery.”

Prologue, Letter from America, 2019 @Gil Ndi-Shang