Professor Mabanckou is extremely kind, understanding, charismatic, and engaging. I genuinely enjoyed his lectures and listening to him in class. That being said, this course was not at all what I expected. The class was described as “Sub-Saharan African Short Story,” which I was very much looking forward to, but we did not read any short stories. Instead, we read Mabanckou’s "8 Leçons sur l’Afrique" and Aimé Césaire’s "Discourse sur le colonialisme", both of which are long-form essays rather than short fiction, as the course description suggested. This was frustrating, as the actual content of the course differed significantly from what I was led to expect.
Additionally, we had few in-person classes and a handful of Zoom sessions throughout the quarter, with many classes canceled altogether. Without prior notice, Professor Mabanckou did not show up for the first class and was almost always late to the in-person classes we did have. While I recognize that it is a privilege to take a course with him as he is a highly sought-after and busy author, this felt unprofessional and contributed to a lack of structure and consistency in the course.