WHAT IS UKRAINE TO ME?

At the very least 10,000 years ago, people from the heart of Africa—whom the ancient Greeks called Aithiops (Ethiopians)—“discovered, while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences … [and] founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe.” In this the final stage of the UN declared International Decade for People of African Descent, 2015 to 2024, as humanity lives through the COVID pandemic and stares down the catastrophe of climate change, we now have to confront the Ukraine conflict. The question, “What Is Ukraine to Me?” puts the situation in a perspective that brings us back to the fundamental indisputable fact of the African origin of civilization.

Ian Isidore Smart, who was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, is internationally recognized for his scholarship in the field of Hispanophone Africana literature and culture. He has also consistently focused on public policy issues. The first of Professor Smart’s now 28 published books is Central American Writers of West Indian Origin: A New Hispanic Literature. (Washington, DC: Three Continents, 1984). Along with What Is Ukraine to Me? Original World Press has just published Professor Smart’s “Amo a mi raza”: Un enfoque africológico sobre la literatura hispanoamericana.