All men are created equal

Our library here doesn't have the Chinua Achebe book Ashleigh recommened, but it does have Another Africa, a collection of poems by Achebe and photographs of Africa, of people and still lifes, basically. It's worth finding just for the essay at the end, about The Heart of Darkness view vs. seeing all men as having human dignity. I'd like to post some of it here, but it'll be hard to pare down to just a few best parts.

This is the first poem in the book.

A Mother in a Refugee Camp
No Madonna and Child could touch
Her tenderness for a son
She soon would have to forget...
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps
Behind blown empty bellies. Other mothers there
Had long ceased to care, but not this one;
She held a ghost-smile between her teeth,
And in her eyes the memory
Of a mother's pride....She had bathed him
And rubbed him down with her bare palms.
She took from their bundle of possessions
A broken comb and combed
The rust-colored hair left on his skull
And then - humming in her eyes - began to part it.
In their former life this was perhaps
A little daily act of no consquence
Before his breakfast and school; now she did it
Like putting flowers on a tiny grave.