Dangerous books such as Surviving Africa: The Dark Continent play a significant role in Western misconceptions of Africa. Most of such books cover only features of either an Acacia tree or an orange sunset over the veld —in other words, darkness and backwardness. These misconceptions have caused me as an African nothing but misery. Each time my American colleagues ask me about my life course and I naturally answer them I am from Tanzania —a small country on the East Coast of Africa— I read pity in their faces. At that moment their facial expressions silently shout at me: 'Oh Poor Child. How sad and traumatic his childhood must have been.' People feel sorry for me. People feel sorry I was born and have been raised in an African country. Based on their responses, my transition became difficult and challenging. To help other incoming African immigrants, I will highlight what African students need to know as they travel to America to avoid succumbing to prejudices that I, unfortunately, experienced. Dear African student, as an African, your accent is not conventional on American soil. You [African student] do not curve your ‘o’s or roll your ‘r’s, so you must anticipate that some people will have difficulty understanding some of your words. But frequently, you will find that the minute you speak in class and sometimes in conversation, the value of your opinion will depreciate. Suddenly your words will become mere African words that carry less meaning and importance, even before you have finished your first sentence. At first, you will try not to assume the worst. You will attribute this notion to paranoia. When you hear your other African friends with distinct Nigerian, Kenyan, or Ghanaian accents curving their ‘o’s and rolling their ‘r’s and suddenly claiming that it is “simply easier this way,” your heart will begin to break. Because then you will know that this is not paranoia but in fact reality. You will suddenly begin to realize and understand that on this soil, you are not simply yourself, a person with aspirations and plans or an individual who has experienced valleys and hills just like everyone else. On this soil, you are African, and it is not a compliment. Dear African Student, you will have to refrain from reminding them that you are neither backward nor illiterate because somehow, they seem to have forgotten that you too got into the same college. You will abstain from reminding them that you are not defined by the wars and pain that have plagued your home for even America was colonized. And you will try not to remind them that you are not immune to the corruption of truth that is: stereotyping. Stereotyping that they think all Africans speak the 'click-click' language, live in the jungle and have lions as pets. You will choose to abstain from telling them that your dreams stand in tandem with your Africanness, not in spite of it. And even though your spirit is crushed every time you speak upon deaf ears, you will try not to remind them that you are a person too, because that would be condescending, no? Oh! you will also grow tired of the word “diversity.” This go-to word for university applications and networking alike; this word that makes black beautiful on paper, but intolerable in person Anyway, amidst all these, remember you are more than the version of your continent or country that they envision. You are more than this version of diversity that is not fashioned to be inclusive of the experiences, culture, and memories that make you an individual. Do not allow them to crush your stories into dust under the soles of their misconstrued narratives that negate your experiences to the role of the other. Do not let them make you so self-conscious of your identity that you become ashamed. So ashamed that you roll your ‘r’s and ‘o’s; so much so that you laugh when they ask you whether you are familiar with a platform called Facebook; so much so that you become complicit in your own degradation. And you [African Student] that lives beyond these narratives, beyond these stereotypes, beyond this diversity, ceases to exist.