Polangui General Comprehensive High School

Polangui, Albay

21st Century Literature in the

World
AFRICA WRITERS

Submitted by:
 Submitted to:

HISTORY OF AFRICA

The history of Africa begins with the emergence of Homo sapiens in East
Africa, and continues into the present as a patchwork of diverse and
politically developing nation states. The recorded history of early civilization
arose in the Kingdom of Kush,[1] and later in Ancient Egypt, the Sahel,
the Maghreb and the Horn of Africa. During the Middle Ages, Islam spread
west from Arabia to Egypt, crossing the Maghreb and the Sahel. Some
notable pre-colonial states and societies in Africa include the Kingdom of
Nri, Nok culture, Mali Empire, Songhai Empire, Benin Empire, Ashanti
Empire, Ghana Empire, Mossi Kingdoms, Mutapa Empire, Kingdom of
Mapungubwe, Kingdom of Sine, Kingdom of Sennar, Kingdom of
Saloum, Kingdom of Baol, Kingdom of Cayor, Kingdom of
Zimbabwe, Kingdom of Kongo, Empire of Kaabu, Ancient
Carthage, Numidia, Mauretania, Aksumite Empire, Ajuran Sultanate, and
the Adal Sultanate.
From the mid-7th century, the Arab slave trade saw Muslim Arabs enslave
Africans following an armistice between the Rashidun Caliphate and
the Kingdom of Makuria after the Second Battle of Dongola in 652 AD. They
were transported, along with Asians and Europeans, across the Red
Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert.
From the late 15th century, Europeans joined the slave trade, with the
Portuguese initially acquiring slaves through trade and later by force as part
of the Atlantic slave trade. They transported enslaved West, Central,
and Southern Africans overseas.[2]
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European colonization of Africa
developed rapidly in the Scramble for Africa. It is widely believed that Africa
had up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups with distinct
languages and customs before it was colonized.[3] Following struggles for
independence in many parts of the continent, as well as a weakened Europe
after the Second World War, decolonization took place, culminating in the
1960 Year of Africa.
Africa's history has been challenging for research in the field of African
studies because of the scarcity of written sources in large parts of the
continent, particularly with the destruction of many of the most important
manuscripts from Timbuktu. Disciplines such as the recording of oral
history, historical linguistics, archaeology and genetics have been crucial.

21st Century Writer

1. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Even before reading
Americanah, there were two things prone to make me love it. Firstly, that it is
written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and I am yet to read (or listen
to or watch) anything of hers that I havent loved. Secondly, well,
Americanahs main protagonist, Ifemelu, is a Nigerian woman and blogger
who writes about race, gender, Nigerpolitanism and stuff like that: you can
bet your bottom dollar I was going to love this book. However, what
bewitched me even more than meeting a fictional colleague, was the
passionate, vivid and feminist (Id say) love story between Ifemelu and her
love, Obinzeh, transcending both time and geographical spaces. In fact,
Ifemelus being such an opinionated blogger (wink) meant that I was unable
to read the novel in the detached way I tend to read novels. Instead, I kept
finding myself stopping to consider whether I related to her blogging
experiences. Looking through my notes in the book I came across this
highlight, If they asked what she did, she would say vaguely, I write a
lifestyle blog, because saying I write an anonymous blog
called Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those
Formerly known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black would make them
uncomfortable. I highlighted this sentence because it reminded me of how I
used to say that I blog about womens rights rather than feminism to not
make people uncomfortable. Those were the kinds of interruptions, if
welcome ones, that I experienced reading Americanah.
2. Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta I read Everything Good Will
Come first in 2008 and didnt love it. Obviously, something was incredibly
wrong with me at the time (and by that I mean that the book must have
introduced truths that I wasnt yet willing to shake hands with) because
having recently reread it for my book club, this is one of my favourite
novels ever. Attas protagonist, Enitan, is an unapologetically feminist and
proudly Nigerian character. However, she is not ideological, she does not
intend to be any of these things, she simply loves herself and questions the
ways her society denies women self fulfilment. In fact at one point, having
been accused of being a feminist, Enitan wonders: Was I? If a woman
sneezed in my country, someone would call her a feminist. Id never looked
up the word before, but was there one word to describe how I felt from one
day to the next? And should there be? If Ifemelu in Americanah shares my
passion for blogging the African zeitgeist, Enitan is my soul sister. Her
coming of age story in Nigeria, Lagos to be precise, often felt like reading my
own thoughts. I followed her fictional world often through an all too familiar
lens, equally heartbreaking as funny.

3. Sula by Toni Morrisson Sticking to becoming a feminist, it was not

until my early twenties that I started to think of myself as a feminist. To
thank, or blame, depending on how you look at it, was a university professor
(a white, male one, coincidentally) whose course, Gender Representations in
Media, I was taking. His lectures on feminism left me eternally transformed.
That sensation a deep knowing that I was unlikely to ever settle agreeably
into the gender roles that society encouraged was one Id felt years before
when as a teenager I read Sula, only then I didnt have the word feminist
readily available. Rereading it now has brought three insights: 1) That there
is an essence at our core, our unique observation on humanity, that never
changes. We simply (hopefully) become more aware of it with time. I say this
because despite that it had been twenty years since I read Sula, much of it
had stuck with me. Not just the story line and characters but their very
memories, it felt almost like reading an old diary; 2) that to live life fully,
especially as a woman, as I wrote in my last post, requires to not fear
judgement. Sulas fearlessness is coupled with her insight. But her life also
serves as a warning, of what may happen when the heterosexual, patriarchal
order is defied and a woman goes from sex object to sex subject, and; 3) that
Toni Morrison is everything. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
4. Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi ahh, AHH, WOW. Here is a book with
beautiful, jazzy sentences that jump at all your senses. Selasi is a wordsmith
but dont let her craftiness mask the other hat she wears, namely that of a
teacher. The hidden, confused demands that people nevertheless reveal and
rationalise in relationship are difficult to capture but Selasis lyrical sentences
-however short, and they often are manage to do just that. Through the
lives of The Sai family (Kweku, Fola, Olu, Kehinde, Taiwo, and Sade) we
explore relationships, even the ugliness, especially the ugliness actually, but
yet their stories carefully reveal that love is efficacious at smoothing out
even the most unforgivable memories. This is not an easy process for the
Sais, and it isnt for the reader either. I found myself needing to pause: to
listen to the pauses. As one of the characters says, Between the way things
were and when everything changed, a moment within which one notices
nothing, about which one remembers all. Which is the point.

5. The Shadow of Imana by Veronique Tadjo Rwanda is inside me, in

you, in all of us, Tadjo writes in The Shadow of Imana, referring by Rwanda
to the ghastly pogrom whose aftermath she writes about. This quote
summarises aptly the delicate search for universal humanness that seems to
anchor Tadjos story forward. Through recounting stories of people,
ordinary human beings who are farmers, project managers, teachers and
lawyers, but also simultaneously war victims or war criminals, her writing
hatches onto something profoundly true, namely that we all are capable of
more than we know, both good and bad. Nothing reveals this binding trait of
humanness more than the way mundanity exists alongside the atrocity of
war. To live, and be determined to live despite having the odds against you,
is both a mark of struggle and of victory. The Shadow of Imana is not fiction
unfortunately I might add but Ive included it nevertheless as its a creative
non-fiction or as Tadjo herself says (pdf) about her decision to go to Rwanda
to write the book, We felt it was important to reflect on what had really
happened. So we accepted to go there, with the only condition being that we
should respond as writers not like the many journalists or historians who
dealt with the genocide, but in our capacity as pure writers.
6. The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna Let me start by confessing
that I found The Memory of Love somewhat laborious to read. It was a slow,
dream-like read, ushered not so much by the events and characters as by
the language in it. However, the language is jerkingly lucid, and the novel is
an odyssey of discovery of a country Sierra Leone in post-independence
giddiness juxtaposed with post-war dystopia. The Memory of Love is,
amongst other things, a story that arouses reflections on African
independence, conflict and most of all the borders, both of nations as of love.
I read it tempted to attempt to find similarities in all these terminologically
diverse yet emotionally related spaces. What similarities exist between the
fragmentation of our hearts as of our maps? However, as the story unfolds, it
becomes clear that trying to place love in any theoretical frame can only
result in imperfect conclusions. The memory of love and the politics of
love might both be terrains of unity but they are not, necessarily, places or
reconciliation.

7. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo Admittedly, Ive only

just started reading We Need New Names. I am a promiscuous reader
and We Need New Names is only one of the many books Im now dating. I
mean reading. So I have not got to the part of the book where the quote I
want to end this blogpost with is located. However, it was posted on the pan-
African Tumblr, Dynamic Africa, and coincidentally my mum who was reading
the book said to me, Mimmi! (as she calls me) you have to hear this, and
proceeded to read to me the following:
Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with
bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their
hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving
their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords
underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving
everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no
longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you
cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just
cannot be the same.
Chinua Achebe

One of the worlds most widely recognized and praised writers, Chinua Achebe
wrote some of the most extraordinary works of the 20th century. His most famous
novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), is a devastating depiction of the clash between
traditional tribal values and the effects of colonial rule, as well as the tension
between masculinity and femininity in highly patriarchal societies. Achebe is also a
noted literary critic, particularly known for his passionate critique of Joseph
Conrads Heart of Darkness (1899), in which he accuses the popular novel of
rampant racism through its othering of the African continent and its people.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Born in Nigeria in 1977, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is part of a new generation of

African writers taking the literary world by storm. Adichies works are primarily
character-driven, interweaving the background of her native Nigeria and social
and political events into the narrative. Her novel Purple Hibiscus (2003) is a
bildungsroman, depicting the life experience of Kambili and her family during a
military coup, while her latest work Americanah (2013) is an insightful portrayal of
Nigerian immigrant life and race relations in America and the western world.
Adichies works have been met with overwhelming praise and have been
nominated for and won numerous awards, including the Orange Prize and Booker
Prize.

Ayi Kwei Armah

Ayi Kwei Armahs novels are known for their intense, powerful depictions of
political devastation and social frustration in Armahs native Ghana, told from the
point of view of the individual. His works were greatly influenced by French
existential philosophers, such as Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and as such
hold themes of despair, disillusionment and irrationality. His most famous
work, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968) centers around an unnamed
protagonist who attempts to understand his self and his country in the wake of
post-independence.

Mariama B

One of Africas most influential women authors, Mariama B is known for her
powerful feminist texts, which address the issues of gender inequality in her native
Senegal and wider Africa. B herself experienced many of the prejudices facing
women: she struggled for an education against her traditional grandparents, and
was left to look after her nine children after divorcing a prominent politician. Her
anger and frustration at the patriarchal structures which defined her life spill over
into her literature: her novel So Long A Letter (1981) depicts, simultaneously, its
protagonists strength and powerlessness within marriage and wider society.
Nuruddin Farah

Born in Somalia in 1945, Nuruddin Farah has written numerous plays, novels and
short stories, all of which revolve around his experiences of his native country. The
title of his first novel From a Crooked Rib (1970) stems from a Somalian proverb
God created woman from a crooked rib, and anyone who trieth to straighten it,
breaketh it, and is a commentary on the sufferings of women in Somalian society
through the narrative of a young woman trapped in an unhappy marriage. His
subsequent works feature similar social criticism, dealing with themes of war and
post-colonial identity.

Aminatta Forna

Born in Glasgow but raised in Sierra Leone, Aminatta Forna first drew attention for
her memoir The Devil That Danced on Water (2003), an extraordinarily brave
account of her familys experiences living in war-torn Sierra Leone, and in
particular her fathers tragic fate as a political dissident. Forna has gone on to
write several novels, each of them critically acclaimed: her work The Memory of
Love (2010) juxtaposes personal stories of love and loss within the wider context
of the devastation of the Sierre Leone civil war, and was nominated for the Orange
Prize for Fiction.

Nadine Gordimer

One of the apartheid eras most prolific writers, Nadine Gordimers works
powerfully explore social, moral, and racial issues in a South Africa under
apartheid rule. Despite winning a Nobel Prize in Literature for her prodigious skills
in portraying a society interwoven with racial tensions, Gordimers most famous
and controversial works were banned from South Africa for daring to speak out
against the oppressive governmental structures of the time. Her novel Burgers
Daughter follows the struggles of a group of anti-apartheid activists, and was read
in secret by Nelson Mandela during his time on Robben Island.

Alain Mabanckou

Originating from the Republic of Congo, Alain Mabanckous works are written
primarily in French, and are well known for their biting wit, sharp satire and
insightful social commentary into both Africa and African immigrants in France. His
novels are strikingly character-focused, often featuring ensemble casts of figures,
such as his book Broken Glass, which focuses on a former Congolese teacher and
his interactions with the locals in the bar he frequents, or his novel Black Bazar,
which details the experiences of various African immigrants in an Afro-Cuban bar
in Paris.
Ben Okri

Ben Okris childhood was divided between England and time in his native Nigeria.
His young experience greatly informed his future writing: his first, highly acclaimed
novels Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981) were
reflections on the devastation of the Nigerian civil war which Okri himself observed
firsthand. His later novels met with equal praise: The Famished Road (1991),
which tells the story of Azaro, a spirit child, is a fascinating blend of realism and
depictions of the spirit world, and won the Booker Prize.

Ngugi wa Thiongo

Ngugi wa Thiongo is one of Africas most important and influential postcolonial

writers. He began his writing career with novels written in English, which
nevertheless revolved around postcolonial themes of the individual and the
community in Africa versus colonial powers and cultures. Wa Thiongo was
imprisoned without trial for over a year by the government for the staging of a
politically controversial play; after his release, he committed to writing works only
in his native Gikuyi and Swahili, citing language as a key tool for decolonizing the
mindset and culture of African readers and writers.

LITERARY WORKS

African literature is literature of or from Africa and includes oral

literature (or "orature", in the term coined by Ugandan scholar Pio Zirimu).[1]
As George Joseph notes in his chapter on African literature
in Understanding Contemporary Africa, whereas European views of
literature often stressed a separation of art and content, African
awareness is inclusive:
"Literature" can be the part of asian also imply an artistic use of words
for the sake of art alone. Traditionally, Africans do not radically
separate art from teaching. Rather than write or sing for beauty in
itself, African writers, taking their cue from oral literature, use beauty
to help communicate important truths and information to society.
Indeed, an object is considered beautiful because of the truths it
reveals and the communities it helps to build.[2]
Oral literature
Oral literature (or orature) may be in prose or verse. The prose is often
mythological or historical and can include tales of the trickster character.
Storytellers in Africa sometimes use call-and-response techniques to tell
their stories. Poetry, often sung, includes: narrative epic, occupational
verse, ritual verse, praise poems of rulers and other prominent people.
Praise singers, bards sometimes known as "griots", tell their stories with
music.[3] Also recited, often sung, are love songs, work songs, children's
songs, along with epigrams, proverbs and riddles. A revised edition of
Ruth Finnegan's classic book Oral Literature in Africa was released by the
Cambridge-based Open Book Publishers in September 2012. [4]
Precolonial literature
Examples of pre-colonial African literature are numerous. Oral literature of
west Africa includes the "Epic of Sundiata" composed in medieval Mali,
and the older "Epic of Dinga" from the old Ghana Empire. In Ethiopia,
there is a substantial literature written in Ge'ez going back at least to the
fourth century AD; the best-known work in this tradition is the Kebra
Negast, or "Book of Kings." One popular form of traditional African folktale
is the "trickster" story, in which a small animal uses its wits to survive
encounters with larger creatures. Examples of animal tricksters
include Anansi, a spider in the folklore of the Ashanti people
of Ghana; Ijp, a tortoise in Yoruba folklore of Nigeria; and Sungura,
a hare found in central and East African folklore.[5] Other works in written
form are abundant, namely in north Africa, the Sahel regions of west
Africa and on the Swahili coast. From Timbuktu alone, there are an
estimated 300,000 or more manuscripts tucked away in various libraries
and private collections,[6] mostly written in Arabic but some in the native
languages (namely Fula and Songhai).[7] Many were written at the
famous University of Timbuktu. The material covers a wide array of
topics, including astronomy, poetry, law, history, faith, politics, and
philosophy.[8] Swahili literature similarly, draws inspiration from Islamic
teachings but developed under indigenous circumstances. One of the
most renowned and earliest pieces of Swahili literature being Utendi wa
Tambuka or "The Story of Tambuka".
In Islamic times, North Africans such as ibn Khaldun attained great
distinction within Arabic literature. Medieval north Africa boasted
universities such as those of Fes and Cairo, with copious amounts of
literature to supplement them.
Colonial African literature
The African Colonial works best known in the West from the period of
colonization and the slave trade are primarily slave narratives, such
as Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano (1789).
In the colonial period, Africans exposed to Western languages began to
write in those tongues. In 1911, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford (also
known as Ekra-Agiman) of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) published what is
probably the first African novel written in English, Ethiopia Unbound:
Studies in Race Emancipation.[9]Although the work moves between fiction
and political advocacy, its publication and positive reviews in the Western
press mark a watershed moment in African literature.
During this period, African plays written in English began to
emerge. Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo of South Africa published the first
English-language African play, The Girl Who Killed to Save: Nongqawuse
the Liberator in 1935. In 1962, Ngg wa Thiong'o of Kenya wrote the first
East African drama, The Black Hermit, a cautionary tale about "tribalism"
(discrimination between African tribes).
Among the first pieces of African literature to receive significant
worldwide critical acclaim was Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe.
Published in 1958, late in the colonial era, Things Fall Apart analyzed the
effect of colonialism on traditional African society.[10]
African literature in the late colonial period (between the end of World
War I and independence) increasingly showed themes of liberation,
independence, and (among Africans in French-controlled
territories) ngritude. One of the leaders of the ngritude movement, the
poet and eventual President of Senegal, Lopold Sdar Senghor,
published in 1948 the first anthology of French-language poetry written
by Africans, Anthologie de la nouvelle posie ngre et malgache de
langue franaise (Anthology of the New Black and Malagasy Poetry in the
French Language), featuring a preface by the
French existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre.[11]
For many writers this emphasis was not restricted to their publishing.
Many, indeed, suffered deeply and directly: censured for casting aside his
artistic responsibilities in order to participate actively in
warfare, Christopher Okigbo was killed in battle for Biafra against the
Nigerian movement of the 1960s' civil war; Mongane Wally Serote was
detained under South Africa's Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967 between 1969
and 1970, and subsequently released without ever having stood trial;
in London in 1970, his countryman Arthur Norje committed
suicide; Malawi's Jack Mapanje was incarcerated with neither charge nor
trial because of an off-hand remark at a university pub; and, in 1995, Ken
Saro-Wiwa was hanged by the Nigerian junta.
Postcolonial African literature
With liberation and increased literacy since most African nations gained
their independence in the 1950s and 1960s, African literature has grown
dramatically in quantity and in recognition, with numerous African works
appearing in Western academic curricula and on "best of" lists compiled
at the end of the 19th century. African writers in this period wrote both in
Western languages (notably English, French, and Portuguese) and in
traditional African languages such as Hausa.
Ali A. Mazrui and others mention seven conflicts as themes: the clash
between Africa's past and present, between tradition and modernity,
between indigenous and foreign, between individualism and community,
between socialism and capitalism, between development and self-reliance
and between Africanity and humanity.[12]Other themes in this period
include social problems such as corruption, the economic disparities in
newly independent countries, and the rights and roles of women. Female
writers are today far better represented in published African literature
than they were prior to independence.
In 1986, Wole Soyinka became the first post-independence African writer
to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Previously, Algerian-born Albert
Camus had been awarded the 1957 prize.