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Let There Be Light: the Voices of West African Novels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

J. Barry Riddella
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Extract

The novels of an area tell a tale: Obi Okonkwo's career as a civil servant in Lagos, Kamara's political life in Sierra Leone, and Baako's return to a changed Ghana. But they also say more in that they depict much of the reality of the countries and their peoples, their ideas and goals, and the historical and contemporary forces which influence them. In this way, therefore, the literature contains both fictive and factual essences.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1990 , pp. 473 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 See Achebe, Chinua, No Longer at East (London, 1960),Google ScholarConton, William, The African (London, 1960),Google Scholar and Armah, Ayi Kwei, Fragments (New York, 1969), respectively.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Amuta, Chidi, The Theory of African Literature: implications for practical criticism (London and New York, 1989),Google Scholar and Chinweizu, , Voicesfrom Twentieth-Century Africa: griots and towncriers (London and Boston, 1988).Google Scholar

3 Killam, G. D., Africa in English Fiction, 1874–1939 (Ibadan, 1968).Google Scholar

4 Margaret Laurence is certainly one ‘outsider’ who seems to have understood the ferment of Africa and its people, as may be seen from This Side Jordan. Two other of the region's novels may be put aside for such reasons: Jo Anne Bennett employs the journey on Downfall People into the exotic scene of northern Ghana as a vehicle for her tale, and Dave Godfrey uses the new Ghanaian setting at independence to add complexity to The New Ancestors.

5 Meyers, Jeffrey, Fiction and the Colonial Experience (Ipswich, 1973 edn.), p. 98.Google Scholar

6 See, for example, Pocock, D. C. D., ‘Introduction: imaginative literature and the geographer’, in Pocock, (ed.), Humanistic Geography and Literature (London, 1981),Google Scholar and ‘Geography and Literature’, in Progress in Human Geography (London), 12, 1988, pp. 87–102;Google Scholar also Salter, C. L. and Lloyd, W. L., ‘Landscape in Literature’, Association of American Geographers, Resource Paper for College Geography, Washington, D.C., 1977.Google Scholar

7 Mallory, W. F. and Simpson-Housley, Paul (eds.), Geography and Literature. a meeting of the disciplines (Syracuse, 1987).Google Scholar

8 Osborne, B. S., ‘Fact, Symbol, and Message: three approaches to literary landscapes’, in Canadian Geographer (Montreal), 32, 1988, pp. 267–9.Google Scholar

9 It should be acknowledged that a text can also be interpreted in terms of its silences – see Hamilton, C. A., ‘Ideology and Oral Traditions: listening to the voices “from below”’, in History in Africa (Madison), 14, 1978, pp. 67–86.Google Scholar

10 Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter, Burden of Empire: an appraisal of western colonialism in Africa south of the Sahara (New York, 1967),Google Scholar and Rodney, Walter, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London and Dar Cs Salaam, 1972).Google Scholar

11 Cary should be seen as continuing the tradition of British colonial novelists such as Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forester, and Joseph Conrad. For more about Cary, see Hoffman, Charles G., Joyce Cary: the comedy of freedom (Pittsburgh, 1964);Google ScholarMahood, M. M., Joyce Gary's Africa (London, 1964);Google ScholarFoster, Malcolm, Joyce Cary: a biography (Boston, 1968);Google ScholarEcheruo, M. J. C., Joyce Gary and the Novel of Africa (New York, 1973);Google Scholar Killam, op. cit.; Roscoe, A. A., Mother is Gold: a study in West African literature (Cambridge, 1971); and Meyers, op. cit.Google Scholar

12 See Carroll, David, Chinua Achebe (London and New York, 1980);Google ScholarInnes, C. L. and Lindford, Bernth (ed.), Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe (Washington, D.C., 1978);Google ScholarKillam, G. D., The Novels of Chinua Achebe (New York, 1969);Google ScholarRavenscroft, Arthur, Chinua Achebe (London, 1969);Google Scholar Roscoe, op. cit.; and Wren, Robert M., Achebe's World: the historical and cultural context of the novels of Chinua Achebe (Washington, D.C., 1980).Google Scholar

13 Similar adoration of traditional African society can be found in Achebe's other early novels, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, and A Man of the People.

14 Oman, Peter T., Kwame Nkrumah: the anatomy of an African dictatorship (Accra and New York, 1970), p. 99.Google Scholar

15 Readers must not forget the dire economic circumstances facing the countries of sub-Saharan Africa; see Riddell, J. Barry, ‘Internal and External Forces Acting Upon Disparities in Sierra Leone’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 23, 3, 09 1985, pp. 389–406.Google Scholar

16 McClusky, John, ‘The City as a Force: three novels by Cyprian Ekwensi’, in Journal of Black Studies (Los Angeles), 7, 1976, pp. 211–24.Google Scholar

17 Although négritude is treated as a common message of the novels, it is recognised that not all writers support such a philosophical stance. As well, it should be noted that French direct rule and British indirect rule had quite distinct impacts upon local cultures of the region.

18 A Meyers writes in op. cit. p. 88 of Mister Johnson: ‘Semi-literate and half-educated, uprooted from his own culture, he can only imitate but not absorb western culture.’

19 There has been much debate about the issue of African novels being written in the tongues of the coloniser — in English and French especially, but also Portuguese, German, Spanish, and Italian — see Nkosi, op. cit. pp. 1–9 and Roscoe, op. cit. pp. 5–9 for example. However, this is likely a matter of expediency, for there are thousands of distinct African languages and no one of them would provide a sufficiently large enough reading audience for the viability of the literature.

20 Cf. Amuta, op. cit.

21 Nkosi, Lewis, Tasks and Masks: themes and styles of African literature (London, 1982), preface.Google Scholar

22 Awuyah, C. K., ‘The Concept of National Literature: the case of Ghana’,Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies,Ottawa,1989.Google Scholar

23 Chinweizu, , Decolonising the African Mind (Lagos, 1987),Google Scholar and Chinweizu, , Jemie, Onwuchekwa, and Madubuike, Ihechukwu, Toward the Decolonization of African Literature: African fiction and poetry and their critics (London, 1985 edn.)Google Scholar

24 Cf. George H. T. Kimble's comment, ‘The darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it’, quoted by Gunter, John, Inside Africa (London, 1955), p. xii.Google Scholar