Literary Background
African Literature
Despite the ignorance of most so called "literati" to the domain of African literature, African literature in fact is one of the main currents of world literature, stretching continuously and directly back to ancient history. Achebe did not "invent" African Literature, because he himself was inundated with it as an African. He simply made more people aware of it.
The Beginnings of African Literature
The first African literature
is circa 2300-2100, when ancient Egyptians begin using burial texts to
accompany their dead. These include the first written accounts of creation
- the Memphite Declaration of Deities. Not only that, but 'papyrus',
from which we originate our word for paper, was invented by the Egyptians,
and writing flourished. In contrast, Sub-Saharan Africa feature a vibrant
and varied oral culture. To take into account written literary culture
without considering literary culture is definitely a mistake, because they
two interplay heavily with each other. African oral arts are "art's for
life's sake" (Mukere) not European "art's for art's sake", and so may be
considered foreign and strange by European readers. However, they provide
useful knowledge, historical knowledge, ethical wisdom, and creative stimuli
in a direct fashion. Oral culture takes many forms: proverbs and riddles,
epic narratives, oration and personal testimony, praise poetry and songs,
chants and rituals, stories, legends and folk tales. This is present in
the many proverbs told in Things Fall Apart, and the rich cultural
emphasis of that book also is typically African.
The earliest written Sub-Saharan
Literature (1520) is heavily influenced by Islamic literature. The earliest
example of this is the anonymous history of the city-state of Kilwa Kisiwani.
The first African history, History of the Sudan, is written by Abd
al-Rahman al-Sadi in Arabic style. Traveling performers, called griots,
kept the oral tradition alive, especially the legends of the Empire of
Mali. In 1728 the earliest written Swahili work, Utendi wa Tambuka
borrows
heavily from Muslim tradition. However, there are little to no Islamic
presence in Things Fall Apart.
The Period of Colonization
With the period of Colonization,
African oral traditions and written works came under a serious outside
threat. Europeans,
justifying themselves with the Christian ethics, tried to destroy the "pagan"
and "primitive" culture of the Africans,
to make them more pliable slaves. However, African
Literature survived this concerted attack. In 1789, The
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustava Vassa
was the first slave narrative to be published.
Kidnapped from Nigeria, this Ibo man wrote his autobiography in Great Britain
in English, and like Achebe used his narrative as a platform to attack
the injustices of slavery and cultural destruction. Back in Africa, Swahili
poetry threw off the dominating influence of Islam and reverted back to
native Bantu forms. One exemplar of this was Utendi wa Inkishafi (Soul's
Awakening), a poem detailing the vanity of earthly life. The Europeans,
by bringing journalism and government schools to Africa, helped further
the development of literature. Local newspapers abounded, and often they
featured sections of local African poetry and short stories. While originally
these fell close to the European form, slowly they broke away and became
more and more African in nature. One of these writers was Oliver Schreiner,
whose novel Story of an African Farm (1883)
is considered the first African classic analysis
of racial and sexual issues. Other notable writers, such as Samuel Mqhayi
and Thomas Mofolo begin portraying Africans as complex and human characters.
Achebe was highly influenced by these writers in their human portrayal
of both sides of colonization.
Emerging from Paris in the
1920s and 1930s, the negritude movement established itself as one
of the premiere literary movements of its time. It was a French-speaking
African search for identity, which ofcourse took them back to their roots
in Africa. Africa was made into a metaphorical antipode to Europe, a golden
age utopia, and was often represented allegorically as a woman. In a 1967
interview, Cesaire explained: "We lived in an atmosphere of rejection,
and we developed an inferiority complex." The desire to establish an identity
begins with "a concrete consciousness of what we are--…that we are black
. . .
and have a history. . . [that] there have been
beautiful and important black civilizations…that its values were
values that could still make an important contribution to the world." Léopold
Sédar Senghor, one of the prime thinkers of this movement, eventually
became president of the country of Senegal, creating a tradition
of African writers becoming active political figures.
Achebe was doubtless familiar with the negritude movement, although
he preferred to less surrealistic and more realistic writing.
In 1948, African literature came to the forefront
of the world stage with Alan Paton's publishing of Cry the Beloved Country.
However,
this book was a somewhat paternalistic and sentimental portrayal of Africa.
Another African writer, Fraz Fanon, also a psychiatrist, becomes famous
in 1967 through a powerful analysis of racism from the African viewpoint
- Black Skin, White
Masks. Camara Laye explored the deep psychological ramification of
being African in his masterpiece, The Dark Child (1953), and African
satire is popularized by Mongo Beti and Ferdinand Oyono. Respected African
literary critic Kofi Awoonor systematically collects and translates into
English much of African oral culture and art forms, preserving native African
culture.
Chinua Achebe then presents
this native African culture in his stunning work, Things Fall Apart.
This is probably the most read work of African Literature ever written,
and provides a level of deep cultural detail rarely found in European literature.
Achebe's psychological insight combined with his stark realism make his
novel a classic.
Post-Achebe African Literature
Achebe simply opened the door for many other African literati to attain international recognition. East Africans produce important autobiographical works, such as Kenyans Josiah Kariuki’s Mau Mau Detainee (1963), and R. Mugo Gatheru’s Child of Two Worlds (1964). African women begin to let their voice be heard. Writers such as Flora Nwapa give the feminine African perspective on colonization and other African issues. Wole Soyinka writes her satire of the conflict between modern Nigeria and its traditional culture in her book The Interpreters (1965). A prolific writer, she later produces famous plays such as Death and The King's Horseman. Later, in 1986, she is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. African Literature gains more and more momentum, and Professor James Ngugi even calls for the abolition of the English Department in the University of Nairobi, to be replaced by a Department of African Literature and Languages. African writers J. M. Coetzee, in his Life and Times of Michael K., written in both Afrikaans and English for his South African audience, confronts in literature the oppressive regime of apartheid. Chinua Achebe helps reunite African Literature as a whole by publishing in 1985 African Short Stories, a collection of African short stories from all over the continent. Another African writer, Naguib Mahfouz, wins the Nobel Prize in literature in 1988. In 1990 African poetry experiences a vital comeback through the work I is a Long-Memoried Woman by Frances Anne Soloman. African Literature is only gaining momentum as time marches onwards.