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Literature of Marginal పీపుల్ గుర్రం సీతారాములు
Literature is basically secondary because it is reactionary, Foucault’s Function of the literature suggests that we stop treating literature as a sacralized object that stands separate from above the politics of culture, and that instead we treat literature as a part of a cultural/political field. Literature then becomes available as a tool for examining cultural and political processes. This is unfortunate that now a days in modern domain some reactionary literature is being Marginalized. We can find how power operates through hegemony to decide central and Marginal. It has several dimensions one can experience the humiliation in the name of haves and have-nots, one can experience in the name of Gender , and in the name of Racial discrimination. For instance In Kenya the native peoples were driven to revolt by segregation, exploitation and theft their lands. The colonizers were reluctant to give equal pay for equal work. They are Marginalized in the name of skill “A skilled minor is one who has a white face” according to Peter Abrahams in “Return to Goli.” When a white miner does a drilling job, it becomes a skilled job. When a black miner does it, it is unskilled”. Dominated western societies saying that gave civilization to the African countries “To civilize the savages” such words used by the colonizer to justify their invasion of the so called Dark Continent. Rene Maran attacked in the preface of Batouala: “Civilization, civilization, pride of Europeans and their slaughters- house of innocence, Rabindranath Tagore the Indian poet once, in Tokyo told what you are! You build your Kingdome on corpse. Whatever you wish whatever you wish. In Indian literary history and theory as well as the teaching of Indian literature, are spectacularly silent about Dalith literature. Yet Dalith cultural and
Critical production makes a significant critical intervention in the thinking and writing about Indian society, history culture and literature Though Dalith literature if powerful., but it is being marginalized by the Dominant upper caste Hindu fundamentalists.
Arjun Dangle, the Marathi Dalith writer, editor, and activist, says, ‘Dalith literature is marked by revolt and negativism, since it is closely associated with the hopes for freedom by a group of people who as untouchables are victims of social, economic and cultural inequality’ Dangle traces the origin of dalith literature to Ambedkar ‘His revolutionary ideas stirred into action all the Daliths of Maharastra and gave them a new self- respect. Dalith literature is nothing but the literary expression of this awareness
Peoples those who are Lesbians, gays Homosexuals Transsexuals are thrown a way from mainstream literary discourse. In this paper I would like elaborate the literature of the Marginalized people with reference to Afro American literature.
A person may become marginal because of change demographic, caste, religion, and regional patterns, even with in his/her own caste he/ she may be marginal because of consideration of the sub caste for their consideration it may seem, yet the person may be marginal but being a member of religious majority he may be centered even when we move from one locality to another locality in the same place on the same day or even hour the margin and center identities or categories keep shifting. Making it difficult for any one to conclude if these identities draw the barer draws them
The question of Margin or Marginal, Marginalized/ Marginalization is related to identity to self. Identity and self and individual have been major concerns of individualistic societies like the west and not India where inhalation or surrender of the self has been the ideal to achieve. Now a days Marginality become Universal phenomena one can become marginalize in the name of the Caste, region religion, or Gender. Seldom can we find these voices discussed any ware. The last twenty years has witnessed an explosive growth of interest in African literature as well as Marginal literature. There has been an outpouring of anthologies, papers and book length studies. This kind of the African Literature continuous to grow, and there is every reason to believe that the voice of the African writers will be heard and studied for a long time to come, as artist social analysts and literary critic. But with in the Afro American literature Woman writers are being marginalized.
In this way the women writers of Africa are the other voices, the unheard voice rarely discussed and seldom accorded space or time for African women writers on the continent has come a tradition, implicit rather than formally stated. Bell hooks a renowned Afro American Feminist Ideologue and a distinguished professor of English at city College University of New York. In her book “Feminist Theory from Margin to center” criticized western domination in with in the women liberation movement in United States. She said “There are white women who had never considered resisting male domination until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should “ Her awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance, she grew up in Southern black Father dominated, working class house hold she experienced (her mother, sister and her brother) various dangers of patriarchal tyranny and it made her angry and raised her question the politics of male domination enabled her resist sexist socialization.
She says” how has the women been depicted in literature? This is the crucial question that needs our attention. Since literature reflects the socio cultural realities, the depiction of the women in literature has been according to the social status enjoyed by the women, but the status of the women has not been the same at all times and all societies there fore it is difficult to make organized generalized statements which would be universally valid. Yet by and large women all over the world have enjoyed a secondary status Visa-a vis men.” The tremendous blossoming of the women writers in Africa after the 1960’s has led to a vigorous questioning of Eurocentric masculinist world view. The literary fashion of ignoring women writers has been challenged by voices which were virtually unheard till a few decades ago.” She provoked discussion between among the blocks and white women about the issue of racism and American feminism. It represented one of few efforts at black feminist analysis; and it was accessible to people outside of academics.
To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside of the main body. It explores, that the masses of the poor and minority women are marginal to feminist activism and theory building, her analysis of how racial sexual and class and class oppression are inextricably intermingled proves to be powerfully illuminating. She provides comprehensive well documented critique of contemporary American feminism. Most of issues considered to be to a feminist agenda are addressed female sexual oppression.
She also explodes why black women and other women of color remained alienated from the feminist movement. The reason include a general unfamiliarity with the language and traditions of feminism, the media misrepresentation of feminists the portrayal of all men as enemies and attacks on mother hood and family by some feminists as well as recognition of white women racism. Literature is closely related to society. It has to reflect the Social reality it not only reflect but also shapes the complex ways in which men and women organized themselves, their inter personal relationships and their perceptions of the socio cultural reality . The attitude of the male author towards men and women depicted by him and in his works and the attitude of the characters male and female to one another highlights the gender relationships as well as the authors’ attitude towards these relationships. Literature thus offers the best possibility of expressing the politics of gender. She suggest that how to come up with racial discrimination She says” I have been working to change the way I speak and write, to incorporate in the manner of telling a sense of place , of not just who I am in the present but where I am coming from, the multiple voices with me. I have confronted silence, inarticulateness. When I say then, that these words emerge from suffering, I refer to that personal struggle to name the location from which I came to voice- that space of my theorizing”
Chinua Achebe’s “Things fall Apart “ is the first title in Heinemann’s African writers series at the same time Flora N wapa’s Efru the first novel in the series by a women .
Heinemann’ was the major English publisher of African literature between 1958 and 1986. Flora N wapa was the first Female authored work in the series .The next work in the series by a women “Idu “ also by N wapa, did not appear until 1970, thirty male authored texts later. What are the factors to which the relativity small number of women authors can be attributed? Male bias in education is clearly one such factor.
Colonial policies in Africa favored the education of boys over girls and operated to cut women off from the written world. The same male bias is evident in education in postcolonial Nigeria. The number of women writing in Africa has always been rather small when compared with their male counter parts. The contributions of women to African literature have not been limited to the modern period. Women have always played considerable role, as storytellers and performers, in the oral traditions. The women writers of Africa are the other voices, the unheard voice rarely discussed and seldom accorded space or time for African women writers on the continent has come a tradition, implicit rather than formally stated. The situation in South Africa is similar. It is therefore great importance that black Africans and women and other marginalized people become involved in every spear of South African life. This must especially get involved in African literature. Until recently black African writers were ignored and pushed aside to the periphery.
Jerry Gaffio Wattes In his book “Ameri Baraka “explains about the social marginality He says “A fundamental assumption of this study is that traditional afro American intellectuals have as one of their priorities the re production of themselves as intellectuals. That is black intellectuals want to write and black painters want to paint whatever provides the time and space to write to paint becomes a priority for intellectuals. One of the greatest tensions of twentieth century traditional afro American intellectual life is that the attempts of black intellectuals to flourish were severely hindered by the viciousness of white American racism. For most of the twentieth century black American intellectuals did not have reads access grants fellowships research positions at elite universities or even membership on the editorial boards of the prominent American intellectual journals. The condition of being denied access to the mainstream (i.e. White controlled) intellectuals resources and critical audiences while belonging to an ethnic group that did not have the resources and or educational attainment sufficient to sustain serious traditional intellectual activity placed traditional black intellectuals in unique voice For most of the black intellectuals have been socially marginalized to the white and black communities”.
Ameri Baraka another marginalized voice in afro American writers. He was a poet, play Wright, novelist, fiction writer essayist jazz critic, political reader social activist and Marxist. Jerry Gafio Watts a leading critic of afro American literature in his book “ Amiri Baraka” Of the Afro American artists/ intellectuals who came to prominence during the 1960’s no single figure was more politically active than Le Roi Jones/ Amiri Baraka . More than any other American writer white or black Baraka is the committed artist par excellence from the mid 1960’s and through the mid 1970’s Baraka devoted his artistic skills to the creation of art particularly poetry and drama that affirmed the new assertive militancy of black people. We cannot separate Baraka name when we are discussing about the Black Nationalist movement. Ameri Baraka who was known as LeRoi Jones was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of middle class parents. He demonstrated unusual oratorical skills as a child when he memorized and recited lengthy speeches for family gatherings. He became a gifted student who graduated two years early from high school. Although he received a two year scholarship in 1951 from Rutgers University, He apparently felt an outsider there and transferred to Harvard University. He published his first book of poetry, preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. In the year he followed, he wrote numerous plays, poems, and short stories, along with commentaries on literature, music and society. Most of his writing focused on white racism on black liberation during these decades, Jones moved from Greenwich Village to Harlem, and then to New York There his political outlook changed from liberalism to Black Nationalism, then to Marxism- Leninism, and later to socialism. Then he joined the Kawadia branch of the Islamic faith and changed his name Imamu Ameri Baraka.
Throughout these changes he remained a radical spokesman for the black community. Jones arrived at Howard University in Washington, D. C after one year He was shocked particularly by the discrimination among the University students. Lighter-skinned blacks refused to associate with darker- skinned blacks. The students who had come from urban areas like Philadelphia or New York ridiculed those who had come from rural areas in the South. When Jones become a Muslim he discarded his “slave name “ from a traditional African or Islamic one LeRoi Jones became Imamu Ameri Baraka, Which one Biographer has interpreted as meaning spiritual leader Blessed Prince(Hudson p. 34) Baraka Political orientation had changed. He had moved from hollow rhetoric to real politics. Later he realized the limitations of organizing under the banner of Black Nationalism by 1974. His adoption of a Marxist- Leninist Political Philosophy expressed his desire to elevate economics and class to a level equal to that of race. He was convinced that capitalism played a large part in the under development of black Americans and that Nationalism contained serious short comings as a liberation program because it failed to adequately address economic issues.
“The black nationalist movement of the late1960’s and early 1970’s temporarily succeeded in establishing Black Nationalism as a hegemonic ideology in the Afro American intelligentsia. For a brief moment, afro-American intellectuals who were not black nationalists were scrutinized and even labeled ethnically traitorous. Writing in 1960 as a doyen of Black Nationalist movement in afro American arts and letters, Baraka displayed his intolerance of non black intellectuals and artists
The Negro artist who is not a nationalist at this late is white artist, even without knowing it. He is creating death snacks, for and out dead stuff. What he does will not matter because it is in the shadow, connected with the shadow and will die when the shadow dies. The assassination of Malcolm X on February 21 1965, Represented a critical turning point in the life of LeRoi Jones. After the death of Malcolm X, Jones left his wife and children in Greenwich Village in order to join the black Revolution. Further in his identity transformation, Jones married the black actress and dancer Sylvia Robinson of Newark, New Jersey. Symbolizing the depth of Jones’s transformation, the man who buried Malcolm X renamed LeRoi Jones Ameer Barakat, “blessed prince” in Arabic.
Like many other black revolutionaries of that era, Baraka attempted to follow the path out lined by Malcolm X: the most popular themes were those of self determination, self respect, and self defense.
Langston Hughes was perhaps the most wide ranging and persistent black American writer in the twentieth century James Langston Hughes was born to Carrie Langston Hughes and James Nathanial Hughes on February 1 1902 in Joplin. His father moved to Kansas in search of grater racial and financial freedom. “ In 1907 Langston mother took him with her library in Topeka, where he fell in love with books, in part because he was impressed that the library did not have to pay rent .Though the double perspective of boy and man, he recalled: Even before I was six books began to happen to me, so that after a while there came a time when I believed in books more than in people which, of course, was wrong” (Hughes TBS 26) Hughes satirically pictured the deep pathos and hypocrisy in American society Once a black women was seduced by he under taker who enjoyed her favors, she became pregnant but wasn’t sure who was the father. When doctor performed an abortion, the girl died .The undertaker took charge of her body, and the minister preached at her funeral that is also responsible for her death. Hughes re worked the tale into an interracial story that appeared in “The Ways of the white Folks (1934).
“At school, too he was sometimes set apart from other black students He began school in 1908 in Topeka, where he had been temporarily re united with his mother. Carrie successfully appealed to the school board to allow Langston to attend the Harrison Street School, which was more convenient to her residence but which otherwise had only white pupils rather than distant school for Negro children located on the other side of the railroad tracks. However, the boy was harassed by his teacher, who seated him in a black corner, and by some of his classmates, although others befriended him. In one specific incident that Langston long remembered, his teacher confiscated some licorice from one of his classmates. She warned him against eating the black candies: They’ll make you black like Langston. You don’t want to be black, do you?” (Life of Langston Hughes 1:32) In the same school the teacher forced all the black children to sit together in a separate row, Langston made up cards that said JIM CROW ROW and placed them on each desk in the row. When the teacher moved to reprimand him, he ran out of the classroom, yelling that his teacher had a Jim Crow row .Though Hughes was expelled, he was allowed to return to school after protests by several black parents. It indicates even Blacks were not allowed to sit with White students this incident made Langston to start Thinking. He came to know Race plays the vital role in the life.
Steven Carl Tracy in his Book on Langston Hughes “ A historical guide to Langston Hughes “ says “ The Blues I’m Playing “, one of the Hughes’s most carefully developed fictions, express a natural tension between classical and innovative art. The pianist plays her bluesy sound in folk time, but the Persian vases exist in the patron’s drawing groom within elegantly modern space. An interface between history and fiction occurred on October 29 1929, the day the New York stock exchange crashed, ending so many opportunities for publication and artistic performance during the New Negro Movement.
Long stone Hughes one of his early poems described “The time of Martyrdom”
The white man killed my father
My father was proud
The white man raped my mother
My mother was beautiful
The white man bent my brother under the High way sun
My brother was strong
The white man turned toward me
His hands red with black blood
And in the voice of a master:
Hey boy! bring me whisky, a napkin, and some water!
In those days
When civilization kicked us in the face
When holy water slapped our cringing brows
The vultures built in the shadow of their
Bibliography:
1. Baraka, Imam Ameri. The autobiography of LeRoi Jones. New York Freundlich Books .1984.
2. Baraka, Imamu Ameri. LeRoi Jones Reader William J Harries New York Thunder’s mouth press, 1991.
3. Cook, Mercer and Stephen E. Henderson. The militant Black Writer in Africa and the United states, Madison: Wisconsin Press, 1967.
4 Ekim 2009 Pazar
Community and Personal Identity in the works of African writers
Community and Personal Identity in the works of African writers
With Special reference to, Buchi Emechita and Flora N wapa.
The last twenty years has witnessed an explosive growth of interest in African literature.
There has been an outpouring of anthologies, papers and book length studies. This kind of the African Literature continuous to grow, and there is every reason to believe that the voice of the African writers will be heard and studied for a long time to come, as artist social analysts and literary critic. In this paper I want to write Community and personal identity in the works of African writers with special reference to Buchi Emechita and Flora N wapa .
The women writers of Africa are the other voices, the unheard voice rarely discussed and seldom accorded space or time for African women writers on the continent has come a tradition, implicit rather than formally stated. Bell hooks a renowned Afro American Feminist Ideologue and a distinguished profession of English at city College University of New York. In her book “Feminist Theory from Margin to center” criticized western domination in with in the women liberation movement in United States.
She said “There are white women who had never cosider resisting male domination until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should “
Her awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance, she grew up in Southern black Father dominated, working class house hold she experienced (her mother, sister and her brother) various dangers of patriarchal tyranny and it made her angry and raised her question the politics of male domination enabled her resist sexist socialization.
Privileged, and middle and upper class white women need the theory to inform than that they were oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression.
The fact that black women does not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of Feminism (many of black women does not know or use the term). Nor the fact that they have not had access to the machinery of power that they would allow to share their analysis or theories about gender with the American public.
Bell Hooks says “the understanding I had by age thirteen of patriarchal politics created in me expectations the feminist movement that were quite different from those of young middle class white women. When I entered my first women studies class at Stanford University in early 1970’s white women were reveling in the joy of being together to them it was an important momentous occasion. I had not known a life where women had not known white women who were ignorant of the impact of race and class on their social status and consciousness.
I did not feel sympathetic to while peers who maintained that I could not expect them to have knowledge of or understand the life experience of Black women.
“When I participated in feminist groups, I found that white women adopted a condescending attitude to wards me and other non-white participates. White women did see equals; they did not treat us equals. But they expected and provide First hand accounts of black experience they felt it way their role to decide if these experiences were authentic”.
Chinua Achebe,s “Things fall Apart “ is the first title in Heinemann’s African writers series at the same time Flora N wapa’s Efru the first novel in the series by a women .
Heinemann’ was the major English publisher of African literature between 1958 and 1986. Flora N wapa was the first Female authored work in the series .The next work in the series by a women “Idu “ also by N wapa, did not appear until 1970, thirty male authored texts later. What are the factors to which the relativity small number of women authors can be attributed?
Male bias in education is clearly one such factor. Colonial policies in Africa favored the education of boys over girls and operated to cut women off from the written world. The same male bias is evident in education in postcolonial Nigeria. The number of women writing in Africa has always been rather small when compared with their male counter parts. The contributions of women to African literature have not been limited to the modern period. Women have always played considerable role, as storytellers and performers, in the oral traditions. The traditions always had significant place for the voice of the women singing or reciting tales from her own perspective as wife, mother and housekeepers. Flora N wapa’s two novels (Efru, Idue ) are the most imaginative and ambitious attempts in Nigeria and Africa as a whole to integrate oral forms with the literate design of the novel.
Flora N wapa was Africa’s first published female novelist. She was born in Ugwuta, Nigeria in 1913 in to wealthy family, the first daughter of six children, she educated in Nigeria finished her primary and secondary school in Ugwuta., Elelenwa and Lagos . She later studied English, History, and Geography, at University of Edinburgh where she obtained a diploma in education. Following her return from Scotland, she became an education officer in Calabar in 1958 and then proceeded to teach at Queen’s school Enugu in 1959. From 1962 to 1967 she held the position of assistant registrar at the University of Lagos, and it was during this period of her life her literary carrier was launched with the publication of her first novel Efru by Heinemann in 1966.
Flora N wapa’s personal life has therefore involved a certain degree of public service that has invite by exposed her to the works of public institution in contemporary Nigeria.
The life style in Nwapa’s cities is dominated by the continuous round of vicious sexual intrigues, tribal conflict and civil war, her choice of genre, are interwoven with her most fundamental perspectives. Her perception of contemporary in urban Nigeria demands a short story format, one that does not depend to any significant degree on the kind of oral modes that are so integral to much of Adoo’s Short fiction. It is a form at which reflects the largely literate, western middle class with in which her women move. In N wapa’s short story seems especially appropriate for brief even deliberately unfinished glimpses of urban life. The N wapa novel is a typical of the kind of African novel that resists purely western oriented approaches to the genre.
It has been a truism for some time now that the African novel is a western import, differing from the drama and the short story in that the latter have partly developed from ritual folk drama and the oral tale respectively. N wapa novels depend on a narrative form rooted in the oral modes of every day village life and in turn those oral forms are intrinsic to ever y details of women’s life. Unfortunately some writers in African writings have been taken the issues of social realism, the study of the novel from the west to Africa.
What may be socially unrealistic or romantic for the west reader is not necessarily so far the Yoruba reader of Amos Tutuola’s fiction. Similarly, the issues of individualism that so often dominate western society and literature are not always as crucial in novels by some African, The cultural destination that are involved here were summed up in 1938 by a young anthropologist, Jomo Kenyatta.
“If it is true that the European system of education aims at individuality, is it then to be wondered at that Europeans educated in this way have some difficulty in finding the right place for the original tribal relationships of the Africans? We may some up by saying that to the Europeans “individuality is the ideal of life” to the Africans the ideal is the relations with, and behavior to other people. No doubt education philosophy can make a higher synthesis in which these two grate truths are one, but the fact remains that while the Europeans place the emphasis on one side the Africans place it on the other “
The question which Kenyatta both rises and answers has immediate significance for the study of the novel in Africa. Give those organic tribal relationships which notes, how useful is it to discuss those African novels which describe traditional, or non westernized African society by applying to such novels those criteria of individualism which are so sacrosanct in western society and literature ? this kind of question that is being raised by a few critics in west itself , among them the American James Only who has emphasized what has always been obvious but not always conceded by western students of non western fiction . We argue with Kenyatta argument because study of those aspects of African literature which originate with and describe indigenous cultural traditions or the interaction between those traditions and non African civilizations. The plays of Whole Soyinka, for example much of Chinua Achebe’s fiction and all of Tutolas novels
Flora N wapa novels deserve special attention because they have been the most neglected yet the most striking examples of African novel writing manifested by motivated and shaped by a communal rather than predominately individualistic perspective. More specially, The N wapa novel is not so much a study of the individual as it is a resentment of the relationship between individual and community.
Her tittles “Efru” and “Idu” are likely to mislead those western readers whose literary experience may encourage the expectation that Nwapa, like her European predecessors, concentrate primarily on the individual’s private perceptions. Community’s collective perceptions of “Efru” or “Idu” are as crucial in the novels Theme an struggle as her relation to the community and its tradition. N wapa’s name little therefore identifies the focal point of the community attention as much as it pinpoint the individuals personal experience with in the community .To read the Nwapa novel is to be immersed to a remarkable degree in ceaseless flow of talk .N wapa leaves no doubt about the extent to which this oral format has been consciously incorporated with in her themes and narrative design. Betty Friedan’s in her book “The Feminine Mystic” argues and she criticized the main stream white women Feminist organizations
“Feminism in the United States has never emerged from the women who or most victimized by sexiest oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority .A mark of their victimization is that they accept their lot in life without visible question without organized protest without collective anger or rage”.
The problem that has no name often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college educated middle and upper class, married white women house wives bored with leisure, with home , with children with buying products who wanted more out of life .Freidan concludes her first chapter by stating
“We can no longer ignore that voice with in women that says “I want something more than carries my husband and my children and my house”.
Friedan was a principle shaper of contemporary feminist thought significantly the one dimensional perspective on women’s reality presented in her book became a marked featured of the contemporary feminist movement White women who dominate feminist discourse today rarely question whether or not their perspective on women’s reality is true to the lived experience of women as collective group.
The two West African women writers, Flora N wapa, Buchi Emechita have made their departure to alien lands in different directions. N wapa to America and Buchi Emechita to England .The divergent cultures and ideological fuzziness of the adopted cultures have made these writers contemplate problems of social justice and humanity in her charged contexts, The feminist environment in America or England has provided them with a scope to suggest alternative based on a combination of conformity and rebelliousness, facilitating comparisons with western feminism. The insight full critical enquiry made by those African women writers to suggest a distinct identity for their women needs to be studied at a time when problems of women have become global causes
Flora N wapa’s “Efru” is set in rural Igbo land in a town calls Ugwuta, the time of the novel is the late 1940’s and early 1950.In this novel she unveils the impact of colonial occupation but it is an average of rapid social and cultural transformations, remark such as “Things are changing fast these days serve as a refrain in the novel. She recreates Igbo social, political and religious life, and portraits the effects of colonialism on Igbo society. N wapa’s fiction places considerable emphasis on mother daughter relationships. Efru as a mother less girl her mother having died when her daughter was in child hood .Efru misses her mother ‘ the time her mother died is her first point of reference when made miserable by her inability to find fulfillment in marriage or mother hood ,she ravines her life in an attempt to locate her error . Efru development is delayed until she is well. On in her adult years because she has no mother .She denied patriarchal authority by marrying a poor former without her father‘s permission and without the bride price being paid him before marriage. Reading Efru from the vantage of N wapa’s
Later novels suggest that the death of Efru’s mother is also linked to the colonial oppression of women that it is symbolic of the decline in Igbo women’s power under colonial order. Efru story tells of a daughter’s search for a lost mother. It begins where Efru is on the verge of entering adult life, having decided to leave her father’s house for the second time divorced women. African women writes tend to the marriage not only race but also gender as developmental issue, thus for example N wapa provides a critique both of colonialism and of Igbo patriarchy through her depiction of the forces that inhibit female development.
Buchi Emechita :
Buchi Emechita is one of the most acclaimed writers in present times. A mid western Igbo Nigerian by birth, Buchi Emechita has written regularly for the lost more than three decades, she has gained international recognition through her writings. Her writings have been translated in to fourteen languages to date. These include thirteen novels three autobiographical works four children’s books .and collection of photographs. Her autobiographical works include her first two novels: “In the ditch” and Second class citizen”, Head above water: An autobiography. Her novels are the Bride price The slave girl The joys of mother hood , Destination Biafa, Double Yoke Our own freedom is a book of photographs of black women and numerous essays published in anthologies scholarly journals news papers and magazines in Africa, Australia Europe and United states
Born in Logos Nigeria on 21 July 1944, in the home of her parents Jermy Nwa Budike Emechita and Alice Ogbanje OjebetaEmechita, Buchi emechita’s own life reads like a Nigerian women’s success story.
The issue if Feminism in the novels of Buchi Emechita
As I discussed before the existing trend in the literary criticism of African women writing has largely been adopt a western feminist perspective. Reading African women’s writing with in a feminist frame work is a use full strategy because it introduce Gender as a fundamental category in literary analysis enabling the critic to see representations in texts as mediated by sexual difference and the political and aesthetic assumptions that surrounded gender .In her introduction to a collection of essays titled “Emerging perspectives on Buchi Emechita ” Marie Umeh observes that the novels of Buchi Emechta reflect what Kate Millet calls Sexual politics the patriarcheal principle by which all males dominate females and elders dominate the young ( Kate millet’s Sexual politics) .
Catharine Frank an American Feminist critic in her book “Women without men “The feminist novel in African literature today where she goes to the extreme point of adopting a totally western feminist perspective on African women writers and comes to the controversial conclusion that Emechita and other women writers of Africa are more radical than their western counterparts and embrace solution of women without men or lesbianism. To quote fully: The feminist novel in Africa is not only alive and well it is in general more radical, even more militant than its western counter parts ….
All these novels (by African women writers) embrace the solution of world without men. Men is enemy the exploiter and oppressor. Given the historically established and culturally sanctioned sexism of African society, there is no possibility of a compromise or even with the enemy. Instead, women must spurn patriarchy in its entire guise and create a safe sane supportive world of women. A world of mothers and daughters sisters and friends .This of course amounts to feminist separatism... A logical outcome of this ideology lesbianism”
It is important to note this basic ambiguity in Emechita’s assumption about the needs of her women because it suggests that she does not readily fit in to the ranks of those middle class feminists in the west who are now discovering her works. Buchi Emechita’s first novel “ In the ditch” was published 1977 six years after Ogot’s The promised land, and N wapa Efru. Asked an interview about her relationship to other female writers such as Flora N wapa , Emechita described herself as their new sister she acknowledge the debt to the women who have preceded her placing herself within the literary tradition that has emerged with her writing . Buchi Emechita declared Flora N wapa as a role model. She made a point of distancing herself from western feminism finally she declared If iam now feminist than I am an African feminist”.
The Joys of Mother hood is Emechita’s best known novel but it is also a work which is clearly influenced by Emechita’s reading of other African authors. N wapa Efru “The Joys of mother hood “confirms the existence of a female tradition in fiction; we can see the similarity of the protagonist’s psychological experience. In her Joys of mother hood main protagonist Nnu Ego is like Efru. She from an Igbo village from Emechita’s home town of Ibuza. Like Efru too she loses mother at an early age which leaves her dependent on her Father’s house on the failure of each marriage and for a time she too is held in disrepute by her inability to bear children
The Joys of mother hood protagonist Nnu Ego is the daughter of the slave master Agbadi, the grate chief of Ibuza. Feminism in the novels of Buchi emechita as we have discussed the prevailing trend in the literary criticism of African women’s writing has largely influenced western feminist perspective. On this issue from her well known essay title “Feminism with a small” f” “Being a women and African born I see things through an African women’s eye chronicle the little happening in the lives of the African women I know. I did not know that by doing so I was going to be called a feminist but if iam now a feminist than an African feminist with small “f”
There are so many feminist women dogmas I believe in like education and the freedom of the individual in fact I am a feminist plus but there is no root in middle class feminist attitudes now for the black women plight. She says in the same interview and they are beginning to be proud of me although when I started they felt I was pushing into a man’s world. She is constantly pre occupied with the term feminism and expresses a recurrent sense of discomfort at being called a feminist to quote again “I did not start as a feminist I do not think I am one now most of my readers would take this to be the statement of a cowered. But it is not I thought before that I would like to be one but after my recent visit to the United states when I talked to read “Feminists” with a capital “F” I think we women of African background still have a very long way to go before we can really rub shoulders with such women . So my sister in America, I am not shunning your advanced help in fact I still think women of Africa need your contribution and at the same time we need our men”.
N wapa’s harsh realism results from her close involvement in public life in Nigeria. Her University education provided her with an opportunity to associate herself with public institution in Nigeria. Though she is basically indentified as a modern Nigerian writer, her concentration is on the lives of women in Nigeria’s modern urban life. Especially writes about communities expectations from its women as well as the women’s response to both the community and their own needs. Her women characters are extremely conscious of their bodies in relation to their roles as a wives and mothers. This body consciousness encourages them to accept their roles as inevitable and necessary.
Her novels “Efru” and “Idu” are fine example to access the nature of the narrative of domesticity .These women authoredneo works in colonial/ neo colonial situations insists on the virtues of their protagonists and on the complicated structural patterns of Igbo community .Her characters are strong individualized women who are not burdened with baggage of patriarchal societies .These women often question the general assumptions about women and their course of life without denying their Igbo identity and humanity .
Her female characters are extremely independent and have determine their course if life without denying their Igbo identity .The writers locate her ideal representation of Igbo female power and independence at the turn of the century .The actions of her female characters such as catalytic agents on the facts of other characters .Her women take center stage by exerting their industry ingenuity and resitence. Efru stands for self assertiveness, through continually circumscribed by the imperatives of male universe .She is attracted to tradition but is strong, independent and free spirited .She un conditionally accepts traditional practice such as circumcision and polygamy, beliefs and attitudes towards wife wood and infertility .
Being a black immigrant women in a white society, Emechita focuses her works on the lives and problems of Black immigrant women exclusively. Establishing her as a black British women writer .She often tries to bring about a fusion between original African culture and her adopted alien culture. She says” I keep my two worlds, my two cultures”. Emechita emphasizes the individual right to freedom of choice the slave girl is a board sexual archetype. Slavery is not simply a status or role in Emechita’s work but a condition. She ironically implies that women are their worst enemies because they lack the sprit to rebel.
Bibliography:
N wapa,Flora “ Efru” . African writer’s series: Heinemann, 1966.
N wapa,Flora “Idu “ African writers series: Heinemann , 1966.
Bell,Hooks “Feminist theory” south End press,Cambridge,1984.
Lloyd,W. Brown” Women writers in Black Africa” Golden wood press,London:1981.
Emechit,Buchi” Joys of mother hood” 1975.
Emechit,Buchi “ The Bride Price “ Allison and Busby, London,1976.
Emechit,Buchi “The second class citizen ,New York:1975.
Shyam. S Agarwalla ”The African fiction” Prestige, New Delhi.2006.
Bruci king & Kolawole ogum gbesan “A celebration of Black and African writing”
Oxford, 1975.
C L Innes “Critical perspectives on Chinua Achebe” Heinamann, 1979.
With Special reference to, Buchi Emechita and Flora N wapa.
The last twenty years has witnessed an explosive growth of interest in African literature.
There has been an outpouring of anthologies, papers and book length studies. This kind of the African Literature continuous to grow, and there is every reason to believe that the voice of the African writers will be heard and studied for a long time to come, as artist social analysts and literary critic. In this paper I want to write Community and personal identity in the works of African writers with special reference to Buchi Emechita and Flora N wapa .
The women writers of Africa are the other voices, the unheard voice rarely discussed and seldom accorded space or time for African women writers on the continent has come a tradition, implicit rather than formally stated. Bell hooks a renowned Afro American Feminist Ideologue and a distinguished profession of English at city College University of New York. In her book “Feminist Theory from Margin to center” criticized western domination in with in the women liberation movement in United States.
She said “There are white women who had never cosider resisting male domination until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should “
Her awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance, she grew up in Southern black Father dominated, working class house hold she experienced (her mother, sister and her brother) various dangers of patriarchal tyranny and it made her angry and raised her question the politics of male domination enabled her resist sexist socialization.
Privileged, and middle and upper class white women need the theory to inform than that they were oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression.
The fact that black women does not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of Feminism (many of black women does not know or use the term). Nor the fact that they have not had access to the machinery of power that they would allow to share their analysis or theories about gender with the American public.
Bell Hooks says “the understanding I had by age thirteen of patriarchal politics created in me expectations the feminist movement that were quite different from those of young middle class white women. When I entered my first women studies class at Stanford University in early 1970’s white women were reveling in the joy of being together to them it was an important momentous occasion. I had not known a life where women had not known white women who were ignorant of the impact of race and class on their social status and consciousness.
I did not feel sympathetic to while peers who maintained that I could not expect them to have knowledge of or understand the life experience of Black women.
“When I participated in feminist groups, I found that white women adopted a condescending attitude to wards me and other non-white participates. White women did see equals; they did not treat us equals. But they expected and provide First hand accounts of black experience they felt it way their role to decide if these experiences were authentic”.
Chinua Achebe,s “Things fall Apart “ is the first title in Heinemann’s African writers series at the same time Flora N wapa’s Efru the first novel in the series by a women .
Heinemann’ was the major English publisher of African literature between 1958 and 1986. Flora N wapa was the first Female authored work in the series .The next work in the series by a women “Idu “ also by N wapa, did not appear until 1970, thirty male authored texts later. What are the factors to which the relativity small number of women authors can be attributed?
Male bias in education is clearly one such factor. Colonial policies in Africa favored the education of boys over girls and operated to cut women off from the written world. The same male bias is evident in education in postcolonial Nigeria. The number of women writing in Africa has always been rather small when compared with their male counter parts. The contributions of women to African literature have not been limited to the modern period. Women have always played considerable role, as storytellers and performers, in the oral traditions. The traditions always had significant place for the voice of the women singing or reciting tales from her own perspective as wife, mother and housekeepers. Flora N wapa’s two novels (Efru, Idue ) are the most imaginative and ambitious attempts in Nigeria and Africa as a whole to integrate oral forms with the literate design of the novel.
Flora N wapa was Africa’s first published female novelist. She was born in Ugwuta, Nigeria in 1913 in to wealthy family, the first daughter of six children, she educated in Nigeria finished her primary and secondary school in Ugwuta., Elelenwa and Lagos . She later studied English, History, and Geography, at University of Edinburgh where she obtained a diploma in education. Following her return from Scotland, she became an education officer in Calabar in 1958 and then proceeded to teach at Queen’s school Enugu in 1959. From 1962 to 1967 she held the position of assistant registrar at the University of Lagos, and it was during this period of her life her literary carrier was launched with the publication of her first novel Efru by Heinemann in 1966.
Flora N wapa’s personal life has therefore involved a certain degree of public service that has invite by exposed her to the works of public institution in contemporary Nigeria.
The life style in Nwapa’s cities is dominated by the continuous round of vicious sexual intrigues, tribal conflict and civil war, her choice of genre, are interwoven with her most fundamental perspectives. Her perception of contemporary in urban Nigeria demands a short story format, one that does not depend to any significant degree on the kind of oral modes that are so integral to much of Adoo’s Short fiction. It is a form at which reflects the largely literate, western middle class with in which her women move. In N wapa’s short story seems especially appropriate for brief even deliberately unfinished glimpses of urban life. The N wapa novel is a typical of the kind of African novel that resists purely western oriented approaches to the genre.
It has been a truism for some time now that the African novel is a western import, differing from the drama and the short story in that the latter have partly developed from ritual folk drama and the oral tale respectively. N wapa novels depend on a narrative form rooted in the oral modes of every day village life and in turn those oral forms are intrinsic to ever y details of women’s life. Unfortunately some writers in African writings have been taken the issues of social realism, the study of the novel from the west to Africa.
What may be socially unrealistic or romantic for the west reader is not necessarily so far the Yoruba reader of Amos Tutuola’s fiction. Similarly, the issues of individualism that so often dominate western society and literature are not always as crucial in novels by some African, The cultural destination that are involved here were summed up in 1938 by a young anthropologist, Jomo Kenyatta.
“If it is true that the European system of education aims at individuality, is it then to be wondered at that Europeans educated in this way have some difficulty in finding the right place for the original tribal relationships of the Africans? We may some up by saying that to the Europeans “individuality is the ideal of life” to the Africans the ideal is the relations with, and behavior to other people. No doubt education philosophy can make a higher synthesis in which these two grate truths are one, but the fact remains that while the Europeans place the emphasis on one side the Africans place it on the other “
The question which Kenyatta both rises and answers has immediate significance for the study of the novel in Africa. Give those organic tribal relationships which notes, how useful is it to discuss those African novels which describe traditional, or non westernized African society by applying to such novels those criteria of individualism which are so sacrosanct in western society and literature ? this kind of question that is being raised by a few critics in west itself , among them the American James Only who has emphasized what has always been obvious but not always conceded by western students of non western fiction . We argue with Kenyatta argument because study of those aspects of African literature which originate with and describe indigenous cultural traditions or the interaction between those traditions and non African civilizations. The plays of Whole Soyinka, for example much of Chinua Achebe’s fiction and all of Tutolas novels
Flora N wapa novels deserve special attention because they have been the most neglected yet the most striking examples of African novel writing manifested by motivated and shaped by a communal rather than predominately individualistic perspective. More specially, The N wapa novel is not so much a study of the individual as it is a resentment of the relationship between individual and community.
Her tittles “Efru” and “Idu” are likely to mislead those western readers whose literary experience may encourage the expectation that Nwapa, like her European predecessors, concentrate primarily on the individual’s private perceptions. Community’s collective perceptions of “Efru” or “Idu” are as crucial in the novels Theme an struggle as her relation to the community and its tradition. N wapa’s name little therefore identifies the focal point of the community attention as much as it pinpoint the individuals personal experience with in the community .To read the Nwapa novel is to be immersed to a remarkable degree in ceaseless flow of talk .N wapa leaves no doubt about the extent to which this oral format has been consciously incorporated with in her themes and narrative design. Betty Friedan’s in her book “The Feminine Mystic” argues and she criticized the main stream white women Feminist organizations
“Feminism in the United States has never emerged from the women who or most victimized by sexiest oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority .A mark of their victimization is that they accept their lot in life without visible question without organized protest without collective anger or rage”.
The problem that has no name often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college educated middle and upper class, married white women house wives bored with leisure, with home , with children with buying products who wanted more out of life .Freidan concludes her first chapter by stating
“We can no longer ignore that voice with in women that says “I want something more than carries my husband and my children and my house”.
Friedan was a principle shaper of contemporary feminist thought significantly the one dimensional perspective on women’s reality presented in her book became a marked featured of the contemporary feminist movement White women who dominate feminist discourse today rarely question whether or not their perspective on women’s reality is true to the lived experience of women as collective group.
The two West African women writers, Flora N wapa, Buchi Emechita have made their departure to alien lands in different directions. N wapa to America and Buchi Emechita to England .The divergent cultures and ideological fuzziness of the adopted cultures have made these writers contemplate problems of social justice and humanity in her charged contexts, The feminist environment in America or England has provided them with a scope to suggest alternative based on a combination of conformity and rebelliousness, facilitating comparisons with western feminism. The insight full critical enquiry made by those African women writers to suggest a distinct identity for their women needs to be studied at a time when problems of women have become global causes
Flora N wapa’s “Efru” is set in rural Igbo land in a town calls Ugwuta, the time of the novel is the late 1940’s and early 1950.In this novel she unveils the impact of colonial occupation but it is an average of rapid social and cultural transformations, remark such as “Things are changing fast these days serve as a refrain in the novel. She recreates Igbo social, political and religious life, and portraits the effects of colonialism on Igbo society. N wapa’s fiction places considerable emphasis on mother daughter relationships. Efru as a mother less girl her mother having died when her daughter was in child hood .Efru misses her mother ‘ the time her mother died is her first point of reference when made miserable by her inability to find fulfillment in marriage or mother hood ,she ravines her life in an attempt to locate her error . Efru development is delayed until she is well. On in her adult years because she has no mother .She denied patriarchal authority by marrying a poor former without her father‘s permission and without the bride price being paid him before marriage. Reading Efru from the vantage of N wapa’s
Later novels suggest that the death of Efru’s mother is also linked to the colonial oppression of women that it is symbolic of the decline in Igbo women’s power under colonial order. Efru story tells of a daughter’s search for a lost mother. It begins where Efru is on the verge of entering adult life, having decided to leave her father’s house for the second time divorced women. African women writes tend to the marriage not only race but also gender as developmental issue, thus for example N wapa provides a critique both of colonialism and of Igbo patriarchy through her depiction of the forces that inhibit female development.
Buchi Emechita :
Buchi Emechita is one of the most acclaimed writers in present times. A mid western Igbo Nigerian by birth, Buchi Emechita has written regularly for the lost more than three decades, she has gained international recognition through her writings. Her writings have been translated in to fourteen languages to date. These include thirteen novels three autobiographical works four children’s books .and collection of photographs. Her autobiographical works include her first two novels: “In the ditch” and Second class citizen”, Head above water: An autobiography. Her novels are the Bride price The slave girl The joys of mother hood , Destination Biafa, Double Yoke Our own freedom is a book of photographs of black women and numerous essays published in anthologies scholarly journals news papers and magazines in Africa, Australia Europe and United states
Born in Logos Nigeria on 21 July 1944, in the home of her parents Jermy Nwa Budike Emechita and Alice Ogbanje OjebetaEmechita, Buchi emechita’s own life reads like a Nigerian women’s success story.
The issue if Feminism in the novels of Buchi Emechita
As I discussed before the existing trend in the literary criticism of African women writing has largely been adopt a western feminist perspective. Reading African women’s writing with in a feminist frame work is a use full strategy because it introduce Gender as a fundamental category in literary analysis enabling the critic to see representations in texts as mediated by sexual difference and the political and aesthetic assumptions that surrounded gender .In her introduction to a collection of essays titled “Emerging perspectives on Buchi Emechita ” Marie Umeh observes that the novels of Buchi Emechta reflect what Kate Millet calls Sexual politics the patriarcheal principle by which all males dominate females and elders dominate the young ( Kate millet’s Sexual politics) .
Catharine Frank an American Feminist critic in her book “Women without men “The feminist novel in African literature today where she goes to the extreme point of adopting a totally western feminist perspective on African women writers and comes to the controversial conclusion that Emechita and other women writers of Africa are more radical than their western counterparts and embrace solution of women without men or lesbianism. To quote fully: The feminist novel in Africa is not only alive and well it is in general more radical, even more militant than its western counter parts ….
All these novels (by African women writers) embrace the solution of world without men. Men is enemy the exploiter and oppressor. Given the historically established and culturally sanctioned sexism of African society, there is no possibility of a compromise or even with the enemy. Instead, women must spurn patriarchy in its entire guise and create a safe sane supportive world of women. A world of mothers and daughters sisters and friends .This of course amounts to feminist separatism... A logical outcome of this ideology lesbianism”
It is important to note this basic ambiguity in Emechita’s assumption about the needs of her women because it suggests that she does not readily fit in to the ranks of those middle class feminists in the west who are now discovering her works. Buchi Emechita’s first novel “ In the ditch” was published 1977 six years after Ogot’s The promised land, and N wapa Efru. Asked an interview about her relationship to other female writers such as Flora N wapa , Emechita described herself as their new sister she acknowledge the debt to the women who have preceded her placing herself within the literary tradition that has emerged with her writing . Buchi Emechita declared Flora N wapa as a role model. She made a point of distancing herself from western feminism finally she declared If iam now feminist than I am an African feminist”.
The Joys of Mother hood is Emechita’s best known novel but it is also a work which is clearly influenced by Emechita’s reading of other African authors. N wapa Efru “The Joys of mother hood “confirms the existence of a female tradition in fiction; we can see the similarity of the protagonist’s psychological experience. In her Joys of mother hood main protagonist Nnu Ego is like Efru. She from an Igbo village from Emechita’s home town of Ibuza. Like Efru too she loses mother at an early age which leaves her dependent on her Father’s house on the failure of each marriage and for a time she too is held in disrepute by her inability to bear children
The Joys of mother hood protagonist Nnu Ego is the daughter of the slave master Agbadi, the grate chief of Ibuza. Feminism in the novels of Buchi emechita as we have discussed the prevailing trend in the literary criticism of African women’s writing has largely influenced western feminist perspective. On this issue from her well known essay title “Feminism with a small” f” “Being a women and African born I see things through an African women’s eye chronicle the little happening in the lives of the African women I know. I did not know that by doing so I was going to be called a feminist but if iam now a feminist than an African feminist with small “f”
There are so many feminist women dogmas I believe in like education and the freedom of the individual in fact I am a feminist plus but there is no root in middle class feminist attitudes now for the black women plight. She says in the same interview and they are beginning to be proud of me although when I started they felt I was pushing into a man’s world. She is constantly pre occupied with the term feminism and expresses a recurrent sense of discomfort at being called a feminist to quote again “I did not start as a feminist I do not think I am one now most of my readers would take this to be the statement of a cowered. But it is not I thought before that I would like to be one but after my recent visit to the United states when I talked to read “Feminists” with a capital “F” I think we women of African background still have a very long way to go before we can really rub shoulders with such women . So my sister in America, I am not shunning your advanced help in fact I still think women of Africa need your contribution and at the same time we need our men”.
N wapa’s harsh realism results from her close involvement in public life in Nigeria. Her University education provided her with an opportunity to associate herself with public institution in Nigeria. Though she is basically indentified as a modern Nigerian writer, her concentration is on the lives of women in Nigeria’s modern urban life. Especially writes about communities expectations from its women as well as the women’s response to both the community and their own needs. Her women characters are extremely conscious of their bodies in relation to their roles as a wives and mothers. This body consciousness encourages them to accept their roles as inevitable and necessary.
Her novels “Efru” and “Idu” are fine example to access the nature of the narrative of domesticity .These women authoredneo works in colonial/ neo colonial situations insists on the virtues of their protagonists and on the complicated structural patterns of Igbo community .Her characters are strong individualized women who are not burdened with baggage of patriarchal societies .These women often question the general assumptions about women and their course of life without denying their Igbo identity and humanity .
Her female characters are extremely independent and have determine their course if life without denying their Igbo identity .The writers locate her ideal representation of Igbo female power and independence at the turn of the century .The actions of her female characters such as catalytic agents on the facts of other characters .Her women take center stage by exerting their industry ingenuity and resitence. Efru stands for self assertiveness, through continually circumscribed by the imperatives of male universe .She is attracted to tradition but is strong, independent and free spirited .She un conditionally accepts traditional practice such as circumcision and polygamy, beliefs and attitudes towards wife wood and infertility .
Being a black immigrant women in a white society, Emechita focuses her works on the lives and problems of Black immigrant women exclusively. Establishing her as a black British women writer .She often tries to bring about a fusion between original African culture and her adopted alien culture. She says” I keep my two worlds, my two cultures”. Emechita emphasizes the individual right to freedom of choice the slave girl is a board sexual archetype. Slavery is not simply a status or role in Emechita’s work but a condition. She ironically implies that women are their worst enemies because they lack the sprit to rebel.
Bibliography:
N wapa,Flora “ Efru” . African writer’s series: Heinemann, 1966.
N wapa,Flora “Idu “ African writers series: Heinemann , 1966.
Bell,Hooks “Feminist theory” south End press,Cambridge,1984.
Lloyd,W. Brown” Women writers in Black Africa” Golden wood press,London:1981.
Emechit,Buchi” Joys of mother hood” 1975.
Emechit,Buchi “ The Bride Price “ Allison and Busby, London,1976.
Emechit,Buchi “The second class citizen ,New York:1975.
Shyam. S Agarwalla ”The African fiction” Prestige, New Delhi.2006.
Bruci king & Kolawole ogum gbesan “A celebration of Black and African writing”
Oxford, 1975.
C L Innes “Critical perspectives on Chinua Achebe” Heinamann, 1979.
New world Politics and Role of Creative writers With reference to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe
New world Politics and Role of Creative writers
With reference to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua అచేబే by గుర్రం సీతా రాములు
When we are reading a novel, short story or poetry, we may ask some questions .How good is the work? What does it mean? What moral values emerge from it? What does the work reveal about the society, directly or indirectly or is it irrelevant to society? We expect something from that work to the society. We cannot separate the literature from the society. In this paper I want to write new world politics and role of creative writer with reference to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe
‘African literature is politically committed’, declared Leopold Sedar Snghor at the first international conference of Negro writers and artists at the Sorbonne in 1956, most of the African writer’s revolt against colonial rule resentment at racial discrimination. The ugly face of the colonial rulers and their slave trade, inspired African poets in the first place. We can see slavery is still one of the main themes of Negro poetry. The development of black writing has been closely connected with the renewal of African culture and political consciousness after the demoralizing effects of the slave trade and colonialism. In its earlier stages,, African and black written literature was a matter of racial pride showing that black men could succeeded and answer back within European cultural forms. This was followed by the gradual evaluation of the African Black cultural experience to an equal dignity the European. The period of cultural Affirmation has now passed.
“The rise of independent African and west Indian states during the late 1950’s and 60’s was parallel by a phenomenal flowering of Black writing as writers have turned from the older problems of colonialism towards the new issues resulting from political independence, some of the new issues resulting from political independence, some of the original pan African idealism and concern for arrival cultural heritage have been lost the second Black and African arts festival therefore seems on occasion to see black literature in its historical and intercontinental perspectives”.
‘Aime Cesaire’ another West Indian also from Martinique was to play a much more important role in the development of French African Literature. Aime Cesaire is primarily a poet. The popularity of poetry among black writers stems from that genres capacity for experimentation with language so as to allow for the rendering of a new and very special experience. It is Cesaire who claims.... In the beginning was the world no one has believed this mere fervently than the poet. The power of the poetic ‘’word’’ becomes Cesaire miracles weapon, the beating of the wave of the mind against the root of the world. Cesaire’s poetry represents a pioneering effort to impose a new subjectivity upon an inherited literary form. Aime Cesaire gave the definition of Negritude is the most important thing in the history of African literature. The desperate optimism of 1930’s
Spread the ideology of negritude now confronted with the harsh unyielding reality of postcolonial societies, this effervesces scene seems frustrated.
The group ‘Leon Damas’ , ‘Aime Ceasire’, ‘ Leopold Senghor’ and ‘James Baldwin’ called “That ache to come in to the world as men finds the political and cultural implication of negritude under attack. In recent interview Ceisere explained,
“Negritude has brought with it same danger it has tended to become a school, a church, a theory an ideology, I am for a negritude which is literary and somewhat like a personal ethic , but I am against an ideology founded on negritude .. I refuse to be considered in the name of negritude, the brother of Francois Duvalier critiquing myself to only the dead.”
“I believe it is impotent to write anything in Africa without some kind of commitment, some kind of message, some kind of protest...because there were people who thought we didn’t have a past. What we were doing was to say we did- here it is”
Chinua Achebe
“Violence in order to change an intolerable, unjust social order is not savagery: it purifies man. Violence to protect and preserve an unjust, oppressive social order is criminal, and diminishes man”
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Both Chinua Achebe and Ngugi are committed writers. The two statements quoted above by Achebe and Ngugi clarify the nature of their commitment as writers
Chinua Achebe:
‘Chinua Achebe’ is probably the most widely read of contemporary African writers, both on the African continent and abroad. His reputation was quickly established with his first novel ,’Things fall Apart’ which won him the ‘Margeret Wrong Memorial Prize’ as well as scholarships and grants, After the publication of his second novel , No longer at Ease, He was awarded the’ Nigerian National Trophy’ for literature, and for his third novel Arrow of the god he received the New states man Jock Campbell award .over the last decade, Achebe lectures and essays have provoked much debate the criteria for assessing African writers and his influence on younger novelists has been considerable. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. ‘Chinua Achebe ‘Born in Odgidi, in the eastern part of Nigeria in 1930, his father was an evangelist and church teacher, although many of his relatives and neighbours adhered to the Ibo religion and customs ,Thus Achebe writes , he grew up “at the crossroads of cultures”
“The literature written about Africa during this time generally tended to reinforce those assumption of the British and helped them defend colonial rule as enlightenment to primitive peoples without a valid civilisation of their own Hence Africa was seen as a dark continent a symbol of irrational, nourishing undifferentiated and child like peoples governed by fear and superstition rather than reason, a people only too ready to welcome and, indeed, worship, the Whiteman. “
Chinua Achebe grew up at a time when Africans were not only opposing European rule through political action, but also beginning to question with increasing vigour and clarity the cultural assumptions used to justify that rule .Like many other people of his generation, Achebe was given a British education, first at the local mission school then at the government school then government college in Umuahia, and finally at University college Ibadan, Where he had planned to study medicine. Both as a creative writer and as a critic, Achebe has had a great influence, particularly on younger African writers. His novels have made an especially powerful impression upon young Ibo writers who first became acquainted with his works as high school or University students.
“The African writer has been very much influenced by politics, probably because the African intellectual is a part of the political elite. The writer is a sensitive point within his society .Thus, African literature has tended to reflect the political phase on the continent .Chinua Achebe is a very suitable example. Beginning during the colonial days his writings spans the succession of political crisis which has beset Nigeria. Also, more than any other Nigerian writer, He has made statements on the role of the writer in his society.
His conception of the writers’ duty is has also tended to change with the political situation in his country. By examining the both his creative and his pronouncement, we can obtain an interesting picture of how the quality of the literature cab be directly influenced by the degree of the writer’s political commitment.”
Achebe’s first statement on the social responsibility of the African writer was made in lecture entitled “the role of the writer in a New Nation” Delivered to the Nigerian Library Association in 1964. Achebe talked specifically about the role of the writer in what he called the new Nigeria. The major problem all over the world, he said, was the debate between white and black humanity, a subject which presented the African writer with a great challenge:
“It is in convincible to me that a serious writer could stand aside from this debate or be indifferent to this argument which calls his full humanity in question .For me at any rate, there is a clear duty to make a statement .This is my answer to those who say that a writer should be writing about contemporary issues – about politics in1964 about city life the lost coup d’état.
Of course, these are legitimate themes for the writer but as for the writer but as far as i am concerned the fundamental theme themes must first be disposed of. This theme put quite simply is that African people did not hear of culture for the first time From European; that their societies were not middle but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty that they had poetry and above all, they had dignity .It is this dignity and self respect. The writer’s duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them, what they lost.
The writer can tell the people where the rain began to beat them. After all the novelist’s duty is not to beat this morning’s headline in topicality, it is to explore in depth the human condition. In Africa he cannot perform this task unless he has a proper sense of history.”
He refused to believe that African writer could be alienated from his society in spite of the fact that the education of Africans was largely Western-Oriented, the relationship between European writers and their audience will not automatically re produced itself in Africa . In Africa Achebe said, Society expects the writer to be its leader. He revealed that many people have asked him to bring out more forcefully the lessons to be learned from his stories. Achebe said that the role of the African writer should be that of a social transformer and revolutionary. In a paper presented at a political science seminar in Makerere in 1968, entitled “The African writer and the Biafran cause “he said that a writer is only “a human being with heightened sensitive’s” and therefore “must be aware of the faintest nuances of injustice in human relations The African writer cannot therefore be unaware or indifferent to, the monumental injustice which his people suffer”. African writers are committed to a new society which will affirm their validity and accord them identity as Africans, as peoples. On the relationship between politics and the writer, He says that some measure of politics is bound to intrude in to writing epically in Africa. He himself could not abstain although he would not deny the right of any writer to do so. For him however one can only avoid commitment by pretending or by being insensitive. Achebe is correct that politics and social affairs cannot be kept out of literature in Africa; at least not for some time .Yet the writer’s approach to these issues will be crucial to the quality of his work. In order to be objective, he must be detached, must not become emotionally in involved.
In African literature the town has become a symbol of contact with the west, with it blemishes and attractions. The shock of the invasion of the European civilisation in to tribal African society has been dealt with even more explicitly. Several African writers here found it fine subject for novel. First there is the Nigerian Chinua Achebe with Things Fall A part. This is the story of the Decay of the social structure of an igbo villege under pressure from administration and missionaries the suicide of the hero Okenkwo after he has taken part in burning down the missionary school and killing a British official with his own hand is an admission of his importance to stop the course of history as much as final gesture of rebellion, against the new order He chooses to die rather than submit.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o:
Like Achebe, Ngui wa Thiong’o has also attracted critical attention from different parts of the world and there is a large body of critical writings on Ngugi works. As we discussed earlier, it is with the intention of studying this functional relationship between literature and politics closely that study of the writings of only one writer. Ngugi wa Thiong’o who is not only the most prolific of contemporary Kenyan writers but who is also the most prominent one.
Besides having a tradition of oral literature – Orature , as Ngugi wa Thiongo would like to call it which various communities in Kenya share with most other communities in other parts of Africa . Kenya has also had a tradition for over two hundred years of written literature primarily poetry in Swahili which as we know is a kind of trade’ Language ‘ used around the coastal areas of east Africa .Of the various British colonies in Africa , Kenya was perhaps the last emerge on the map of literary writing in English. Finding it difficult to express their thoughts in Swahili particularly poetry , Kenyan writers took the writing in English primarily prose in a big way ,It is Ngugi wa Thiong’o who has singlehandedly through his writings fictional as well as nonfiction forced scholars and critics of African literature to pay serious attention to Kenyan writing in English
Born in 1938, in the family of a land less squatter on the land of a well to do farmer in Kimiithu village Near Limeru in Kiambu district, Ngugi wa Thiong’o went to mission run school Kamaandura school in Limeru and later to a school of the independent schools Movement, Later, he joined the Alliance High school Kenya’s first full fledged school for Africans run by an alliance of the protestant denominations in Kenya. It is here that Ngugi’s religious awareness about Christianity a fact which is more than obvious from his writings.
Ngugi was fourteen when a state of emergency was declared in Kenya in 1952 on October 20. His passion for education seems to have weighed heavily with him in his decision to continue with it and as a result he missed out on actual participation in the movement. This fact seems to have given him a kind of guilt complex and is perhaps one of the major reasons for making the freedom struggle, particularly the Mau Mau phase, reputedly the theme of most of his books. After finishing his school education at alliance High school, Ngugi joined B A in English at Makerere University college at Kampala, Uganda which was the only University college in the whole Africa. Ngugi got trouble with political Authorities over the portions of His ‘Petals of Blood’ in which he dealt for the first time with situations in post independence Kenya. Also the text of play ‘Ngaahika Ndeenda’ ( I will marry when i want) about presents independent Kenya which he wrote together with’ Ngugi wa Mirii’ in his mother tongue Gikuyu and which was performed at the kamirithu community education and cultural Centre, Limeru in 1977, was objected by the authorities who eventually banned its performance on November 16, 1977. On the 31 st December 1977 Ngugi was taken to a police station near his residence for routine questioning but was detained without trial for almost a year Until December.
Ngugi has made Kenyan history, including the freedom struggle, as the theme of his powerful writings. For reasons consistency and homogeneity of analysis, the study has been confined to only one genre, namely fiction, although Ngugi is an equally, powerful play Wright, short story writer and essayist.
According to G.D Killam who wrote the book” An introduction to the Writings of Ngugi” in his book “The life in his novels is shaped by the presence of Christianity and his first novel The River Between was written when he was a devout to Christian Christianity is a major influence in both the colonial and neo colonial novels of Ngugi.
‘A grain of wheat’ and’ Petals of Blood’abound in biblical allusions
History is yet another major influence on Ngugi’s fiction His first four novels cover a span of six decades and draw on documented historical fact as background Both Achebe and Ngugi focus on the historical aspect in their fiction. Killam also accounts for the influence of Marx and Fanon on Ngugi writings,
With the publication of “Weep not child” in1964, Ngugi appeared on the African literary scene, becoming the first novelist from East Africa. Ngugi’s appearance marked the belated beginnings of the novel in East Africa at a time when the West African novel was already well established. Ngugi most serious commitment lies in his quest for a socialist order and a revolutionary culture through the process of the Decolonisation of mind and decolonisation of African literature His ‘Petals of the Blood ‘attempts this direction.
Ngugi concerned with the history of his people and seeks to extrapolate from his consideration of the influence of Europe on Kenya the means for making a better future. There are tow predominating influences on his third and forth novels these are Karl Marx and, epically Frantz Fanon .It is Marx who articulates a political and economic philosophy which will suit Ngugi’s conviction about post independent Kenyan development. It is Fanon who places the thinking of Marx in the African context.
Killam says “Ngugi strength as a novelist proceeds from the way in which he encrusts his political vision with material derived from his own Kenyan background ,the present values which are the real values as opposed to those new First World values which are taken on by the blacks who became the leaders in the post- independence circumstance .These are contemptible people so far as Ngugi is concerned because of the way they exploit their own kind and secondly, for their repudiation of the heroes of the revolution who brought about those circumstance in which they are able to act as they do. Thus ‘Dedan Kimati ‘ is legitimate hero his vision was straight forward unflinching uncompromising ultimately successful”.
After Petals of The Blood” Ngugi wrote’ Ngaahika Ndenda” (I will Marry when i want), the play which brought about his arrest .At least and at last in the production of the Kikuyu play Ngugi seems to have found an answer for a question he raised as far back as 1969 when he said “I have reached a point of crisis; I don’t know whether it is worthy any longer writing in English ....The problem is this – I know whom I write about. But whom do I write for? “He has found the medium to convey his message and though he knew all along what he wished to say and on whose behalf he wished to say it, he discovered that the audience for what he had to say was the same as those on “(p 15).
We can see two phases in Ngugi’s life one is before independence another one is after independence. In Kenya, “Weep not child,”the first published novel but the second written brings Ngugi to his central theme which is the struggle for Kenyan independence and the effect of the struggle on the lives of individuals within the Kenyan context. Both of the novels “Weep not Child” and “A grain of Wheat “The themes are the same where we find reference to various historical revolutionary activities before Mau mau independence movement got under way in1950s. In both “weep not child” “A grain of wheat”, causes and the prosecution of Mau mau aspirations are dramatised. The independence struggle is important to Ngugi and he has written this novel to explain inartistic terms and through a sustained comparison with Christian teaching action and theology the origins of the struggle and epically its legitimacy .He does in detail drawing in much of the same historical and political material as he has used in Weep not Child and River Between”
Ngugi lists the names of those Kenyans who martyred themselves over a fifty year period for Kenya’s independence the list includes Waiyaki, Harry Thuku, and Jomo Kenyatta and their activities are briefly sketched into show their inspirational effect on Kihika sees in Waiyaki’s failure and death, the seeds of future success. I want to conclude this article with the Argument
“The novels of Achebe and Ngugi”by K Indra Sena Reddy
..Political power for supremacy and self-rule dominate the colonial novels of” Things Fall apart”, Arrow of the god, The River Between “and to a large extent in A Grain of wheat which culminates in Kenyan independence. Petals of the Blood, and Anthills of the Savannah the two post colonial novels are concerned with the misuse and abuse of power by the Native black masters and call for a resolution with a sence of urgency about it through a sustained struggle The motifs of power and struggle run as an undercurrent in all the novels under discussion and provide a connecting link between Achebe and Ngugi’s fiction.
Bibliography:
1. Ngui wa Thiong’o Weep not child: Henemann, 1964.
Ngui wa Thiong’o The Revier Between: London: Heinemann, 1964.
3 Ngui wa Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat: London: Heinemann, 1967.
Ngui wa Thiong’o Petals of The Blood. London, Heinemann, 1977.
Chinua, Achebe. Things Fall Apart, London, Heniman, 1958.
Chinua, Achebe. No Longer at Ease, London, Heniman, 1960.
Chinua, Achebe. Arrow of the God, London, Heniman, 1964.
Chinua, Achebe. Anthills of Savannah, London, Picador, 1987.
Killam,G D An introduction to writings of Ngugi, London Henimann,1980.
With reference to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua అచేబే by గుర్రం సీతా రాములు
When we are reading a novel, short story or poetry, we may ask some questions .How good is the work? What does it mean? What moral values emerge from it? What does the work reveal about the society, directly or indirectly or is it irrelevant to society? We expect something from that work to the society. We cannot separate the literature from the society. In this paper I want to write new world politics and role of creative writer with reference to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe
‘African literature is politically committed’, declared Leopold Sedar Snghor at the first international conference of Negro writers and artists at the Sorbonne in 1956, most of the African writer’s revolt against colonial rule resentment at racial discrimination. The ugly face of the colonial rulers and their slave trade, inspired African poets in the first place. We can see slavery is still one of the main themes of Negro poetry. The development of black writing has been closely connected with the renewal of African culture and political consciousness after the demoralizing effects of the slave trade and colonialism. In its earlier stages,, African and black written literature was a matter of racial pride showing that black men could succeeded and answer back within European cultural forms. This was followed by the gradual evaluation of the African Black cultural experience to an equal dignity the European. The period of cultural Affirmation has now passed.
“The rise of independent African and west Indian states during the late 1950’s and 60’s was parallel by a phenomenal flowering of Black writing as writers have turned from the older problems of colonialism towards the new issues resulting from political independence, some of the new issues resulting from political independence, some of the original pan African idealism and concern for arrival cultural heritage have been lost the second Black and African arts festival therefore seems on occasion to see black literature in its historical and intercontinental perspectives”.
‘Aime Cesaire’ another West Indian also from Martinique was to play a much more important role in the development of French African Literature. Aime Cesaire is primarily a poet. The popularity of poetry among black writers stems from that genres capacity for experimentation with language so as to allow for the rendering of a new and very special experience. It is Cesaire who claims.... In the beginning was the world no one has believed this mere fervently than the poet. The power of the poetic ‘’word’’ becomes Cesaire miracles weapon, the beating of the wave of the mind against the root of the world. Cesaire’s poetry represents a pioneering effort to impose a new subjectivity upon an inherited literary form. Aime Cesaire gave the definition of Negritude is the most important thing in the history of African literature. The desperate optimism of 1930’s
Spread the ideology of negritude now confronted with the harsh unyielding reality of postcolonial societies, this effervesces scene seems frustrated.
The group ‘Leon Damas’ , ‘Aime Ceasire’, ‘ Leopold Senghor’ and ‘James Baldwin’ called “That ache to come in to the world as men finds the political and cultural implication of negritude under attack. In recent interview Ceisere explained,
“Negritude has brought with it same danger it has tended to become a school, a church, a theory an ideology, I am for a negritude which is literary and somewhat like a personal ethic , but I am against an ideology founded on negritude .. I refuse to be considered in the name of negritude, the brother of Francois Duvalier critiquing myself to only the dead.”
“I believe it is impotent to write anything in Africa without some kind of commitment, some kind of message, some kind of protest...because there were people who thought we didn’t have a past. What we were doing was to say we did- here it is”
Chinua Achebe
“Violence in order to change an intolerable, unjust social order is not savagery: it purifies man. Violence to protect and preserve an unjust, oppressive social order is criminal, and diminishes man”
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Both Chinua Achebe and Ngugi are committed writers. The two statements quoted above by Achebe and Ngugi clarify the nature of their commitment as writers
Chinua Achebe:
‘Chinua Achebe’ is probably the most widely read of contemporary African writers, both on the African continent and abroad. His reputation was quickly established with his first novel ,’Things fall Apart’ which won him the ‘Margeret Wrong Memorial Prize’ as well as scholarships and grants, After the publication of his second novel , No longer at Ease, He was awarded the’ Nigerian National Trophy’ for literature, and for his third novel Arrow of the god he received the New states man Jock Campbell award .over the last decade, Achebe lectures and essays have provoked much debate the criteria for assessing African writers and his influence on younger novelists has been considerable. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. ‘Chinua Achebe ‘Born in Odgidi, in the eastern part of Nigeria in 1930, his father was an evangelist and church teacher, although many of his relatives and neighbours adhered to the Ibo religion and customs ,Thus Achebe writes , he grew up “at the crossroads of cultures”
“The literature written about Africa during this time generally tended to reinforce those assumption of the British and helped them defend colonial rule as enlightenment to primitive peoples without a valid civilisation of their own Hence Africa was seen as a dark continent a symbol of irrational, nourishing undifferentiated and child like peoples governed by fear and superstition rather than reason, a people only too ready to welcome and, indeed, worship, the Whiteman. “
Chinua Achebe grew up at a time when Africans were not only opposing European rule through political action, but also beginning to question with increasing vigour and clarity the cultural assumptions used to justify that rule .Like many other people of his generation, Achebe was given a British education, first at the local mission school then at the government school then government college in Umuahia, and finally at University college Ibadan, Where he had planned to study medicine. Both as a creative writer and as a critic, Achebe has had a great influence, particularly on younger African writers. His novels have made an especially powerful impression upon young Ibo writers who first became acquainted with his works as high school or University students.
“The African writer has been very much influenced by politics, probably because the African intellectual is a part of the political elite. The writer is a sensitive point within his society .Thus, African literature has tended to reflect the political phase on the continent .Chinua Achebe is a very suitable example. Beginning during the colonial days his writings spans the succession of political crisis which has beset Nigeria. Also, more than any other Nigerian writer, He has made statements on the role of the writer in his society.
His conception of the writers’ duty is has also tended to change with the political situation in his country. By examining the both his creative and his pronouncement, we can obtain an interesting picture of how the quality of the literature cab be directly influenced by the degree of the writer’s political commitment.”
Achebe’s first statement on the social responsibility of the African writer was made in lecture entitled “the role of the writer in a New Nation” Delivered to the Nigerian Library Association in 1964. Achebe talked specifically about the role of the writer in what he called the new Nigeria. The major problem all over the world, he said, was the debate between white and black humanity, a subject which presented the African writer with a great challenge:
“It is in convincible to me that a serious writer could stand aside from this debate or be indifferent to this argument which calls his full humanity in question .For me at any rate, there is a clear duty to make a statement .This is my answer to those who say that a writer should be writing about contemporary issues – about politics in1964 about city life the lost coup d’état.
Of course, these are legitimate themes for the writer but as for the writer but as far as i am concerned the fundamental theme themes must first be disposed of. This theme put quite simply is that African people did not hear of culture for the first time From European; that their societies were not middle but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty that they had poetry and above all, they had dignity .It is this dignity and self respect. The writer’s duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them, what they lost.
The writer can tell the people where the rain began to beat them. After all the novelist’s duty is not to beat this morning’s headline in topicality, it is to explore in depth the human condition. In Africa he cannot perform this task unless he has a proper sense of history.”
He refused to believe that African writer could be alienated from his society in spite of the fact that the education of Africans was largely Western-Oriented, the relationship between European writers and their audience will not automatically re produced itself in Africa . In Africa Achebe said, Society expects the writer to be its leader. He revealed that many people have asked him to bring out more forcefully the lessons to be learned from his stories. Achebe said that the role of the African writer should be that of a social transformer and revolutionary. In a paper presented at a political science seminar in Makerere in 1968, entitled “The African writer and the Biafran cause “he said that a writer is only “a human being with heightened sensitive’s” and therefore “must be aware of the faintest nuances of injustice in human relations The African writer cannot therefore be unaware or indifferent to, the monumental injustice which his people suffer”. African writers are committed to a new society which will affirm their validity and accord them identity as Africans, as peoples. On the relationship between politics and the writer, He says that some measure of politics is bound to intrude in to writing epically in Africa. He himself could not abstain although he would not deny the right of any writer to do so. For him however one can only avoid commitment by pretending or by being insensitive. Achebe is correct that politics and social affairs cannot be kept out of literature in Africa; at least not for some time .Yet the writer’s approach to these issues will be crucial to the quality of his work. In order to be objective, he must be detached, must not become emotionally in involved.
In African literature the town has become a symbol of contact with the west, with it blemishes and attractions. The shock of the invasion of the European civilisation in to tribal African society has been dealt with even more explicitly. Several African writers here found it fine subject for novel. First there is the Nigerian Chinua Achebe with Things Fall A part. This is the story of the Decay of the social structure of an igbo villege under pressure from administration and missionaries the suicide of the hero Okenkwo after he has taken part in burning down the missionary school and killing a British official with his own hand is an admission of his importance to stop the course of history as much as final gesture of rebellion, against the new order He chooses to die rather than submit.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o:
Like Achebe, Ngui wa Thiong’o has also attracted critical attention from different parts of the world and there is a large body of critical writings on Ngugi works. As we discussed earlier, it is with the intention of studying this functional relationship between literature and politics closely that study of the writings of only one writer. Ngugi wa Thiong’o who is not only the most prolific of contemporary Kenyan writers but who is also the most prominent one.
Besides having a tradition of oral literature – Orature , as Ngugi wa Thiongo would like to call it which various communities in Kenya share with most other communities in other parts of Africa . Kenya has also had a tradition for over two hundred years of written literature primarily poetry in Swahili which as we know is a kind of trade’ Language ‘ used around the coastal areas of east Africa .Of the various British colonies in Africa , Kenya was perhaps the last emerge on the map of literary writing in English. Finding it difficult to express their thoughts in Swahili particularly poetry , Kenyan writers took the writing in English primarily prose in a big way ,It is Ngugi wa Thiong’o who has singlehandedly through his writings fictional as well as nonfiction forced scholars and critics of African literature to pay serious attention to Kenyan writing in English
Born in 1938, in the family of a land less squatter on the land of a well to do farmer in Kimiithu village Near Limeru in Kiambu district, Ngugi wa Thiong’o went to mission run school Kamaandura school in Limeru and later to a school of the independent schools Movement, Later, he joined the Alliance High school Kenya’s first full fledged school for Africans run by an alliance of the protestant denominations in Kenya. It is here that Ngugi’s religious awareness about Christianity a fact which is more than obvious from his writings.
Ngugi was fourteen when a state of emergency was declared in Kenya in 1952 on October 20. His passion for education seems to have weighed heavily with him in his decision to continue with it and as a result he missed out on actual participation in the movement. This fact seems to have given him a kind of guilt complex and is perhaps one of the major reasons for making the freedom struggle, particularly the Mau Mau phase, reputedly the theme of most of his books. After finishing his school education at alliance High school, Ngugi joined B A in English at Makerere University college at Kampala, Uganda which was the only University college in the whole Africa. Ngugi got trouble with political Authorities over the portions of His ‘Petals of Blood’ in which he dealt for the first time with situations in post independence Kenya. Also the text of play ‘Ngaahika Ndeenda’ ( I will marry when i want) about presents independent Kenya which he wrote together with’ Ngugi wa Mirii’ in his mother tongue Gikuyu and which was performed at the kamirithu community education and cultural Centre, Limeru in 1977, was objected by the authorities who eventually banned its performance on November 16, 1977. On the 31 st December 1977 Ngugi was taken to a police station near his residence for routine questioning but was detained without trial for almost a year Until December.
Ngugi has made Kenyan history, including the freedom struggle, as the theme of his powerful writings. For reasons consistency and homogeneity of analysis, the study has been confined to only one genre, namely fiction, although Ngugi is an equally, powerful play Wright, short story writer and essayist.
According to G.D Killam who wrote the book” An introduction to the Writings of Ngugi” in his book “The life in his novels is shaped by the presence of Christianity and his first novel The River Between was written when he was a devout to Christian Christianity is a major influence in both the colonial and neo colonial novels of Ngugi.
‘A grain of wheat’ and’ Petals of Blood’abound in biblical allusions
History is yet another major influence on Ngugi’s fiction His first four novels cover a span of six decades and draw on documented historical fact as background Both Achebe and Ngugi focus on the historical aspect in their fiction. Killam also accounts for the influence of Marx and Fanon on Ngugi writings,
With the publication of “Weep not child” in1964, Ngugi appeared on the African literary scene, becoming the first novelist from East Africa. Ngugi’s appearance marked the belated beginnings of the novel in East Africa at a time when the West African novel was already well established. Ngugi most serious commitment lies in his quest for a socialist order and a revolutionary culture through the process of the Decolonisation of mind and decolonisation of African literature His ‘Petals of the Blood ‘attempts this direction.
Ngugi concerned with the history of his people and seeks to extrapolate from his consideration of the influence of Europe on Kenya the means for making a better future. There are tow predominating influences on his third and forth novels these are Karl Marx and, epically Frantz Fanon .It is Marx who articulates a political and economic philosophy which will suit Ngugi’s conviction about post independent Kenyan development. It is Fanon who places the thinking of Marx in the African context.
Killam says “Ngugi strength as a novelist proceeds from the way in which he encrusts his political vision with material derived from his own Kenyan background ,the present values which are the real values as opposed to those new First World values which are taken on by the blacks who became the leaders in the post- independence circumstance .These are contemptible people so far as Ngugi is concerned because of the way they exploit their own kind and secondly, for their repudiation of the heroes of the revolution who brought about those circumstance in which they are able to act as they do. Thus ‘Dedan Kimati ‘ is legitimate hero his vision was straight forward unflinching uncompromising ultimately successful”.
After Petals of The Blood” Ngugi wrote’ Ngaahika Ndenda” (I will Marry when i want), the play which brought about his arrest .At least and at last in the production of the Kikuyu play Ngugi seems to have found an answer for a question he raised as far back as 1969 when he said “I have reached a point of crisis; I don’t know whether it is worthy any longer writing in English ....The problem is this – I know whom I write about. But whom do I write for? “He has found the medium to convey his message and though he knew all along what he wished to say and on whose behalf he wished to say it, he discovered that the audience for what he had to say was the same as those on “(p 15).
We can see two phases in Ngugi’s life one is before independence another one is after independence. In Kenya, “Weep not child,”the first published novel but the second written brings Ngugi to his central theme which is the struggle for Kenyan independence and the effect of the struggle on the lives of individuals within the Kenyan context. Both of the novels “Weep not Child” and “A grain of Wheat “The themes are the same where we find reference to various historical revolutionary activities before Mau mau independence movement got under way in1950s. In both “weep not child” “A grain of wheat”, causes and the prosecution of Mau mau aspirations are dramatised. The independence struggle is important to Ngugi and he has written this novel to explain inartistic terms and through a sustained comparison with Christian teaching action and theology the origins of the struggle and epically its legitimacy .He does in detail drawing in much of the same historical and political material as he has used in Weep not Child and River Between”
Ngugi lists the names of those Kenyans who martyred themselves over a fifty year period for Kenya’s independence the list includes Waiyaki, Harry Thuku, and Jomo Kenyatta and their activities are briefly sketched into show their inspirational effect on Kihika sees in Waiyaki’s failure and death, the seeds of future success. I want to conclude this article with the Argument
“The novels of Achebe and Ngugi”by K Indra Sena Reddy
..Political power for supremacy and self-rule dominate the colonial novels of” Things Fall apart”, Arrow of the god, The River Between “and to a large extent in A Grain of wheat which culminates in Kenyan independence. Petals of the Blood, and Anthills of the Savannah the two post colonial novels are concerned with the misuse and abuse of power by the Native black masters and call for a resolution with a sence of urgency about it through a sustained struggle The motifs of power and struggle run as an undercurrent in all the novels under discussion and provide a connecting link between Achebe and Ngugi’s fiction.
Bibliography:
1. Ngui wa Thiong’o Weep not child: Henemann, 1964.
Ngui wa Thiong’o The Revier Between: London: Heinemann, 1964.
3 Ngui wa Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat: London: Heinemann, 1967.
Ngui wa Thiong’o Petals of The Blood. London, Heinemann, 1977.
Chinua, Achebe. Things Fall Apart, London, Heniman, 1958.
Chinua, Achebe. No Longer at Ease, London, Heniman, 1960.
Chinua, Achebe. Arrow of the God, London, Heniman, 1964.
Chinua, Achebe. Anthills of Savannah, London, Picador, 1987.
Killam,G D An introduction to writings of Ngugi, London Henimann,1980.
Tradition, Modernity and Decolonizing the mind In Ngugi and Achebe
Tradition, Modernity and Decolonizing the mind In Ngugi and Achebe
Tradition is how we interpret the past; Modernity is how we understand the present and future. Language is a social discourse. In this paper I am attempting to relate How Ngugi wa Thiongo and Chinua Achebe are attempting to bring their post colonial concerns within the social and political discourse of African languages in relation to English. In the process I am attempting to situate tradition and modernity as two forces that can be reconciled through the decolonization of the mind.
The British Philosopher H.B Acton defines tradition as “a belief of practice transmitted from one generation to another and accepted as Authoritative, or differed to, without argument.” Samuel Fleischaker defines tradition as “a set of customs passed down over the generations, and set of beliefs and values endorsing those customs”.
Africans are basically rural, village-conscious and traditional oriented people caught in a state of transition between tradition and modernity. When they are exposed to modern urban culture, one can notice certain ambivalence in their attitude towards alien culture and behavior patterns. We can see these kinds of conflicts in Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiyango’ and women writers like Flora N Wapa and Buchi Emechita. In their novels they go back to the pre-colonial and post colonial situations and record the cultural conflicts with the impact of the west on the native society.
Chinua Achebe expressed his views with respect to the feelings of many African novelists when he said.” We must seek the freedom to express our thoughts and our feelings; even against ourselves without the anxiety that what we say might be taken as evidence against our race. We have stood in the dock for too long pleading and protesting before ruffians and frauds masquerading as disinterested judges “(Achebe “The Black writers Burden” 139.).
African literature as a major segment of commonwealth writing in English, with its phenomenal, growth has attracted the English speaking world outside Africa thus leading to the arrival of Modern African literature in English. The new voice of Africa is countering the western thesis of cultural denigration of the African peoples and their histories. Most of the major African writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi Wa thiyango, Floran n Wapa, Buch Emechita, and others are deeply concerned with the task of restoring character and cultural identity to African society through the discovery of the past in the light of the present.
Writers like Ngugi wa thiyango took a leading role decolonizing the school and University curriculum in Kenya. When he first became a lecturer at Makere University in Uganda, no African books were included in the literature curriculum; not even any in the secondary school syllabus. Here writers like Achebe argued against the assumption that literature is universal but instead saw the value of literature in its detailed and concrete depiction of a community in a particular place and a particular historical moment seeking to understand and create itself. Ngugi also introduced the study of local oral literature into the curriculum and said that these should be central rather than peripheral for students of literature.
In his essay “Return to the roots” he says: “To choose a language is to choose a world, once said a West Indian thinker and although I do not share the assumed primacy of language over the world, the choice of a language already predetermines the answer to the most important question for producers of imaginative literature, for whom do I write? Who is my audience? I f a Kenyan writer writes in English no matter how radical the context of that literature he cannot possibly directly talk to the peasants and workers of Kenya. If a Kenyan acts in a play in English, he cannot possibly be assuming a truly Kenyan audience “
He believes that the African writer’s duty to his people is to nourish the language and culture that exist there. He goes on to say that Kenyan national literature should mostly be produced in the language of various nationalities that make up modern Kenya. Kenyan nation liberation can only get its stamina and blood by utilizing the rich national traditions of culture and history carried by the languages of all the Kenyan nationalities. In Kenya Ngugi led his lives in terrible conditions, contradictions and his experiences have changed his attitude toward his writings. Ngugi has said about his early life:
“My parents were not Christians. But at the same time they did not practice much of the Gikuyu forms of worship. My father was skeptical of religious and magical practices that went with rites of passages and rhythms of the seasons. He believed in land and hard work “(C Brian Cox African writers 1997 p 537). From 1955 to 1959 he attended Alliance High School; that is the country’s most prestigious secondary school. He is the first student from his area of the country to be admitted and he excelled in his studies, during that time he read widely texts of Shakespeare, Shaw, Tennyson, Wordsworth and his own selections from the school library Tolstoy, Dickens, R L Stevenson and Alan Paton. He also gained familiarity with the Bible. The strongest influence in his period was the struggle for independence in the shape of armed resistance of the Mau mau uprising (1952-1956). The Kenyan government declared a state emergency (1952-60) and Ngugi family and village suffered in a number of ways. His brothers joined in the guerrilla movement and another brother was shot dead by the police. This is the main cause we see in his writings. He mentions his brother who fighting in the forest against the colonial powers still found time to send him message to “cling to education” that was provided by the colonialists even though it was an education meant to bolster the image and culture of the empire, thereby creating colonized subjects. Finally he is arguing that Western culture, education has done more harm than good.
Describing this incident Ngugi says “Although I was in the school, I remember quite vividly standing up and trembling with anger saying that Western education could not be equated with the land taken from the peasants by the British. And I remember holding up the fountain pen and giving the example of someone whom comes and takes away food from your mouth and then gives you a fountain pen. I asked the audience: Can you eat a fountain pen? Can you clothe yourself with a fountain pen or shelter yourself with it? ” (C Brian Cox, African writers .1997 p). During this period Ngugi threw himself into various activities as writer, editor and organizer.
In 1967, Ngugi return to Kenya as a special lecturer in English at the University of Nairobi and become the first black African Member of the Department, He soon issued his famous proposal along with two other colleagues to abolish the department of African literature and language, because he felt that African Universities needed to emphasize their own national culture.
Ngugi’s attempt at change was only partly successful. Even he resigned from his position to protest against increasing restrictions in academic freedom. He says language as communication and culture are products of each other; communication creates culture: Culture is a means of communication. Language carries culture and culture carries particularly orature and literature the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world. He is looking into language in colonial aspects; the aim of colonialism was to control the people’s wealth. It imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. Ngugi is arguing that colonialism by destroying and deliberately undervaluing of peoples culture, art, dances, history, geography, education, orature, and literature and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer.
Ngugi wa Thiongo demanded to abolish English departments in African countries. In his view language, any language has dual character; it is both a means of communication and a carrier of a culture. He says English is spoken in Britain and Denmark. But for Swedish and Danish people English is only a means of communication with non-Scandinavians. It is not a carrier of their culture. For the British, and particularly the English, it is additionally and inseparably from its use as a tool of communication, a carrier of their culture and history.
He argues that the use of the language in Africa must be understood within the context of the European domination, marginalization and exploitation. The politics of revenge is deeply intertwined within the cultural imperialism represented by Eurocentric domination of Africans and other third world peoples in the past four centuries He says “For colonialism this involved two aspects of the same process. The destruction and the deliberate undervaluing of peoples culture, their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer. The domination of a people’s language by the language of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized” (Decolonizing the mind). His main argument is that English, French, German, and Portuguese are not supposed to be seen as natural languages. They were used as tools of subordination during the colonial era and English language and literature, philosophy, culture and values were carried and elevated to the skies.
African languages and the literature and philosophy they carried were brutally suppressed.” It is very important to cultivate African language is the only one solution to overcome colonial suppression. That’s why Ngugi wa Thiong’o declared in 1986 while Writing his famous book “Decolonizing the mind as “his farewell to English as a vehicle for any of his writings.” He chooses to write Gikuyu and Kiswahili all the way. This was undoubtedly a difficult decision, coming as it did after seventeen years of writing in English. He justified his decision thus:
“I believe that my writing in Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, and an African language is part and parcel of the anti-human relation between the nations and peoples of Africa and those of other continents. For these reasons I for one would like to propose Kiswahili as the language for the world.”
One can understand no language can sustain in front of colonial languages because it suppressed other languages .This languages cannot be cultivated under these conditions. Ngugi calls for widespread usage of African languages as a way to counter their previous suppression. He says Black English developed in the black community as a crucial element in the formation of the cultural identity of Afro-Americans.
Chinua Achebe another major literary figure and African Ideologue from Nigeria defend Ngugi’s argument. These renowned exile writers continue to share a deep love for their continent. Each has suffered by the colonial power; they were being exiled because of their commitments. Achebe wrote a paper entitled “The African writer and the English Language. “He declared “Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling. But for me there is no other choice. I have been given the language and I intend to use it.” “What does he mean when he says that there is no other choice? Achebe means that for practical purposes, European languages have become the languages of the world. This is the painful reality contemporary Africans must face. We, third world countries adopting the tongues of colonizers have no other choice or option.
Ngara has commented, “By 1967 Ngugi felt that the African writer had failed. The failure referred to here was in fact not that of the African writer alone. It resulted from the Failure of the African Bourgeoisie to give meaningful freedom and independence to the broad masses of the people. In less than a decade of their rule, many African leaders proved that they were incapable of shaking off shackles of neo colonialism. The essence of Ngugi’s complaint, therefore was that by failing to challenge this new state of affairs, the African writer was guilty of neglecting his duty to society in general and to the African masses in particular. It was now incumbent upon (the writer) to throw in his lot with the masses once more by confronting the ideology of the new ruling elite. A new rift had surfaced in independent Africa, not between Blacks and whites, But between the haves and have-nots, what Ngugi has called a “horizontal rift dividing the elite from the mass of the people” (35 -35).
Ngugi was imprisoned without charge for almost a year in 1978, and stripped of his position as chair of the department of literature at the University of Nairobi, and has subsequently been obliged to seek exile in the west.
“When I myself used to write plays and novels that were only critical of the racism in the colonial system, I was praised. I was awarded prizes, and my novels were in the syllabus. But when toward the seventies I started writing in a language understood by peasants, and in an idiom understood by them and started questioning the very foundations of imperialism and of foreign domination of Kenyan economy and culture, I was sent to Kamiritu Maximum Security Prison” (Barrel of gun, 65). Since the 1960’s Ngugi has moved to redefine the situation of the writers along the axis of class solidarity rather than Romanticism and mysteries of imagination. He insists that the African writers cannot be assessed separately from those of the other categories of intellectuals and cannot be assessed without addressing the larger and more embracing questions of national culture and political justice.
In other words while both Ngugi and Achebe agree on the basic argument against colonialism their strategies are different. Ngugi embraces the use of African languages and Achebe insists that we’ve no choice but to use western languages. But both are definitely for the decolonizing of the mind. The African has to reconcile both tradition and modernity. He has to bring the past and the present together in order that he may have a bright future.
Bibliography:
Ngugi wa thiongo: Decolonizing the Mind: The politics of language in African literature: Heinemann, 1986.
Ngugi wa thiongo: Moving the Center: The struggle for cultural freedom: .Heinemann, 1993.
Chinua Achebe: Morning yet on creation day: London, Heinemann, 1975.
Killam,G D : An introduction to writings of Ngugi, London, Henimann,1980.
Ngui wa Thiong’o : The River Between: London, Heinemann, 1964.
Ngui wa Thiong’o: Home coming London Heinemann 1972.
Tradition is how we interpret the past; Modernity is how we understand the present and future. Language is a social discourse. In this paper I am attempting to relate How Ngugi wa Thiongo and Chinua Achebe are attempting to bring their post colonial concerns within the social and political discourse of African languages in relation to English. In the process I am attempting to situate tradition and modernity as two forces that can be reconciled through the decolonization of the mind.
The British Philosopher H.B Acton defines tradition as “a belief of practice transmitted from one generation to another and accepted as Authoritative, or differed to, without argument.” Samuel Fleischaker defines tradition as “a set of customs passed down over the generations, and set of beliefs and values endorsing those customs”.
Africans are basically rural, village-conscious and traditional oriented people caught in a state of transition between tradition and modernity. When they are exposed to modern urban culture, one can notice certain ambivalence in their attitude towards alien culture and behavior patterns. We can see these kinds of conflicts in Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiyango’ and women writers like Flora N Wapa and Buchi Emechita. In their novels they go back to the pre-colonial and post colonial situations and record the cultural conflicts with the impact of the west on the native society.
Chinua Achebe expressed his views with respect to the feelings of many African novelists when he said.” We must seek the freedom to express our thoughts and our feelings; even against ourselves without the anxiety that what we say might be taken as evidence against our race. We have stood in the dock for too long pleading and protesting before ruffians and frauds masquerading as disinterested judges “(Achebe “The Black writers Burden” 139.).
African literature as a major segment of commonwealth writing in English, with its phenomenal, growth has attracted the English speaking world outside Africa thus leading to the arrival of Modern African literature in English. The new voice of Africa is countering the western thesis of cultural denigration of the African peoples and their histories. Most of the major African writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi Wa thiyango, Floran n Wapa, Buch Emechita, and others are deeply concerned with the task of restoring character and cultural identity to African society through the discovery of the past in the light of the present.
Writers like Ngugi wa thiyango took a leading role decolonizing the school and University curriculum in Kenya. When he first became a lecturer at Makere University in Uganda, no African books were included in the literature curriculum; not even any in the secondary school syllabus. Here writers like Achebe argued against the assumption that literature is universal but instead saw the value of literature in its detailed and concrete depiction of a community in a particular place and a particular historical moment seeking to understand and create itself. Ngugi also introduced the study of local oral literature into the curriculum and said that these should be central rather than peripheral for students of literature.
In his essay “Return to the roots” he says: “To choose a language is to choose a world, once said a West Indian thinker and although I do not share the assumed primacy of language over the world, the choice of a language already predetermines the answer to the most important question for producers of imaginative literature, for whom do I write? Who is my audience? I f a Kenyan writer writes in English no matter how radical the context of that literature he cannot possibly directly talk to the peasants and workers of Kenya. If a Kenyan acts in a play in English, he cannot possibly be assuming a truly Kenyan audience “
He believes that the African writer’s duty to his people is to nourish the language and culture that exist there. He goes on to say that Kenyan national literature should mostly be produced in the language of various nationalities that make up modern Kenya. Kenyan nation liberation can only get its stamina and blood by utilizing the rich national traditions of culture and history carried by the languages of all the Kenyan nationalities. In Kenya Ngugi led his lives in terrible conditions, contradictions and his experiences have changed his attitude toward his writings. Ngugi has said about his early life:
“My parents were not Christians. But at the same time they did not practice much of the Gikuyu forms of worship. My father was skeptical of religious and magical practices that went with rites of passages and rhythms of the seasons. He believed in land and hard work “(C Brian Cox African writers 1997 p 537). From 1955 to 1959 he attended Alliance High School; that is the country’s most prestigious secondary school. He is the first student from his area of the country to be admitted and he excelled in his studies, during that time he read widely texts of Shakespeare, Shaw, Tennyson, Wordsworth and his own selections from the school library Tolstoy, Dickens, R L Stevenson and Alan Paton. He also gained familiarity with the Bible. The strongest influence in his period was the struggle for independence in the shape of armed resistance of the Mau mau uprising (1952-1956). The Kenyan government declared a state emergency (1952-60) and Ngugi family and village suffered in a number of ways. His brothers joined in the guerrilla movement and another brother was shot dead by the police. This is the main cause we see in his writings. He mentions his brother who fighting in the forest against the colonial powers still found time to send him message to “cling to education” that was provided by the colonialists even though it was an education meant to bolster the image and culture of the empire, thereby creating colonized subjects. Finally he is arguing that Western culture, education has done more harm than good.
Describing this incident Ngugi says “Although I was in the school, I remember quite vividly standing up and trembling with anger saying that Western education could not be equated with the land taken from the peasants by the British. And I remember holding up the fountain pen and giving the example of someone whom comes and takes away food from your mouth and then gives you a fountain pen. I asked the audience: Can you eat a fountain pen? Can you clothe yourself with a fountain pen or shelter yourself with it? ” (C Brian Cox, African writers .1997 p). During this period Ngugi threw himself into various activities as writer, editor and organizer.
In 1967, Ngugi return to Kenya as a special lecturer in English at the University of Nairobi and become the first black African Member of the Department, He soon issued his famous proposal along with two other colleagues to abolish the department of African literature and language, because he felt that African Universities needed to emphasize their own national culture.
Ngugi’s attempt at change was only partly successful. Even he resigned from his position to protest against increasing restrictions in academic freedom. He says language as communication and culture are products of each other; communication creates culture: Culture is a means of communication. Language carries culture and culture carries particularly orature and literature the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world. He is looking into language in colonial aspects; the aim of colonialism was to control the people’s wealth. It imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. Ngugi is arguing that colonialism by destroying and deliberately undervaluing of peoples culture, art, dances, history, geography, education, orature, and literature and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer.
Ngugi wa Thiongo demanded to abolish English departments in African countries. In his view language, any language has dual character; it is both a means of communication and a carrier of a culture. He says English is spoken in Britain and Denmark. But for Swedish and Danish people English is only a means of communication with non-Scandinavians. It is not a carrier of their culture. For the British, and particularly the English, it is additionally and inseparably from its use as a tool of communication, a carrier of their culture and history.
He argues that the use of the language in Africa must be understood within the context of the European domination, marginalization and exploitation. The politics of revenge is deeply intertwined within the cultural imperialism represented by Eurocentric domination of Africans and other third world peoples in the past four centuries He says “For colonialism this involved two aspects of the same process. The destruction and the deliberate undervaluing of peoples culture, their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer. The domination of a people’s language by the language of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized” (Decolonizing the mind). His main argument is that English, French, German, and Portuguese are not supposed to be seen as natural languages. They were used as tools of subordination during the colonial era and English language and literature, philosophy, culture and values were carried and elevated to the skies.
African languages and the literature and philosophy they carried were brutally suppressed.” It is very important to cultivate African language is the only one solution to overcome colonial suppression. That’s why Ngugi wa Thiong’o declared in 1986 while Writing his famous book “Decolonizing the mind as “his farewell to English as a vehicle for any of his writings.” He chooses to write Gikuyu and Kiswahili all the way. This was undoubtedly a difficult decision, coming as it did after seventeen years of writing in English. He justified his decision thus:
“I believe that my writing in Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, and an African language is part and parcel of the anti-human relation between the nations and peoples of Africa and those of other continents. For these reasons I for one would like to propose Kiswahili as the language for the world.”
One can understand no language can sustain in front of colonial languages because it suppressed other languages .This languages cannot be cultivated under these conditions. Ngugi calls for widespread usage of African languages as a way to counter their previous suppression. He says Black English developed in the black community as a crucial element in the formation of the cultural identity of Afro-Americans.
Chinua Achebe another major literary figure and African Ideologue from Nigeria defend Ngugi’s argument. These renowned exile writers continue to share a deep love for their continent. Each has suffered by the colonial power; they were being exiled because of their commitments. Achebe wrote a paper entitled “The African writer and the English Language. “He declared “Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling. But for me there is no other choice. I have been given the language and I intend to use it.” “What does he mean when he says that there is no other choice? Achebe means that for practical purposes, European languages have become the languages of the world. This is the painful reality contemporary Africans must face. We, third world countries adopting the tongues of colonizers have no other choice or option.
Ngara has commented, “By 1967 Ngugi felt that the African writer had failed. The failure referred to here was in fact not that of the African writer alone. It resulted from the Failure of the African Bourgeoisie to give meaningful freedom and independence to the broad masses of the people. In less than a decade of their rule, many African leaders proved that they were incapable of shaking off shackles of neo colonialism. The essence of Ngugi’s complaint, therefore was that by failing to challenge this new state of affairs, the African writer was guilty of neglecting his duty to society in general and to the African masses in particular. It was now incumbent upon (the writer) to throw in his lot with the masses once more by confronting the ideology of the new ruling elite. A new rift had surfaced in independent Africa, not between Blacks and whites, But between the haves and have-nots, what Ngugi has called a “horizontal rift dividing the elite from the mass of the people” (35 -35).
Ngugi was imprisoned without charge for almost a year in 1978, and stripped of his position as chair of the department of literature at the University of Nairobi, and has subsequently been obliged to seek exile in the west.
“When I myself used to write plays and novels that were only critical of the racism in the colonial system, I was praised. I was awarded prizes, and my novels were in the syllabus. But when toward the seventies I started writing in a language understood by peasants, and in an idiom understood by them and started questioning the very foundations of imperialism and of foreign domination of Kenyan economy and culture, I was sent to Kamiritu Maximum Security Prison” (Barrel of gun, 65). Since the 1960’s Ngugi has moved to redefine the situation of the writers along the axis of class solidarity rather than Romanticism and mysteries of imagination. He insists that the African writers cannot be assessed separately from those of the other categories of intellectuals and cannot be assessed without addressing the larger and more embracing questions of national culture and political justice.
In other words while both Ngugi and Achebe agree on the basic argument against colonialism their strategies are different. Ngugi embraces the use of African languages and Achebe insists that we’ve no choice but to use western languages. But both are definitely for the decolonizing of the mind. The African has to reconcile both tradition and modernity. He has to bring the past and the present together in order that he may have a bright future.
Bibliography:
Ngugi wa thiongo: Decolonizing the Mind: The politics of language in African literature: Heinemann, 1986.
Ngugi wa thiongo: Moving the Center: The struggle for cultural freedom: .Heinemann, 1993.
Chinua Achebe: Morning yet on creation day: London, Heinemann, 1975.
Killam,G D : An introduction to writings of Ngugi, London, Henimann,1980.
Ngui wa Thiong’o : The River Between: London, Heinemann, 1964.
Ngui wa Thiong’o: Home coming London Heinemann 1972.
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