African Literature

Literary Background of the African Literature The most notable literary selections are those that capture the life and struggle of the African people. There have been significant struggles that could have been left untouched, but writers choose to face courageous task of answering the call of pen, and begin the process of social healing through literature. Perhaps, it is this brilliant characteristic of African literature that enables it to shine and fulfill one universal function of literature.

The literary tradition of Africa became richer than ever as it gained artistic and sophisticated expression in different languages. Traditional languages became vehicles of cultural thoughts. Poetry, drama, novel, and short story flourished as the literary genres. The people’s struggle to cope with – or oppose – the changing atmosphere of their homelands was dramatically recorder in what is known as African literature.

 NEGRITUDE “A sudden grasp of racial identity and of cultural values and an awareness of the wide discrepancies which existed between the promise of the French system of assimilation and the reality.” The movement's founders looked to Africa to rediscover and rehabilitate the African values that had been erased by French cultural superiority. Negritude writers wrote poetry in French in which they presented African traditions and cultures as antithetical, but equal, to European culture.The journal, according to its founder, was an endeavor "to help define African originality and to hasten its introduction into the modern world.”

ORAL LITERATURE • Oral literature, also called as “orature,” have flourished in Africa for many centuries and take a variety of forms including folk tales, myths, epics, funeral dirges, praise poems, and proverbs.

1. MYTHS • Myths usually explain the interrelationships of all things that exist, and provide for the group and its members a necessary sense of their place in relation to their environment and the forces that order events on earth.

2. EPICS • Epics are elaborate literary forms, usually performed only by experts on special occasions. They often recount the heroic adventures of ancestors.

3. FUNERAL DIRGES • Dirges, chanted during funeral ceremonies, lament the departed, praise his/her memory, and ask for his/her protection.

4. PRAISE POEMS • Praise poems are epithets called out in reference to an object (a person, a town, an animal, a disease, and so on) in celebration of its outstanding qualities and achievements. • Praise poems have a variety of applications and functions. Professional groups often create poems exclusive to them. Prominent chiefs might appoint a professional performer to compile their praise poems and perform them on special occasions. Professional performers of praise poems might also travel from place to place and perform for families or individuals for alms or a small fee.

5. PROVERBS • Proverbs are short, witty or ironic statements, metaphorical in its formulation which aim to communicate a response to a particular situation, to offer advice, or to be persuasive. • It is often employed as a rhetorical device, presenting its speaker as the holder of cultural knowledge or authority. Yet, as much as the proverb looks back to an African culture as its origin and source of authority, it creates that African culture each time it is spoken and used to make sense of immediate problems and occasions.

• WRITTEN LITERATURE - Written literature includes novels, plays, poems, hymns, and tales.

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CENTURY CANONICAL AFRICAN WRITERS

1. Michael Onsando (Kenya) Michael is one of those rare writers whose work– be it poetry, politics, fiction or non-fiction—hits a standard of perfection which many can only dream of. The use of poetry to express the realities of the world around us is almost as old as the tradition of poetry itself, and it is in this that Onsando really excels. There is no topic he does not touch– from political oppression to extra-judicial killings to the words and acts of Kenyan politicians.

STILL (Michael Onsando) ‘And then a word and then a cut and then another. And then pain. And display of pain. Still, it’s okay. It’s a big black Kenyan man. A big black Kenyan man. And the big black Kenyan man is… invincible’

2. Ben Okri OBE - is a Nigerian poet and novelist. Okri is considered one of the foremost African authors in the postmodern and post-colonial traditions, and has been compared favourably to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.

An African Elegy (Ben Okri OBE) We are the miracles that God made To taste the bitter fruit of Time. We are precious. And one day our suffering Will turn into the wonders of the earth. There are things that burn me now Which turn golden when I am happy. Do you see the mystery of our pain? That we bear poverty And are able to sing and dream sweet things And that we never curse the air when it is warm Or the fruit when it tastes so good Or the lights that bounce gently on the waters? We bless things even in our pain. We bless them in silence.

4. Ijeoma Umebinyuo Ijeoma Umebinyuo is a Nigerian author. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria. She is the author of Questions for Ada, her first published collection of prose poems and poems. Her writings have been translated to Portuguese, Turkish, Spanish, Russian and French. In 2016, Ijeoma Umebinyuo was named one of the top ten contemporary poets from sub-sharan Africa by wrtivism.org. She published her first collection of poems titled Questions for Ada in August of 2015. Writing of her personal story,the tribulations of being a woman, being foreign and being loved.

Questions For Ada “So, here you are too foreign for home too foreign for here. Never enough for both.” ― Ijeoma Umebinyuo,

“Stay away from men who peel the skin of other women, forcing you to wear them.” ― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, “America, while you were “1. You must let the pain visit. asleep another woman 2. You must allow it teach you mourned her dead black 3. You must not allow it overstay. lover’s bullet-ridden body, as his baby cried for her father’s (Three routes to healing)” life.” ― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, ― Ijeoma Umebinyuo,

5. Upile Chisala Born in 1994 and raised in Zomba, Malawi, writer Upile Chisala hopes to tell stories from the margins and, through her work, to help others and herself come to terms with pasts, celebrate presents, and confidently dream beautiful futures. Upile Chisala comes a collection of poetry and style exploring the self, joy, blackness, gender, matters of the heart, spirituality, the experience of Migration, and above all, how we survive.

Upile Chisala Short Poems

DYAD ACTIVITY: 1 Whole Instruction: Basing from our discussion on the 21st century African Literature, Create your own Adaptation of a poem with a title, “STRUGGLE”.  4 stanzas  4 lines per stanza  Use rhyming words and figurative languages. Criteria: Creativity -5 points Relation to the theme - 10 points Originality - 5 points TOTAL -20 points