AFRICAN LITERATURE

AFRICAN LITERATURE

Africa is the second largest continent after Asia. It contains a complex mosaic of peoples, languages, and cultures. The number of spoken languages in Africa has been variously estimated at between 800 and 1,700. The dominant religion of Northern Africa is Islam, which replaced Christianity in the 7th century and spread west and south across the Sahara and into the equatorial zones. African literature comprises the oral and written forms of the continent, composed in either African languages or foreign ones. The widespread African oral tradition is rich in folktales, myths, riddles, and proverbs that not only convey an imaginative view of the world but also serve a religious, social, and educational function. African literary works have only been produced in the 20th century, most of them after World War II. Unlike Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, black Africa has no ancient traditions of written literature. The earliest examples are Muslim inspired religious writings from North Africa. The first full length narratives in Sesotho, Yoruba, and Ibo were modeled on John Bunyan’s 17th century allegory Pilgrim’s Progress. The first major works in West Africa appeared in the 1950s at the end of the colonial era were primarily concerned with reinterpreting African history from an indigenous point of view that stressed the dignity of the African past. Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart (1952).
AFRICAN WRITERS AND POETS

Wole, Soyinka (Born in Nigeria, July 13, 1934) is the foremost English language poet and certainly the most celebrated playwright of Black Africa. His work earned him the 1986 Nobel Prize for literature. Combining Western dramatic forms with music, dance, and mime of Africa, his plays achieve a ritualistic power and demonstrate the fundamental African concern with ‘‘numinous” boundaries: those between the human and the divine, between life and death.
Chinua Achebe (1930), Nigerian novelist and poet, whose first novel, Things Fall Apart, set the theme for his subsequent work: the impact of Western influences on traditional African society. Achebe’s other works include The Arrow of God (1964), and A Man of the People (1966).
John Peer Clark, a Nigerian poet, dramatist, and literary critic (born April 6, 1935), contributed significantly to the Nigerian renaissance of the late 50s and early 60s. his interest in collecting traditional African oral literature has resulted in such plays as Ozidi (1966), based on an Ijaw epic, and Song of a Goat (1961). Representative of his poetry is the volume, a Decade of Tongues.
James Ngugi Wa Thiong’ O (born in Kenya, January 5, 1938) is considered the most important East African novelist. His first two novels, Weep Not, Child (1954) and The River Between (1965, concern the impact of colonialism, Christianity, and rebellion on the East African peoples.

POETRY

Africa
David Diop

Africa, my Africa.
Africa of proud warriors on ancestral savannahs,
Africa that my grandmother sings.
On the bank of her distant river,
I have never known you
But my face is full of your blood,
Your beautiful black blood which waters the wide fields.

The blood of your sweat,
The sweat of your work,
The work of your slavery,
The slavery of your children,
Africa, tell me, Africa,

Is this really you? This back which is bent
And breaks under the load of insult,
This back trembling with red weals
Which says “yes” to the whip of the hot roads of noon.

Thus, gravely a voice replies to me,
Impetuous son, that tree robust and young,
That tree over there
Splendidly alone amidst white and faded flowers
That is Africa, your Africa which grows
Grows patiently, obstinately
And whose fruit little by little learn
The bitter taste of liberty.

AFRICAN
LITERATURE