24086 results in Literary texts
Frontmatter
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp i-vi
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‘Ties that Gag’ (Short Story)
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- By Felicia Moh
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp 111-118
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Summary
They survived. Malaria that attacked each person at least once in every three months. They survived. Drinking water from the muddy brown pond which served as the community's source of water; water that had guinea worm eggs which matured into live worms as they entered the human system. They survived measles, whooping cough, and countless cases of flu brought about by lack of immunization. They survived under-nutrition and a heavily carbohydrate-based diet. Egg was for adults, and any child that was raised eating eggs would steal in the future. They survived. Eating rice and stew only on Sundays. Because Sunday was a special day and they were a Christian family that went to church. After church, Mama would make rice and stew with tripe of cow and hides and skin. As the ‘things’ within the stew were shared according to seniority, you dared not choose out of turn or eat yours immediately. You wore the ‘towel’ on your finger and ran out to show other children the great feast that happened in your home. They survived the chiggers that burrowed into their shoeless feet as they did the ‘five-kilometre’ trek to their school and back every day. As Mama tenderly cut open the affected toe to pick out the flea, she rubbed hot sizzling oil into the wound and put a plaster on it. That foot must be protected from stones and from getting contaminated. Many a child died from tetanus infection. They survived poverty. So how did they not survive running the same prosperous business they had both contributed to nurturing?
They enjoyed the moonlight games and the tropical rains. They would run into the rain naked, glad that they could have a full bath without the hassle of fetching the water. They felt the biting wind and cold of the harmattan season when one would stand for several minutes wishing the cold water could miraculously turn to warm water before using it to bathe. But bath in the cold water, they must. So they began by testing a little with the feet and working up gradually to the head. That is if Kachi or Ogeri didn't mischievously pour some ice-cold water on them from behind.
Uche and Azu were born eight years apart to Papa and Mama Mkpume. Uche was the older. Between them were two sisters; Kachi and Ogeri.
Reclaiming the Muted Voices of Xhosa Literature: A Personal Testament
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- By Jeff Opland
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp 77-92
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Summary
A proper history of literature in the Xhosa language of South Africa has yet to be written. The majority of the few attempts at a coherent narrative tend to commence with original literature published in book form in the first decade of the twentieth century, usually with H.M Ndawo's novel Uhambo lukaGqoboka in 1909. My own research has served to extend the range of literary expression in Xhosa backwards, to 1837 in the case of literature in print, with the appearance of the first periodical, Umshumayeli wendaba, and potentially further still in the case of traditions of oral poetry, izibongo. What follows is a brief account of my journey, and its accomplishments in restoring the voices and reputations of major authors overlooked by African literature scholars in the past as well as in the present.
My journey as a scholar began with Arts and Science degrees in English and Mathematics from the University of Cape Town. Attracted by pre-Conquest English literature, I proceeded to MA and PhD degrees; my doctoral dissertation compared the South Slavic, Homeric, and Xhosa traditions of oral poetry, expressing my growing interest in the development of literatures from the oral to the written state. The Xhosa sections drew on fieldwork with Xhosa oral poets, iimbongi, commencing in 1969. The fieldwork and collection of oral poetry, izibongo, were initially designed to shed light on preliterate Anglo-Saxon poetry, but in time my focus shifted to the study and collection of oral Xhosa izibongo in its own right, an enterprise that continued through to 1988. As an adjunct to this research, I began to focus on izibongo in traditional form in published books, and this focus in turn extended in time to the study and collection of Xhosa poetry, and literature in general, in vernacular periodicals. My field recordings of oral performances of izibongo, and interviews with over a hundred iimbongi, together with books in Xhosa and copies of Xhosa literature culled from ephemeral publications, form the core of The Opland Collection of Xhosa Literature.
With the exception of A.C. Jordan's unfinished series of twelve articles, published in Africa South between 1957 and 1960 under the title ‘Towards an African Literature’, scant attention had been paid to newspapers as a vehicle of Xhosa literature. The copies of newspaper literature in my Collection were culled from surviving Xhosa or multilingual periodicals published between 1837 and the mid-1950s.
Two Poems
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp 107-108
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Summary
EONS BEFORE
eons before
we were the gods
when the world was a baby
then we thought all we did
were godly
in our ignorance
we troubled the masses
who we thought
had no fire
eons during
they were the gods
and outwards into spacelessness
they expelled us
nothing remained of us
of them
in our compound complexity
we and they felt
godly
eons after
a space less nothingness
devoid of all
we and they
existless
nothing floats
eons in eons
God
in Its all knowingness
tested we and they
we and they failed
fell
but
a light shines
and …
WHAT!?
it was the year
it flew
and we stood
agaped
it was our life
it went
and we watched
stunned
it was our country
it burnt
and we gaped
perplexed
it was our soul
it fried
and we metamorphosed
nothingness
Remembering Gerald Moore
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- By James Gibbs
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp 146-150
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Summary
Gerald Moore, a formidable, industrious, ubiquitous, pioneering critic, was involved in ‘the scramble for African literature’ and produced critical writing on various African authors that was published (mostly) by British publishers ‘staking claims’ in the field of African literature. Below, I have begun to draw attention to some of the projects he was involved with, and I have tried to identify some of those benign and malign presences, fairy godmothers or greedy vultures, that clustered around the ‘cradles of the new literatures’. Along the way, I take note of conferences funded by the CIA that Moore attended during the early 1960s and imply that it is misleading to regard the conference of ‘writers of English expression’ held at Makerere in 1962 as simply a ‘Writers Conference’. This is because a glance at the list of those present and a look at some of the encounters that took place at that conference reveal how essential it was that various ‘agents’ were also present. Neglected by organizers of ‘anniversary conferences’, Moore would have had important insights to share with those interested in the 1962 Conference. He had been a privileged observer of the emergence of African literature and was aware how very vigorously it was promoted in English and French.
In 1963, Oxford University Press published Moore's pioneering Seven African Writers. It appeared in the Three Crowns series and showed him writing with authority on a clutch of the authors who were becoming familiar to those interested in what Africans had to say: Leopold Senghor, David Diop, Camara Laye, Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, Mongo Beti, and Ezekiel Mphahlele. Some nine years later, Evans Brothers turned to Moore as a groundbreaking critic and published his monograph on Wole Soyinka. This was the first title in their ‘Modern African Writers’ series, and in it Moore set the tone for that series both implicitly and explicitly. The book embodied his approach, and his prefatory essay about the series indicated how he expected it would develop.
Moore began that essay by referring to the ‘initial excitement and misunderstanding surrounding African literature in English and French’ and went on to draw attention to the ‘small but growing number of writers who may be called “serious”’. He then anticipated that the MAW Series would be varied in approach. (‘No single school or method of criticism will be favoured in the selection of contributors.’)
Reviews
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 151-162
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Summary
Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Do Not Burn My Bones and Other Stories
Lagos State: Purple Shelves Publishers, 2022, 133 pp. $14.99
ISBN 9789789998739, paperback
As an educationist, theorist, and a creative writer, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo offers transitions and doorways from the past to the present in her incorporation of Igbo traditional knowledge systems in her works of fiction. But she is not negligent of the future. Her disposition is tripartite, in that she leans on the past to influence the present and construct the framework for a better future. This is unequivocally exemplified in her formulation of the thought-provoking Snail Sense Feminism – a feminist theory that builds on Igbo knowledge systems and worldview to engage with and raise questions about gender inequality and influence in our present while setting the roadmap for the future. Her scintillating trilogy – The Last of The Strong Ones (1996), House of Symbols (2001), and Children of The Eagle (2002) – lends credence to this as she challenges patriarchal assumptions and inscribes feminism as the necessary panacea to an ailing, modern nation state.
In Do Not Burn My Bones and Other Stories (hereafter referred to as DNBMB), the writer continues her journey with the short fiction genre that started with Rhythms of Life, Stories of Modern Nigeria (1992) and produced over five collections of shorts. Although not her most prolific, the short story genre holds a pivotal position in Adimora-Ezeigbo's oeuvre as it avails the writer a wide canvass to tackle topical issues of social relevance and social consciousness in Nigeria and beyond. Written in the thick of the Coronavirus pandemic, the author in its Preface notes that the collection ‘is a visible result of [her] determination to keep writing despite the multiple challenges’ (ix) of surviving Nigeria and the times. Most of the stories in this collection are set in Nigeria against the backdrop of poverty, violence, and insecurity, gender-based violence, inequality, and societal malformation. The few stories that are set in the UK centre on varied migrant experiences.
DNBMB is made up of thirteen stories. The opener sets the tone for the entire collection with a strong female lead Mabel Duru, the Iron Lady. In this human entanglement story, the reader is left with the nagging feeling that whoever crosses the Iron Lady does not live to tell the tale.
Decolonizing Trauma Studies: The Recognition-Solidarity Nexus in Uwem Akpan's Say You’re One of Them
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp 132-144
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Summary
DECOLONIZING TRAUMA STUDIES
Given that various African states have witnessed different forms of social and political unrest since independence, it is not surprising that the representation of violence remains a central theme in African literary imagination. This article focuses on Uwem Akpan's representation of postcolonial conflict in his collection of short stories, Say You’re One of Them. Analysing three stories from the collection, I draw from postcolonial trauma studies to show the devastating effects of violence in African societies, and how such violence affects various African states. The article, however, argues for the need for a decolonized trauma studies perspective in analysing traumatic experiences in postcolonial societies. I will offer the recognition-solidarity nexus as an essential perspective in decolonial trauma discourse critical to understanding the specific socio-political dynamics that African writers, like Uwem Akpan, articulate.
The project builds on the work of postcolonial critics, such as Stef Craps, who have critiqued the traditional trauma theory for imposing a Western understanding of trauma on other cultures, privileging the individual manifestation of trauma, as well as restricting the trauma canon to Euro-American contexts. Craps argues that the trauma theory of the 1990s, with its firm grounding in Freudian psychoanalysis and poststructuralist deconstruction, should be radically revised. He contends that the traumas of non-Western or minority groups must be acknowledged ‘on their own terms’ and ‘for their own sake’ (Craps, Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds 19). Should trauma theory refuse to decolonize, Craps warns, it may risk ‘assisting in the perpetuation of the very beliefs, practices, and structures that maintain existing injustices and inequalities’ that are contrary to the field's promise of promoting cross-cultural solidarity (2).
This article agrees with Craps that trauma theory should be ‘reshaped, resituated, and redirected so as to foster attunement to previously unheard suffering’ (37). I would add, though, that its areas of analysis should equally be extended by broadening the postcolonial trauma canon. Rather than a continued obsession with colonial trauma, most exemplified in the writing-back model, Akpan foregrounds the necessity for trauma critics to pay attention to the ways postcolonial writers engage with the plurality of traumatic encounters in the postcolony.
Contents
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp vii-x
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Three Poems
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp 97-99
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Summary
LOCKDOWN IN BIAFRA
When silence echoes loudly
lips droop in shame
words are afraid to perch
eyelids battle the unseen
ears become an open garbage heap
that stink from gossip
lies spread-eagled their legs
the unborn is fated to live
in the womb of maggots and
chemistry
let me wallow in silence
covered with akwete
its whiteness hide my coal-skin
I must chew the cud
and vomit a forest of nostalgia
coal lights a fire that burns
in regiments
I search for truth in between your testicles
clawing my white nails
frozen by years of rejection
my body is a temple
naked and desirable
to beckon the wanderer to explain
why do my roots sag on both sides
why did the ofo tree in an embrace
with me uncover my past?
I am made of more. pure
bronze and fired clay
kola and the aftertaste of bitter-leaf
I am the dot, the locus
of a circle
the mother of pain and joy
boxed into the center of cowards
hiding behind bandits, herds, and men
I am Igbo, the land of
of oracles and thunder
the beginning of the passage
the yearning for the caves and hills
the incantations of the flute
the struggle of rivers flowing ceaselessly
in the veins of the earth to our roots
and fronds dripping blood
give me freedom like a wrapper
without strings
loose at both ends.
THE PRISON DOOR
I know your name
but can't remember
why the oxen fit not the yoke
nor the chariot its rider
Shall I call you a country
when oceans run into streams
Elephants battle trees for space.
The trees fall. Grasses die from
too many rain-tears. The eyes are worn out
like moth-eaten clothes
Shall I call thee a country
in nets and traps. Eagles
migrate to higher rocks
ravished by endless yearning for crumbs
from the master's table.
African Literature in African Languages
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Chiji Akọma
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- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023
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Interrogates and explores African literature in African languages today, and the continuing interfaces between works in indigenous languages and those written in European languages or languages of colonizers.
‘Pulse on Martin Niemöller’ (Poem)
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp 104-106
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Summary
Pastor Niemöller sang of those who kept quiet
When peddlers of terror came for Jews, Socialists, trade unionists
And also the Communists, but those to speak out kept mum – because
They were not one of the victims of circumstances, until they came
For them and no one was left to speak for them,
Then they came for black people
Razing them up through Caribbean enslavement
And then African colonialism before having
Them on the universal slaughter-slab of Neo-
Colonialism – but we all kept quiet as if we were mute
Because we are not black in our skins,
Then they came for Arabs of Muslim persuasion
Hunting them out from their dens of faith and worship
On charges of being terror-peddlers, hunting them down
To Guantanamo bay for detention without trial in sight –
But we kept quiet because we are not Arabs nor Muslims,
Then the Israelis came for the Palestinians, dishing them
With terror of full-sized apartheid perfectly dehumanizing
All Palestinian populations on the streets of Jerusalem –
But we kept quiet because we are not non-Israelis in Gaza,
Then the Chinese came for Uighur Muslims, lynching them
With brutality of megalithic station, dreaming to recreate them
Into new human species acceptable for China's Neighbourhood
But all was done in most cruel manner devoid of modern logic –
But we kept quiet because we are not Uighur Muslims,
Then they came for migrant workers, the workers running away from war
And ecological as well social climate unfit for human habitation
But labelled illegal migrants in the style of giving a dog a bad name
For sanctified flogging, thrashing and pummelling with hostility –
But we kept quiet because we are not those looking for a new home,
Then they came for African-Americans, kneeling on their necks
Until they can't breathe for their insignificant black lives
As if black lives don't matter in the white world of America –
But we kept quiet and very aloof from demos of black-lives matter
We backed-off because we have never had a knee of a policeman on our necks,
Then post-colonial politics of Africa came for the powerless and
Poor citizens, looting from them in exchange of mediocrous life in all avenues
Forcing the people down the hell-hole of poverty, want, disease
And collective despair.
Introduction: African Literature in African Languages: Orality and the Burden of Modernity
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 1-12
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Summary
A year after the much-celebrated ‘Conference of African Writers of English Expression’, which took place in Uganda in 1962, Obiajunwa Wali published a scathing article, ‘The Dead End of African Literature?’ in the journal Transition, in which he criticized the privileging of African literatures written in European languages over those in indigenous African languages, as evidenced by the category of African writers invited to the conference. Much has been made of his problematic attempt to define African literature and prescribe texts that fit the form, but Wali threw an important challenge to his readers towards the end of his short essay, stating: ‘What one would like future conferences on African literature to devote time to, is the all-important problem of African writing in African languages, and all its implications for the development of a truly African sensibility’ (Transition, 10 September 1963: 14). Central to this debate on the politics of language in African literature are two canonical essays by two of Africa's foremost novelists, ‘The African Writer and the English Language’ by Chinua Achebe and ‘The Language of African Literature’ by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. These two texts, to which we shall return later, have come to represent, broadly, the two ‘tendencies’ writers and scholars of African literatures exhibit when debates about the languages of African literature are wont to erupt.
Sixty years have passed since that historic Makerere University conference in which indigenous African language literatures were conspicuously cast aside for those written in English or French. In the intervening years, discursive approaches such as postcolonialism, postmodernism, and world literature (Damrosch; Prendergast) have compounded the debate and stretched the binary/dichotomy between African (oral) literatures in indigenous languages and ‘modern’ African literatures in European languages or languages of the colonizers. Given the renewed interest in this abiding question of the language of African literatures in the context of decoloniality and the promotion of prizes to recognize and encourage writing in African languages and to kindle translation from, between, and into African languages, exemplified by the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature (see https://kiswahiliprize.cornell.edu), it is pertinent to return to Wali's submission and ask: What is the state of African literatures in African languages today?
The Swahili Mtapta: Exploring Translation in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp 26-37
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Summary
In Abdulrazak Gurnah's novel, Paradise, a column that includes a German colonial officer and his chief askari (soldier) enters Chatu's town in Manyema land, hundreds of miles from the East African coast. The chief askari, who is fluent in Kiswahili, translates a complaint by Uncle Aziz, an unscrupulous merchant, whose goods he claims were stolen by Chatu. Chatu is summoned, and we have a fantastic linguistic performance where ‘the chief askari translated the European's words for Chatu, and Nyundo translated the askari's words for the merchant’ (170). All this takes place while Chatu is distracted by the physique of the German officer, who is a ‘red man with hair growing out of his ears’ (170) who, he believes, eats metal. During this performance, Nyundo, the man that the column depends upon for translation, shouts out what everyone is saying and enjoys the cheers from the crowd. He is in his element.
A few days prior to that, he had struggled to convey what he was meant to and was looked at with suspicion and mistrust by all those who depended on his ‘voice’. Nyundo is the translator. He understands most of the Bantu languages spoken in the area where they are trying to trade, hence when the caravan arrives in Chatu's land, he has to accompany them to see the chief, but ‘the men teased him that he was making up the translations as he went along’ (155). He is a reflection of the old adage, ‘traduttore, traditore’, ‘translator, traitor’. Nyundo often struggles with the task of bringing across the full depth of context, meaning and emotions carried in the original utterances. He struggles to deliver everyone's words and finds himself at the centre of conversations and debates where all sides are suspicious of him. It is also implied that he is abbreviating and omitting original statements for he ‘spoke for only a few moments to Chatu's minutes’, effectively displaying loss in translation. He also struggles to deliver everyone's words hence all are suspicious of him. It is hard for him to remain objective as a translator; for example, following the beating that he endured under the caravan overseer, Mnyapara, he holds a grudge and divulges this to Chatu, the chief, who then orders that Mnyapara gets beaten almost to death.
Ikponmwosa Osemwegie's Ọrọ Epic and Translation: The Past and Prospects of Edo Literature
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp 38-48
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Summary
This article originates from a book project on Ikponmwosa Osemwegie, an understudied Edo-language epic poet who started writing in the mid-twentieth century, which culminated in Macmillan's publication of his collection of poetry, Poems in Bini, in 1965. In this article, I offer insights into the book project as a way of shedding light on the work of Osemwegie and the challenges of exploring some aspects of African literature in indigenous languages – with the Edo language of southern Nigeria as a case study.
Interestingly, it was the determination of concerned Edo people to preserve and transmit their language, history, and culture to their children (in the face of hostile Christian missionary work) in written forms that produced Ikponmwosa Osemwegie, his poems, including Ọrọ: An Epic of the Benin-Idah War, and plays in the Edo language. My interest goes beyond the English translation of Ọrọ and some other poems of Osemwegie; I’m also interested in bringing to the non-Edo or English readers the rich poetry, history, and culture of the Edo people, as well as the thoughts of Osemwegie. Apart from Nevadomsky's introduction and description of Aikay as Nevadomsky used to call him, the book also republishes a long-forgotten review of Osemwegie's Poems in Bini, done by one of his old acquaintances, Professor Dan Ben-Amos, in Nigeria Magazine in 1967. An addition is a long interview he granted me in 1997, published in the Benin Studies Newsletter of the Institute for Benin Studies. The interview provides a more detailed background to Osemwegie's artistic career and his contributions to enriching the cultural life of the Edo people, which he spent his life documenting and promoting.
Apart from Osemwegie's works, review, and interview, Nevadomsky also gives context to the subject matter of the á»ro epic by recounting some aspects of the Benin-Idah war. It ventures into an interpretation of the oral traditions of the war among the Benins, including the role of women in war, or what he called a hagiography of Iyoba (Queen Mother) Idia. The weaponry or armaments of Benin war-making are also given attention, while the art and ceremonial rites the war birthed in Benin culture are not left out. It concludes with an epilogue on poetry and social history in the imagination of social memory. This book, it is hoped, will be read with profit, reawaken interest in Edo literature, and open new vistas for future research.
‘A People's Firewood Cooks for Them’: The Contextual Prosody of Igbo Mask Poetry and Mbem Poetics
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
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- 19 December 2023, pp 64-76
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
The common view that most poetry is in verse but not all verse is poetry is largely factual, especially when minor and basic constructs are considered, such as visual and concrete markers (graphology, page layout, grammar, etc). The Igbo mbem mmọnwụ (ancestral mask chants) is laden with the basic features that constitute traditional Igbo poetry. It encapsulates the Igbo essence of tradition, ontology, and belief system in rhythmical verse and in a contextually cryptic nature that appeals to universality and excites the imagination, as all good poetry does. Proof of such essence in poetry is the focus of this article, such that despite and beyond the maxim of ‘a people's firewood’ contextualization, a universalist comprehension, rooting, and relevance, as a direct result of a general and acceptable test of what really constitutes poetry, is the ultimate goal. The construct of ‘a people's firewood’ is about a considerable degree of sustenance and adaptations of a people over time in most aspects of life for their continued existence and, in this context, it is encapsulated in a proverb, as will be seen later. The quest for proof is akin to Matthew Arnold's rejection of historical and personal estimates in favour of the real by the application of the touchstone theory in his guide for the sublime and ‘high seriousness’ in quality poetry (‘The Study of Poetry’). There is truth in James Reeves’ conviction that the primary purpose of poetry is magical. For him, magical rituals, especially connected to birth, survival, and death, are accompanied by words embedded in magical formulas and ‘are often accompanied by music and dancing. The words supply an indispensable intellectual element in what is largely a physical activity’ (Understanding Poetry 8). The mystery of poetry that prevents a quick loss of fascination lies in constructs such as these.
THE IGBO ANCESTRAL MASK AND THE ‘FIREWOOD’ CONSTRUCT
Igbo mask origins are embodied in oral tradition handed through down generations, thereby making appropriate written dating impossible; with its dateless and ancient origins, it is an embodiment of magic and mystery. This provides the element of ancestral mystique as salient flavour to its narratives and poetic chants.
Four Poems
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 100-103
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Summary
AMBITIOUS
Knocking down and holding up
Loving here and hating there
Taking this and giving that
Whether bind or whether tear
Scurry scurry goes the rat
All in a hurry man keeps up
For you the obscure pumping heart
Ambition
Goldie treasures all for you
Think no leisure but your bread?
Can't you see the apian way?
All in that poor little head
That has to lead to goodies’ way
See how it is killing you
You that craved the path you led
Ambitious
Sometimes it's all so very vague
How alien turns the haven you draft?
How brutally they consume you?
What you create, your little craft
Will consume or harbour you?
You feel the ache, it's like a plague
Of experience you have a raft
Content !
SHAKE IT OFF
What's it?
Sour through the bone
What bone?
The big N’s, queen of the savannah's spinal
Say it is a cancer
Gazelles gadding about the game
Disobeying their curfew at self expense
Buffalos beckoned by butchers
Losing sleep on account of the lords
Rein doe rocking their rear
Regurgitating what predators ate
Greyhounds guarding the ghouls in grunt
Standing to get their pat, a bone and a kick
Falcons fresh from Florence
Egging on their young through their avian routes
Calves come from common castrate camps
Groveling in companies for seeds of own testes
Night birds in nests of nestlings unknown
Neglecting nigh their forts, these they pick to foster-sit
Capons careful to be called cubs
Filling up their cranky core with crying bloods
Ducks daring not to shake as if they are of rubber
Making them stores of stolen grains to earn some plume
And these, and those, and name it.
‘Wild Grief’ (Poem)
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- By Aisha Umar
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 109-110
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Summary
The wilderness of my heart
Runs races of yearnings
Down the road of expectations
On the eve of hopeful disappointment.
The cascade of pain
Erodes my gullible hope
For a dream rewind.
I’m not a friend of grief
for grief is it, that strips me of joy.
The world, adorned in the regalia of grief
Crawls blindly on me
Searching for what never will be
Meaning is meaningless to me
Like a dry river is to fish.
My knowledge fails my knowing
My sight, blurred
Steps failing.
This lonely path I tread unaccompanied,
But for my painful smiles
A stranger you are to my pain
For you reap from the gains of my pain
Leaving in your wake.
The debris of your inequities,
My thorny steps to walk.
A lone friend in majority you were,
You held my hands,
As I throttle through the red sea of life
Then,
You let go your grip
Embarking on an endless journey,
You alone chose to travel
No goodbyes
But the reality of your present absence
All there is left
Are the Debris of your heart
The Echoes of your laughter
The gaiety of your steps
The glow of your smile
The benevolence of your hands
No sired possession
Nor decent siblings
Instead, scavengers of your wealth
Claiming legality to what you hold dear
With professed pain, but gladdened hearts
They scavenge your wealth and world
Paying no attention to the bell of time.
There's no absolution to this pain
The epiphany of your departure,
Tribute
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
-
- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 145-145
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Pictures of Materialism in the Benin Ecological Worldview: Eco-Critical Poems of Osemwengie Ero
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- By Kola Eke, Edafe Mukoro
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 14-25
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Summary
African eco-criticism is an offshoot of environmental literature and environmentalism in general, which tends to focus mainly on Western epistemology rooted in the environmental justice movement and postcolonial eco-criticism. The idea of African eco-criticism serves as a call to rethink Western ideology concerning the preservation of the environment. While African eco-criticism is not opposed to the continuance of environmental discourses, nonetheless, it is important to point out that the African view concerning environmental materialism has always recognized the importance and interdependence of the human and beyond-human worlds. The culture, traditions and religious sensibilities of Africans have always maintained a common relationship between humans and the ecological surroundings and how these materialisms in varying degrees expand the physical and spiritual sensibilities of the people. In this light, this article shows the connections between eco-criticism, eco-philosophy and spiritual materialism that are consistent with Africans and the appreciation of nature. This ‘proximity’, to quote the word of Cajetan Iheka (‘Naturalizing Africa’ 2), remains the forte of African eco-criticism within the diverse worlds of ecological ecosystems.
Emmanuel Egya, in looking at the idea of African eco-criticism, considers it as
based on specific natural, cultural and social particularities of the continent – more specifically, those of Sub-Saharan Africa, … [it] recognize(s) the commonalities between the natural and human worlds that have been understood to exist in Africa … it is rather a call to let the continent speak for itself in discourses about the connections between the human and the non-human, and between literature and ecology.
(67)Egya's position on African eco-criticism recognizes the interface between nature, culture and African sensibilities. In fact, in his language, he refers to these intimations as the ‘social particularities of the continent’. Here he draws our attention to the unique environmental characteristics that define Africans, especially ‘those of Sub-Saharan’ extractions who exhibit common eco-critical dispositions. The critic's ideas align with the responses of Africans towards the appreciation of environmental materialisms in the form of trees, leaves, animals, rivers (water), earth (sand), rocks, stones, cowries, the moon, the sun, and their associated relationship with the human and beyond-human world of spirits – who are in themselves considered as material agents within the ecosystem. As John Mbiti puts it, a ‘majority of peoples (Africans) hold that the spirits dwell in the woods, bush, forest, rivers, mountains… and often these are associated with natural phenomena or objects’ (African Religions and Philosophy 80).
Literary Supplement Four Poems
- General editor Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
- Edited by Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Chiji Akọma, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- African Literature in African Languages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 93-93
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