African novels in the classroom

Abstract

Hay, Margaret Jean, ed. African Novels in the Classroom. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2000. $55.00 hc. $29.95 sc. iv + 314 pp. African Novels in the Classroom, edited by Margaret Jean Hay, is an important addition to the existing pedagogical works on the teaching of African literature such as Thomas Hale and Richard Priebe's The Teaching of African Literature (1989) and Elizabeth Gunner's A Handbook for Teaching African Literature (1984). It is also an appropriate follow-up to Misty Bastian and Jane Parpart's Great Ideas for Teaching about Africa (1999). Hale and Priebe's study focuses on students and the problematics of teaching African literature. Bastian and Parpart's edition is, inversely, primarily concerned with the integration of technology and African arts in the discipline and in the undergraduate curriculum, methods of teaching controversial issues, and the objective representation of Africa. Hay's African Novels, likewise, scrutinizes the various ways novels can mirror and humanize the history of Africa even though literature does not provide literal and historical truth (9). Its significance in the field resides in its examination of pedagogical issues. It explores the reasons why [instructors] choose certain novel, what corollary readings they assign, what background information they present in lecture (1). The collection skillfully delineates the themes of the novels, student assignments, study or discussion questions, and student engagement and responses to the literature. Hay's collection of essays on the teaching of African novels is indeed an excellent handbook for teachers who are considering integrating African texts into their courses as well as accomplished Africanist scholars. All instructors of African Literature will find useful pedagogical information on what motivates instructors' choices of texts, teaching methodologies in our contemporary classrooms, and student responses to the sundry texts discussed in the study. The collection-encompassing 24 chapters on prominent Anglophone and Francophone novelists-covers well the diverse issues, writings, and countries of the continent. The authors also attempt to transmit the African world to Western students through Africans' perspectives and to personalize history. Richard Rathbone's chapter on Peter Abrahams's A Wreath for Udomo, for example, does an excellent job of demonstrating how Abrahams's novel constitutes a major component in the processes of historical recovery of cultural identities (8). In this essay he demonstrates how A Wreath for Udomo gives students better understanding of the nationalist movement of Kwame Nkrumah and the socio-political atmosphere of the era. Martin A. Klein also details in his chapter on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart how African literature is port of entry to history. Emmanual Akeamong in Ai Kwei Armah's The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born also affirms the power of literature to lend human dimension to history. Other chapters in this book, such as Janice Spleth's Driss Chraibi's Mother Comes of Age and Beverly Mack's Lindsey Collen's The Rape of Sita, discuss the difficulties of teaching certain literary texts and provide, like the majority of chapters in the book, insightful thematic studies of the African novels and secondary teaching resources. …