African Writers (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: African Writers Ode S. Ogede (bio) African Writers, ed. C. Brian Cox. New York: Scribner’s, 1997. 2 vols. xxvii + 507 pp. ISBN 0-684-19771-5 and o-684-19772-3. $90.00 per volume. African literature may have moved beyond what Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in a charitable mood, once termed “defensive postures” (“Tell Me, Sir, . . .,” PMLA 105.1 [1990]: 11). But while those of us active in the field may no longer feel the need to justify our existence, the field as a whole is yet to gain widespread acceptance, especially among the general reading public here in the West, where, because the knowledge of those outside our field has not progressed much beyond a few canonized authors or a limited number of titles, we still encounter difficulty in finding publication outlets. It is against the background of these disquieting realities that editor C. Brian Cox’s effort to promote the work of African writers gains its [End Page 186] significance. Cox earns hearty cheers not only for finding a competent publisher that is willing to lend an ear, but also for finding an eclectic team of scholars with the requisite learning and skill to demonstrate the great artistic talents the writers put on display. Roger Allen, Martin Banham, Charles Bonn, Guy Dugas, John Fletcher, Gareth Griffiths, Abiola Irele, G. D. Killam, Dan Kunene, Bernth Lindfors, Obi Maduakor, Oyekan Owomoyela, and Christopher Smith are among the eminent contributors to his two-volume anthology. Writing with the vigor and elan that readers have come to associate with their work, these contributors show convincingly the excitement that comes with reading African writing. The volume set also features work by such outstanding critics as Funso Aiyejina, James Gibbs, Robert Cancel, Shirley Crew, Cherry Clayton, Rosemary Colmer, John D. Conteh-Morgan, Chris Dunton, Andrew Peek, Sheila Roberts, Derek Wright, and Chantal Zabus, who, in brilliant original essays the editor deliberately commissioned, analyze the majority of the close to seventy writers represented. In anthologies of African writing, certain names have now become constant and they recur once again in this one: Achebe, Aidoo, Armah, al-Shabbi, al-Saadawi, Awoonor, Ba, Beti, Brutus, Clark, Coetzee, Dib, Farah, Gordimer, La Guma, Head, Honwana, Idris, Jacobson, Kateb, Laye, Lessing, Mphahlele, Nawal, Neto, Ngugi, Okigbo, Oyono, Pepetela, p’Bitek, Rotimi, Schreiner, Sembène, Senghor, Soyinka, Tutuola, Van der Post, Yacine, and Vieira. Many of these authors, who come from different parts of Africa and write in such different languages as English, French, and Portuguese as well as Arabic and Afrikaans, have hitherto been presented in isolation in previous anthologies. This is one of the few studies to bring them all together under a volume set. As Arab writers from North Africa and black and white authors from South Africa are made to rub shoulders with their colleagues from south of the Sahara, we witness the disintegration of the old walls of segregation, with the shared experience of colonial inheritance forming the central point of unity. The essays, which offer ample proof of the great contribution African literature has made to the literatures of the world in the three main genres—drama, poetry, and prose fiction—will definitely speed up and solidify its popularization and what once were writers and writings in a marginalized field now have an improved chance to be better known. Some readers might argue in favor of more diversification by stating that after a while, when such familiar names are recycled over and over again, they become repetitive. It may well be that the best way to highlight the strengths of a living literary tradition is not simply to display its old roots but to expose its younger ones, but this volume is an exception that disproves the case. The essays on the familiar figures represented here are captivating not because they necessarily deal with heretofore unexamined areas, but because they restate even the usual ones with unusual freshness. Each entry laconically presents illuminating data on the writer’s background and training, traces the evolution of the writer’s work by placing it in its sociopolitical context, discusses the writer’s literary significance by giving a systematic elaboration of the entire...