Building the African Novel on Quick sand: Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership

Abstract

African literary criticism, while useful as a postcolonial tool, has failed the African literary tradition on two fronts: by periodizing the African literary tradition as Achebe to Adichie, leaving out early South African Writing, diaspora African literature, and literature in African languages; and by privileging the African realist political novel in English, leaving behind other genres such as popular and science fictions. Thinking through questions of language, identity, and ownership, Mukoma Wa Ngugi makes the argument for reading early South African Literature (late 1800s–early1940s) within the African literary tradition by reading it alongside the literature of decolonization (1950s–1980s) and contemporary transnational literature (1990s–present). He questions an African literary criticism that ignores its literary history while confining African literature to the Makerere generation of writers and the realist political novel in English.