Debating the language of African literature: Ethiopian contributions

Abstract

This essay recapitulates a discussion that appeared in a series of articles in the early 1980s in Yekatit, an Ethiopian periodical, in which three leading Ethiopian literary critics – Asfaw Damte, Sahle Sellassie Berhane-Mariam, and Menghistu Lemma – debate whether African national literatures may be written in non-African languages. Their observations and arguments, made with an awareness of the larger debate that was occurring elsewhere on the continent, offer insights on the topic from a distinctively Ethiopian perspective. That perspective is worthy of our attention for two reasons. First, it serves as a noteworthy example of the nature of Ethiopian literary critical activity during this period, which has been too often overlooked in African studies. Second, the historical perspective offered by this debate, now more than two decades old, offers fruitful background for considering the future directions of Ethiopian literatures.