Papa's got a brand new bag: current trends in African English fiction

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper examines some new trends in African English creative writing as they are manifest in the following novels: The Gunny Sack by M. G. Vassanji (1989); To Every Birth Its Blood by Mongane Serote (1990); Matigari by Ngũg? wa Thiong'o (1989); The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar by Syl Cheney‐Coker (1990); and The General Is Up by Peter Nazareth (1991). There are some major differences between African English novels written just before and after the end of colonialism. Once they rejected what came from outside Africa as alien and alienating. That rejection is no more true: current African fiction includes a whole range of characters and ideas that would have been rejected once as alien. In thematic terms new African fiction embraces everything; being half‐caste is positive; writing about the past is a way of transforming it. The stylistic experimentation also uses new devices drawing from comics and the radio (see Nazareth, 1993). The novels examined in this paper bring the oral and written tradition together and give birth to the worlds of all the people. The paper provides a critical summary of recent trends in the African variety of literature in English.