Requiems for Revolutions: Race-Sex Archetypes in Two African Novels

Abstract

Nuruddin Farah's A Naked Needle (1976), and Ayi Kwei Armah's Why Are We So Blest? (1972), are both novels set in failing revolutions in postcolonial states, one a decade after independence and the other immediately in its wake. They are also novels that in their treatment of racially mixed marriages and relationships make considerable play, either of a serious or satiric kind, with race-sex archetypes inherited from colonialism. This article will attempt to determine the value die authors attach to the latter paradigms and what connection they have, if any, with the process of decline. Koschin, die mercurial narrator of Farah's novel, is at once raconteur and reporter, romantic and astute political commentator, idealist and realist. At the visit to Mogadiscio of his English fiancA©e Nancy, diree years after General Syad Barre's Soviet-backed military coup of 1969, Koschin is still determinedly celebrating the revolutionary event that ended the chaos of colonial parliamentary models: Before this blessed Revolution, Nancy, there were over sixty political parties in this Country of Curiosity. . . . Each major tribe had a party to its name, each major party had a major tribe to support her (99). ' His euphoria, however,