Chimamanda fans fires of African literature

PHOTO | FILE Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  

In Summary

• Generation has been accused of writing for a foreign audience to win awards
• It is in this context that we have to read Chimamanda’s fiction and that of her generation. Often this generation has been accused of not being African enough; of writing more for a foreign audience; of abandoning Africa and only being translators for the rest of the world of the “bad” in Africa rather than its good(s).
• I always take solace in the fact that it’s through art, especially literature, that I can connect to all of Africa’s regions. Literature was the wind that spread pan-African dreams on this continent in the 1960s. 
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That Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie launched her book Americanah in Nairobi yesterday says more about the spirit of pan-Africanism than any statement that the African Union has issued in the past one year.

Why, you may ask? Because whereas African politicians and bureaucrats continue to dream about a developed Africa or Africa as the future outpost of capitalism, African artists hold in their hands and carry in their minds and hearts the “truth” of Africa’s potential for progress; what Chimamanda calls “emotional truth” when telling a story. And African writers have never really betrayed the continent.

It is in this context that we have to read Chimamanda’s fiction and that of her generation. Often this generation has been accused of not being African enough; of writing more for a foreign audience; of abandoning Africa and only being translators for the rest of the world of the “bad” in Africa rather than its good(s).


But critics ignore that this is a generation that carries the burden of writing about a continent that confounds even those with the best of intentions. To speak about Africa, as usual, is to exaggerate.

HYPERBOLE
It is nearly impossible to write about Africa without being hyperbolic for the things that happen here, and many times, defy logic, as if seeking to prove all the time that truth is stranger than fiction.

Reading about the devastation of the civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s in Chamamanda’s Half of a Yellow Sun or watching the film derived from it is to witness the horror of the fallibility of humankind. Africa’s unending civil wars and inter-ethnic conflicts can be unforgiving.

Hundreds of Africans die crossing borders, away from the theatres of these wars, running away to unknown places, unimagined fates and a life of hide-and-seek with the authorities in the new lands.

It is difficult to write about Africa and not be caught up in its violence, corruption, dishonesty, politics of betrayal etc. It can often be seen as illusory to offer stories of romance, marriages, births, joy, or success in Africa. But African writers have always offered both sides of the story.

For instance, Americanah says as much about fidelity to Africa as it says about the worldliness of the African today. Its stories — and there are many in the book —remind us of the dreams of a past Africa and the trials of Africa today and the hopes of an Africa that is to come.

To script such a tale is undoubtedly more demanding than when African writers of years gone had to tell their “African” communities’ stories.


Why so? Because it is so difficult these days to encounter those authentic, collective African stories, most of which resided in the oral traditions of Africans.

Today bar talk in any town across the continent is some kind of mishmash of languages, always shepherded by the tongues of the former colonial masters. Often in one district in Africa there may be as many as 20 languages competing for hearing and attention!




What should an African writer write about in a world saturated with public politics, bad blood between communities, outright theft of public resources by civil servants, stinking morality etc?

Should they write about these “big” issues or should they write about the mini-stories that haunt the lives of the common mwananchi? Well, it is a question that the audiences would answer best.

But writers don’t have the benefit of sending out questionnaires asking for reader preferences, especially when most of your (paying) audiences live far away from the setting of your dramas. In other words, for whom does the present generation of African writers write?
 


An honest answer would be that they write for a Western audience, for isn’t that where the literary prizes and the moola are?

Isn’t it in Europe, America and Asia where writing residences and public readings and lectures are? Isn’t it somewhere out there where these African prophets are received better? The answers are: yes, yes and yes. But that is the easy part.

African writers really write for Africans.




There is a reason why I still claim Chimamanda as an African writer though she lives not on this continent. The spirit of her writing insists on a certain sense of Africanity; a sense that despite the overwhelming dystopia, Africa still has the spirit of humanity.

This is why it is refreshing to encounter the metaphor of “return” to Africa in Americanah. The writings of Chimamanda’s generation may gesture to other worlds or other cultures; it may be expressed in foreign languages; it may have its foreign benefactors but it remains essentially African because it is one of the few “truths” about Africa that one can believe.

TRANSEND THE LIMITATIONS

The collaboration between Kwani Trust and foreign publishers and other actors in the worlds of literature and the arts that brings African writers such as Chimamanda here is a reminder of the possibilities for the common people to transcend the limitations to continental progress that politicians have bequeathed us.

I always take solace in the fact that it’s through art, especially literature, that I can connect to all of Africa’s regions. Literature was the wind that spread pan-African dreams on this continent in the 1960s.

That is how Nairobi became some kind of African cultural meeting point with writers, thespians and musicians from central, west and south of Africa finding a home here.

One hopes the novelist’s visit isn’t just a mere stopover to grace Kwani Trust’s 10th anniversary celebrations, but the beginning of a worthy cross-continental and even transatlantic conversation.

BY TOM ODHIAMBO

The writer teaches literature at the University of Nairobi.