Table Of ContentWRITING AND AFRICA
Crosscurrents
General Editors:
Professor J B Bullen, University of Reading
Dr Neil Sammells, Bath College of Higher Education
Dr Paul Hyland, Bath College of Higher Education
Published Titles:
Writing and the English Renaissance, edited by William Zunder and
Suzanne Trill
Writing and Radicalism, edited by John Lucas
Writing and America, edited by Gavin Cologne-Brookes,
Neil Sammells and David Timms
Writing and Africa, edited by Mpalive-Hangson Msiska and
Paul Hyland
Writing and Africa
Edited by
Mpalive-Hangson Msiska
and Paul Hyland
~ ~~o~;~~n~~:up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1997 by Pearson Education Limited
Published 2014 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
Copyright© 1997, Taylor & Francis.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new
research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research
methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become neces-
sary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and
knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds,
or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods
they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, includ-
ing parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, con-
tributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to
persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or other-
wise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions,
or ideas contained in the material herein.
ISBN 978-0-582-21418-7 (pbk)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is
available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog entry for this title is available
from the Library of Congress
Contents
Notes on Contributors Vll
General Editors' Preface X
Acknowledgements Xl
Introduction 1
Mpalive-Hangs on Msiska
Part I Writing and History: A Survey 11
1 North African writing 13
Anissa Talahite
2 West African writing 31
Patrick Williams
3 East and Central African writing 46
Mpalive-Hangson Msiska
Part ll Issues and Problems 67
4 What is African literature?: ethnography and criticism 69
Kadiatu Kanneh
5 Fiction as an historicising form in modern South Africa 87
Michael Green
6 Empires of the imagination: Rider Haggard, popular
fiction and Africa 103
Terence Rodgers
7 Stars in the moral universe: writing and resistance to
colonialism 122
Ed Marum
vi WRITING AND AFRICA
8 Writing, literacy and history in Africa 139
Gareth Griffiths
9 Oral tradition as history 159
Robin Law
10 Popular writing in Africa 174
Jane Bryce-Okunlola
11 African writing and gender 193
Lyn Innes and Caroline Rooney
12 The changing fortunes of the writer in Africa? 216
Jack Mapanje
13 The press in Africa: expression and repression 234
Adewale Maja-Pearce
14 Post-colonialism and language 246
Kwaku Larbi Korang and Stephen Siemon
Part lll Selected Documents 265
1 Countering colonial and neo-colonial hegemony 267
2 Writing and gender 270
3 The role of the writer 278
4 The language question 281
Select Bibliography 287
Index 298
Notes on contributors
Jane Bryce-Okunlola lectures in the Department of English at the
University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. Her recent
publications include essays in Motherlands: Black Women,s Writing from
Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia, ed. S. Nasta (1991), Unbecoming
Daughters of Empire, ed. S. Chew and A. Rutherford (1993) and
Readings in African Popular Culture, ed. K. Barber (forthcoming).
Michael Green is a Professor in the Department of English, University
of Natal, Durban. Recent publications include essays in Critical Arts,
World Literature Written in English, Wasafiri, English in Africa,
Researches in African Literature and the Journal of Literary Studies.
He is the author of two forthcoming books: a study of the uses of
history in South African fiction, and a work of historical fiction
entitled Sinking.
Gareth Griffiths is Professor and Head of English at the University of
Western Australia, Perth, Australia. In addition to numerous articles
in journals and collections, he is the author of A Double Exile: African
and West Indian Writing Between Two Cultures (1978) and one of
the authors of The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in
Post-Colonial Literatures (1989) and co-editor of The Post-Colonial-
Studies Reader (1995).
Lyn Innes is Professor of Post-Colonial Literatures at the University of
Kent, Canterbury, England. Her recent books include The Devits
Own Mirror: The Irishman and the African in Modern Literature
(1990), Chinua Achebe (1990), and Woman and Nation in Irish
Literature and Society (1993).
viii WRITING AND AFRICA
Kadiatu Kanneh is a Lecturer in the School of English at the University
of Birmingham. Her work has appeared in, among others, The Oxford
Literary Review, Women and most recently in The Post-Colonial-
Studies Reader (1995).
Kw aku Larbi Korang is a member of the Department of English at the
University of Ghana. He is currently enrolled in the PhD programme
in English at the University of Alberta, Canada. His work has appeared
in Kunapipi and World Literature Written in English.
Robin Law is Professor of History at Stirling University. His many
publications include Early Yoruba Historiography (1976), The Horse
in West Africa (1980), The Oyo Empire c. 1600-c. 1836: A West
African Imperialism in the Era ofA tlantic Slave Trade (1977) and The
Slave Coast of West Africa: The Impact of the Slave Trade on African
Society (1991).
Adewale Maja-Pearce is the Africa Editor of Index On Censorship and
the Series Editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series. His
publications include Loyalties and Other Stories (1986), In My
Father's Country (1987), How Many Miles to Babylon (1990) and,
most recently, Nigerian Novelists of the Eighties (1992)
Jack Mapanje is a Professorial Fellow in the School of English at Leeds
University and was the Head of the English Department at the
University of Malawi prior to his incarceration in 1987 by the Banda
regime. His two anthologies of poetry, Of Chameleons and Gods
(1981) and The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993) have
received international critical acclaim. He is also co-editor of Oral
Poetry from Africa: An Anthology (1983), and Summer Fires: An
Anthology of Modern African Poetry (1983).
Ed Marum is Principal Lecturer and Head of the Division of
Humanities at the University of Derby. He is currently engaged in
researching the role of narrative in learning, with particular reference
to twentieth-century African, Caribbean, Indian and European fiction.
Mpalive-Hangson Msiska is a Lecturer in English and Course Director
for the BA Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London,
having previously taught at Bath College of Higher Education and the
Universities of Malawi and Stirling. He is co-author of The Quiet
Chameleon: Modern Poetry from Central Africa (1992).
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix
Terence Rodgers is a Principal Lecturer in History and Assistant Dean
of Humanities at Bath College of Higher Education. He has published
on labour history and social history and on the politics of popular
fiction. He is currently engaged in research on Rider Haggard and
colonial fiction.
Caroline Rooney is a Lecturer in English and Post-Colonial Literatures
at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England. She has held
lectureships at Oxford University and the University of Capetown.
Recent publications include essays in Motherlands: Black Women's
Writing from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia, ed. S. Nasta
(1991) and Essays on African Writing, ed. A. Gurnah (1995). Her
book on 'The Androgyne and the Double' will shortly be published by
Routledge.
Stephen Siemon teaches post-colonialliteratures and literary theory at
the University of Alberta, Canada. His work on post-colonial theory
has appeared in a number of journals and critical collections. He has
edited, with Helen Tiffin, After Europe: Critical Theory and Post-
Colonial Writing (1989) and is currently writing a book on
post-colonial theory.
Anissa T alahite is a Lecturer in French in the Department of Languages
at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her interests include
post-colonial writing and, in particular, Maghrebian francophone
literature. She has researched questions of race and gender in literature
by Southern African women writers, and has published articles on
gender, race and representation.
Patrick Williams is a Reader in Critical and Cultural Theory at
Nottingham Trent University. He has published widely on colonial
and post-colonial topics, including essays on Rudyard Kipling and
Orientalism and the relationship between theory and poetry. His
publications include Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A
Reader (1991), co-edited with Laura Chrisman and An Introduction
to Post-Colonial Theory (1996), co-authored with Peter Childs.
