African Literatures and Beyond
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African Literatures and Beyond ROSS Readings in Post / Colonial ULTURES Literatures and Cultures in English C 168 S ERIES E DITORS Gordon Collier Bénédicte Ledent Geoffrey Davis (Giessen) (Liège) (Aachen) C O -FOUNDING E DITOR Hena Maes–Jelinek African Literatures and Beyond A Flori legium Edited by Bernth Lindfors and Geoffrey V. Davis Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013 Cover Image Photos of kente cloth by Brenda Lindfors Graphic treatment by Gordon Collier The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3738-0 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0989-2 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2013 Printed in The Netherlands Table of Contents Preface ix Introduction xi WEST AFRICA MPALIVE–HANGSON MSISKA 1 Cultural Studies, Power, and the Idea of the Hegemonic in Wole Soyinka’s Works S OLA ADEYEMI 29 Interpreting the Interpreters: The Narratives of the Postcolony in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters A WO MANA ASIEDU 39 The Enduring Relevance of Kobina Sekyi’s The Blinkards in Twenty-First-Century Ghana E USTACE PALMER 55 The Agony and the Ecstasy: Sierra Leonean Dramatists’ Confrontation with the Sierra Leonean Landscape GARETH GRIFFITHS 69 The Reverend Joseph Jackson Fuller: A ‘Native’ Evangelist and ‘Black’ Identity in the Cameroons EASTERN AND CENTRAL AFRICA JANE PLASTOW 89 A Modest Plant, Easily Crushed: Radio Drama in Blin, Eritrea PIA THIELMANN 103 Through Determination to Happiness? Eastern African Slavery in Life and Literature GEOFFREY V.D AVIS 121 “Shine your light, Zimbabwe” SOUTH AFRICA CHRIS D UNTON 135 From Mqhayi to Sole: Four Poems on the Sinking of the Troopship Mendi R AOUL J.GRANQVIST 149 Fieldwork as Translation: Linnaeus’ Apostle Anders Sparrman and the Hottentot Perspective ELSEWHERE KOFI A NYIDOHO 177 Orality and Performance: A Source of Pan-African Social Self C.L.INNES AND GORDON COLLIER 195 Africans and Ireland: History, Society, and the Black Nexus BERNTH LINDFORS 217 Ira Aldridge in Stockholm A NNE A DAMS 239 “Who’ll get my library after I’m gone?” An Interview with the Septuagenarian Afro- German Africanist Theodor Wonja Michael CHRISTI NE MATZKE 257 Into the Heart of Whiteness: Performing African Moon in Krefeld: Gabriel Gbadamosi in Conversation E CKHARD BREITINGER 271 Von Jenseits des Meeres: Romantic and Revolutionary Visions of Caribbean History LE I F LORENTZON 301 “But it will have to be a new English”: A Comparative Discussion of the ‘Nativization’ of English Among Afro- and Indo-English Authors JOURNALS JAMES CURREY AND LYNN TAYLOR 317 African Literature Today and African Theatre: The James Gibbs Connection POETRY,FICTION,DRAMA KOFI A NYIDOHO 341 He Spoke Truth – Q u i e t l y JACK MAPANJE 343 The Carwash, Clifton Moor, York (for James & Patience) CHARLES R.LARSON 345 Crosscut R OBERT F RASER 349 Kariba’s Last Stand F E MI O SOFISAN 363 Odùduwà, Don’t Go! A One-Act Play MARTI N BANHAM 385 Mosquito! Or, Addition, Vernacular, or Rat? A Railway for Freetown C.L.INNES 415 James Gibbs’s Pinteresque Diversion Notes on Contributors 417 Preface AMES GIBBS has been a leading scholar of anglophone African litera- ture for nearly half a century. He began by producing two MA theses, J one on “Aspects of the Nigerian Dramatic Tradition” at the American University in 1967, and another on “Drama and Nationalism: A Study of Ibsen, Synge and Soyinka” at the University of Bristol in 1972. He then went off to teach in Ghana, where he started writing about theatrical performances he had witnessed. Not long afterward, while teaching in Malawi, he reported on drama festivals, conferences, and tours of the university’s travelling theatre troupe, in all of which he was actively involved. During these years in Africa, he continued to write about Wole Soyinka, publishing a series of authoritative bibliographies, biographical essays, study guides, and critical analyses on the growing body of works by this prolific Nigerian author. In 1980 Gibbs edited a pioneering volume of Critical Perspectives on Wole Soyinka, and he went on to complete a doctoral dissertation on “Wole Soyinka: The Making of a Dramatist” at Leeds University in 1984, parts of which informed his critical study Wole Soyinka (1986). Since then Gibbs has solidified his reputation as one of Soyinka’s most in- sightful interpreters by continuing to produce dozens of well-informed studies of his life and works. In addition, he has made major contributions to scholar- ship on Ghanaian literature by compiling Ghanaian Theatre: A Bibliography (1994), co-editing an issue of Matatu entitled “Fontomfrom: Contemporary Literature, Theatre and Film” (2000), and bringing out a collection of his own articles in a volume called Nkin-Nyin: Essays on Ghanaian Theatre (2009). His appraisals of African playwrights, poets, and novelists – particu- larly those from Ghana, Malawi, and Nigeria – have appeared in numerous books and journals, and he has commented incisively on such matters as censorship, publishing, broadcasting, literary competitions, book fairs, and the teaching of African literature in schools and universities. One of his most practical contributions has been the compilation of A Handbook for African x A FRICAN LITERATURES AND BEYOND a Writers (1986) which was amplified and reissued as The African Writers’ Handbook (1999). Gibbs’s work as editor has been particularly significant. In addition to pre- paring an anthology of Moralities for Modern Africa: Eight Plays (1976) and special issues on Soyinka for Research in African Literatures (1983) and the Literary Half-Yearly (1987), he has served as reviews editor for African Literature Today for many years and was one of the founding editors of Afri- can Theatre, the leading journal in its field. Much of his creative energy has gone into collaborative ventures of this kind. James and his brothers, wife, and children administer the Morel Trust, a charitable foundation that funds worthy projects throughout the world. The Trust has made numerous grants supporting African theatre productions and the distribution of books and journals to African university libraries. Such generous assistance has helped to promote artistic and scholarly activity on African campuses. The contributors to this volume are colleagues of James Gibbs who have benefited greatly from knowing him and wish to thank him for his friendship and honour him for his impressive intellectual achievements. The present gathering of essays and creative writing is meant to celebrate both the man and his works. a Introduction HE ESSAYS AND CREATIVE WRITING collected here as a tribute to James Gibbs reflect the wide range and diversity of his own academic T interests. The main focus is on African literatures, but comparative studies involving literatures produced elsewhere – particularly Europe, India, and the Caribbean – command attention, too. Most contributors discuss speci- fic works of fiction, drama or poetry, or else comment on the cultural signi- ficance of roles played by individual missionaries, scientists, performers, and scholars. The book concludes with a handful of literary contributions expres- sed in a variety of forms. The first geographical region explored is West Africa. MPALIVE– HANGSON MSISKA and SOLA ADEYEMI deal with salient aspects of Wole Soyinka’s oeuvre, Msiska by examining notions of hegemonic power in his dramatic and critical works, and Adeyemi by studying postcolonial strategies of persuasion in his novel The Interpreters. AWO MANA ASIEDU then com- ments on the contemporary relevance of the earliest Ghanaian play, Kobina Sekyi’s The Blinkards, which was written and first produced in 1916, and EUSTACE PALMER, by contrast, surveys five popular plays written in English by Sierra Leonean playwrights but not published until 2008. GARETH GRIFFITHS’s essay reviews the career of Joseph Jackson Fuller, a Jamaican- born missionary who spent forty years in the Cameroons, leaving there in 1888 as the British were handing over territory to the Germans; Griffiths relied on Fuller’s unpublished autobiography and letters to reconstruct the difficulties he faced as a black missionary during this time of transition. The spotlight then shifts to Eastern and Central Africa, with JANE PLASTOW describing the emergence and demise of radio drama in Eritrea broadcast in the Blin language; PIA THIELMANN examines a novel written by Jonathan Sijawandani that tells the story of a youth captured by Muslim Arab slave traders in Malawi who five years later was returned to his family and re- embraced Christianity, thereby attaining happiness; and GEOFFREY V.DAVIS xii A FRICAN LITERATURES AND BEYOND a provides an account of his visit to Zimbabwe in 2012 to assess the country’s cultural needs and to recommend ways in which the international community could help to meet them. South Africa is represented by two essays, the first by CHRIS DUNTON, who examines poetic devices and rhetorical strategies employed in four poems on an historical event that were composed over a span of sixty years in three different languages; and the second by RAOUL J.GRANQVIST, who in- vestigates the activities and observations of Anders Sparrman, an eighteenth- century Swedish naturalist who was sent to South Africa by Carl Linnaeus to collect information on the Hottentots. The next section of the book, dealing with other parts of the world, is the most diverse. KOFI ANYIDOHO offers a pan-African perspective on orality and performance. LYN INNES and GORDON COLLIER discuss the cultural impact of the presence of blacks in Ireland since the eighteenth century, noting their contributions to ‘liberation’ politics, performing arts, and multicultural nation- building. BERNTH LINDFORS records the responses of Swedish audiences to the famous African-American actor Ira Aldridge, who performed as Othello and Shylock at Stockholm’s Royal Theatre in the summer of 1857.