Modern African Writing

Themes and Attitudes in MODERN AFRICAN WRITING By NADINE GORDIMER HERE are two kinds of writers in relates so closely to Africa in its present state Africa: the testifiers and those who are of transition. Elsewhere, people who are ill T actually creating a modem African lit~ equipped creatively write out of vanity or be erature. But perhaps I ought first to explain cause there is a profitable reading public for a little more fully on what criteria I base the the third-rate. In Africa, a literature is still distinction between the testifiers and the cre seen largely as a function of the benefits of ative writers. The testifiers supply some fas education, automatically conferred upon a so cinating folklore and a lot of useful informa ciety which has a quota of Western-educated tion about the organization of traditional Af people. The West African pidgin-English rican life, and the facts of social change in concept "to know book" goes further than it Africa. Like their counterparts, lesser writers may appear; many school teachers, clerks, all over the world, they take stock-in-trade and other white-collar workers seem to write abstractions of human behavior and look a novel almost as a matter of duty. The prin about for a dummy to dress in them, a dummy ciple is strongly reinforced, of course, by the put together out of prototypes in other peo~ fact that the shortage of Western-educated pIe's books rather than from observation of people means that Africa's real writers all, I living people. They set these dummies in ac think, without exception, have to perform tion, and you watch till they run down; there some other function in addition to their vo is no attempt to uncover human motivation, cation-from Africa's greatest poet, Leopold whether of temperament, from within, or so Sedar Senghor, who is also the President of cial situation, from without. Such writers do Senegal, to T. M. Aluko, a fine Nigerian not understand the forces which lie behind the novelist, who is director of public works. human phenomena they observe and are But this is by the way. Let me give some moved to write about. examples of the work of writers whose fac In passing, there is one difference between tual material is interesting but whose ability these writers in Africa and their European falls short of that material. The would-be counterparts which is interesting because it writer says to himself: all over Africa village boys have become Prime Ministers and Pres idents: Kenyatta, Obote, Toure, Banda, MISS GORDIMER has always lived in South Africa, where she was born. She has published Kaunda; I will write a book about a village four collections of short stories and four novels, boy who, like them, leaves home, struggles all widely translated. A new novel, A Guest ot for an education, forms a political party, re Honour, will appear this month, and a fifth book sists the colonial authorities, wins over the of stories is underway. In 1961, she won a British people, and moves into Government House. award for the most distinguished contribution to Commonwealth literature. She was a Ford Foun Another would-be writer, aware of the move dation Visiting Professor to the United States, to re-establish the validity of the African also in 1961. In 1969, she lectured at Harvard, way of life, says to herself, it is one of the Princeton, and Northwestern; in 1970, at Western customs of my country for the husband of a Michigan and The University of Michigan. Two of her novels-A World ot Strangers and The childless woman to take another wife: I will Late Bourgeois World are banned in South Af write about a childless woman whose hus rica, as is South African Writing Today, co-edited band takes another wife. The result is, at with Lionel Abrahams. best, something like the Sierra Leonian, Wil- 221 222 THE MICIDGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW liam Conton's The African, and the Nige social? The answer is yes, but Bora Nwapa, rian, Bora Nwapa's Efuru. While Conton's the author, only dimly senses the theme of hero, Kisimi Kamara, progresses from vil her novel; all she has seen is the somewhat lage bright boy through the care of gin-tip disparate series of events in the life of Efuru. pling missionary ladies to Cambridge certifi Perhaps you remember E. M. Forster's fa cate, England, lodgings, urban poverty and mous definition of the difference between midnight oil, enlivened by boyish plans for story and plot. "The king died and then the African liberation, he has a certain autobio queen died": that is a story, a series of graphical veracity behind him. When he re events arranged in their time-sequence. "The turns to his country and becomes a public, king died and then the queen died of grief": less subjective figure, his author, lacking the that is a plot; the time-sequence is preserved creative insight into the complex motivation but the emphasis is on causality. If I carry -psychological, political, and historical the definition one step further and suppose needed to give his hero substance in this sit the author sets out to explore the questions, uation, resorts to sudden bald statements to "What sort of woman is it who dies of grief be taken on trust by the reader-"Six and what sort of social and historical context months later I was Prime Minister"-and shaped her?"-we reach a definition of finally turns in desperation (and wild defi theme, the third dimension of the novel, and ance of the political facts of life) to having the one where it fulfils art's function of eter Kamara resign office, buy an airline ticket, nally pushing back the barriers of under and land in South Africa to organise a boy standing in order to apprehend and make cott to bring down Apartheid. sense of life. Bora Nwapa's Efuru is a childless woman Bora Nwapa is one among the many Afri whose bewilderment and frustration are can writers who are not able to do this for stated and left unexplored. Again, not know African life because she is not capable of ing enough about her own creation, the au dealing with theme. But she is a country thor has to resort to something to fill the woman of one of the few African writers vacuum. She uses rambling details of daily whose name already belongs to world litera life, mildly interesting but largely irrelevant. ture-Chinua Achebe. He handles the domi Among them the key to the objective reality nant themes of African writing, commanding of Efuru lies half buried and less than half un all the resources of a brilliant creative imagi derstood. Efuru is presented as beautiful, nation from a classical sense of tragedy to clever, a successful trader, and she performs ironic wit. In his first novel, Things Fall all the rites and neighbourly duties without Apart, he shows at once a comprehensive in which these attributes would not be valid in sight into his character~. Their psychological a tribal society, but she has had two unsuc make-up is never seen in isolation, as a neu cessful marriages and seen her only child rotic phenomenon; his historical sense sets die. In a somewhat off-stage incident, a sage them at the axis of their time and place. He diagnoses that a river goddess has chosen knows who they are, and why they are as Efuru as her honoured worshipper; it seems they are; he shows them as stemming from that other women chosen by the river goddess the past, engaged with the forces of the pres have been childless, too. Are we then being ent, and relevant to a future. He chooses as shown, through the life of an individual, how his hero what Hegel calls a world-historical sublimation of frustrated natural instincts figure, a man who, though not obscure is not takes place in a woman of a particular type, a king, not a history-maker in the obvious and how an African society invents or em sense, but someone through whose individ ploys religious or mystical conventions to ual life the forces of his time can be seen to reconcile her to her lot and give her a place interact. Okonkwo is a person of authority within the society despite the fact that she and achievement in his Eastern Nigerian vil cannot fulfil the conventional one? Is this lage. He was born the son of a failure and is novel really about an interesting form of self-made; by his own efforts he has a repu compensation, not merely personal, but also tation as a fine wrestler, has distinguished MODERN AFRICAN WRITING 223 himself in tribal wars, has an excellent yam judges cases "in ignorance" of African law; crop, two tribal titles, and can afford three and a· store has been opened where for the wives. A hostage of a tribal skirmish, a first time palm-oil and kernel have become young boy, Ikemefuna, is given into his care "things of great price." Okonkwo's son, until the council of tribal elders decides the Nwoye, has become a Christian convert, and boy's fate. Ikemefuna becomes so much a disowns his father. Okonkwo, whose exile member of Okonkwo's family that he often has cost him his position of authority in the has the honor of carrying Okonkwo's stool; clan-"The clan was like a lizard; if it lost yet when the elders decide Ikemefuna must its tail it soon grew another"-regains au die, Okonkwo is expected to be present when thority when, on his advice, the church is the deed is done, and, indeed to despatch him burned down because an egwugwu (an an in his final agony.

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