UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MINDANAO

Survey of Afro-Asian
Literature

SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

Instructor
Survey of Afro-Asian Literature
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course deals with an intensive study of the selected literary texts from Asia and
Africa, particularly India, China, Japan-the countries in the southeast region in Asia, and
the African nations south of the Sahara, along with socio-historical, philosophical, and
literary underpinnings. Using research-based content knowledge, the pre-service English
teachers will be able to understand, analyze, and appreciate the outstanding
characteristics: contexts, dimensions, elements, genres and structures, of Afro-Asian
literatures which can lead to promotion of cultural tolerance. Moreover, they are
expected to come up with an annotated reading list of the chosen literary texts and a
synthesis paper that presents their critical interpretation and tolerance of diverse cultures
encountered in the study of the select texts.

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature
Course Learning Outcomes
At the end of the course, the pre-service teachers should be able to:
a. exhibit understanding of the historical basics that shaped African literature
b. demonstrate content and research-based knowledge of Afro-Asian literature in the
preparation of an annotated reading list (ARL);
c. write a synthesis paper that encapsulates their understanding of the outstanding
characteristics of Afro-Asian literature along various viewpoints and lenses;
d. analyze poems, short stories, novels, and plays of the continent with reference to their
contexts
e. appreciate orality in light of its relevance to African society and written literature

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

Introduction
Afro-Asian literature is a diverse collection of the ways
of life of the people of Asia and Africa.
depicts the history and development of all Afro-Asian
art forms and artistic ideals.
Reflects the people’s adaptation to and appreciation for
nature and the entire world as well.
Showcases how both the written and spoken consensus
and/or culture bind one nation in indomitable harmony.
Depicts the inherent styles that distinguish one nation
from another, and that serve as a vital parcel of national
identity.

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

Introduction
 African and Asian cultures are some of the oldest in the world.
 The background of Afro-Asian literature dates to the very beginnings of when the
first mixed race individual began writing.
 It is thought that man started in Africa migrating to populate the rest of the
world.
 Combinations of these ethnicities occurred giving rise to mixed races.
 All of this culture and thought of what happened in the past has been revealed
through written and anthropological studies based on stories passed by word of
mouth.
 Afro-Asian literature is any written text such as poems, short stories, or novels that
are based on African-Asian ethnicity or African Arab ethnicity.
 Covers the literary studies of Africa, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China, India, Persia,
Japan, Philippines, Island Southeast Asia and Mainland Southeast Asia

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

AFRICAN LITERATURE
SAMBAY P. MLA
Instructor
AFRICAN LITERATURE
intends to give a bird’s eye view of African literature. The literature of the continent is a result
of pre and post colonial realities that have influenced African’s one way or the other
The introduction gives a concise summary of pertinent history: slavery, colonialism, negritude,
religion, and literary introduction
 successive units deal with the written literature;

 poetry, short story, novel, and drama are discussed with examples in detail

 Literary works of African writers are presented with different contexts; historical (pre-
colonial, colonial and postcolonial), regional; for which the units glimpse the literary
works of different regions of Africa and reflect sexual category to disclose literary works
of females in the continent.

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

 geography
history

What do you know about

Literature languages

Africa?
cultures and
facts
traditions

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

African Literature
◦ The study and appreciation of oral literature is more important than ever for
understanding the complexity of human cognition
◦ In ancient times, the transmission of oral literature from one generation to the next lies
at the heart of culture and memory.
◦ African literature has much more oral stock compared to the written. Orality shapes
not only societies but also written literature, which is so unique in Africa.

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

Africa
the dark continent
-Consists of 54 countries
-Covers one-fifth of the entire land
surface of the globe.
-Contains 98% of the diamond mines of
the world and 55% of the gold mines.
-Produces two-thirds of the world’s
supply of palm oil

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

 African Art
For many years African art has been copied
and imitated by western nations.
African masks are made with fantastic
intricate carvings; government museums and
private collectors have competed in acquiring
primitive African ceremonial masks.
African music is characterized by short
rhythm based largely on drumbeat; bound
up with religious ceremonies; prayer for rain
and success in hunting and war.
The invention of drums was related to the
ritual of driving the spirits of the dead
away
drum message can be sent a hundred miles
Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng
away in astonishing speed.
African Literature
◦ body of traditional oral and written literatures in Afro-
Asiatic and African languages together with works
written by Africans in European languages
◦ Africans often tell stories using call-and-response
technique.
◦ When the storyteller speaks, time collapses, and the
members of the audience are in the presence of history.
And history, always more than an academic subject,
becomes for the audience a collapsing of time.
◦ Poetry is often sung or recited in a singsong voice.
◦ African poem types; narrative epic, occupational verse,
ritual verse and praise poems.
Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng
The Rise of Africa’s Great Civilization
◦ New Kingdom of Egyptian Civilization flourished between
751 and 664 B.C.
◦ Smaller civilization; Fasa of the Northern Sudan, whose
deeds are recalled by the Soninke Oral Epic, The Daust
◦ Aksum (3rd century A.D.), a rich kingdom in eastern
Africa, now Ethiopia. It served as the center of a trade
route and developed its own writing system.
◦ The Kingdom of Old Ghana (A.D. 300) the first of great
civilization in western Africa succeeded by the empires of
Old Mali and Songhai
◦ Africa’s Golden Age (between A.D. 300 and A.D. 1600)
when sculpture, music, metalwork, textiles, and oral
literature flourished.
Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng
Foreign influences came in the
4th century
Roman Empire proclaimed Christianity as its state religion and
controlled the northern coast of Africa and Egypt.
In 700 A.D. Islam, the religion of Mohammed, was introduced and the
Arabic writing system. Old Mali, Somali and other eastern African
nations were largely Muslim.
European powers created colonized countries in the late 1800s. Social
and political chaos reigned as traditional African nations were either
split apart by European colonizers or joined with incompatible
neighbors.
Mid-1900s marked the independence and rebirth of traditional cultures
written in African languages.
Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng
NEGRITUDE
Means “blackness”
literary movement of the 1030s-1950s that
began among French-speaking African and
Caribbean writers living in Paris as a protest
against French colonial rule and the policy
of assimilation.
Its leading figure was Leopold Sedar
Senghor, who along with Aime Cesaire from
Martinique and Leo Damas from French
Guina, began to examine Western values
critically and to reassess African culture.
Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng
NEGRITUDE
 The basic ideas behind Negritude include:

 Africans must look to their own cultural heritage

to determine the values and traditions that are
most useful in the modern world.
 Committed writers should use African subject
matter and poetic traditions and should excite a
desire for political freedom.
 Negritude itself encompasses the whole of
African cultural, economic, social, and political
values.
 The value and dignity of African traditions and
peoples must be asserted.
Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng
African Poetry
a. Paris in the Snow swings between assimilation of
French, European culture or negritude, intensified by the
poet’s catholic piety.
b. Totem by Leopold Senghor shows the eternal linkage of
the living with the dead.
c. Letters to Martha by Dennis Brutus is the poet’s most
famous collection that speaks of the humiliation, the
despondency, the indignity of prison life.
d. Train Journey by Dennis Brutus reflects the poet’s
social commitment, as he reacts to the poverty around
him amidst material progress especially and acutely felt
by the innocent victims, the children.
e. Africa by David Diop is a poem that achieves its
impact by a series of climactic sentences and rhetorical
questions
Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng
African Novels
a. The Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono points out the
disillusionment of Toundi, a boy who leaves his parents
maltreatment to enlist his services as an acolyte to a foreign
missionary.
b. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe depicts a vivid picture
of Africa before the colonization by the British. The title is an
epigraph from Yeats’ The Second Coming: ‘things fall
apart/the center cannot hold/ mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world.
c. No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe is a sequel to Things
Fall Apart and the title of which is alluded to Elliot’s The
Journey of the Magi: ‘We returned to our places, these
kingdoms,/ But no longer at ease here, in the old
dispensation.’

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

African Novels
d. The Poor Christ of Bombay by Mongo Beti begins en medias
res and exposes the inhumanity of colonialism. The
novel tells of Fr. Drumont’s disillusionment after the
discovery of the degradation of the native women
betrothed but forced to work like slaves in the sixa.

e. The River Between by James Ngugi shows the clash of

traditional values and contemporary ethics and mores.

f. Heirs to the Past by Driss Chraili is an allegorical, parable-

like novel. After 16 years of absence, the anti-hero Driss
Ferdi returns to Morocco for his father’s funeral. The
Signeur leaves his legacy via a tape recorder in which
he tells the family members his last will and testament.

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

African Novels
g. A Few Days and Few Nights by Mbella Sonne Dipoko deals
with racial prejudice. In the novel originally written in
French, a Cameroonian scholar studying in France is
torn between the love of a Swedish girl and a Parisienne
show father owns a business establishment in Africa.

h. The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka is about a group of young

intellectuals who function as artists in their talks with
one another as they try to place themselves in the
context of the world abouth them.

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

Major Writers
A. Leopold Sedar Senghor (1960) is a poet and statesman who was cofounder
of the Negritude. His works include: Songs of Shadow, Black Offerings,
Major Elegies, Poetical Work.
B. Okot P’Bitek (1930-1982) Among his works are: Song of Lawino, Song of
Ocol, African Religions and Western Scholarship, Religion of the Central
Luo, Horn of My Love
C. Wole Soyinka (1934) is a Nigerian Playwright, poet, novelist, and critic who
was the first black African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1986. Among his works: plays- A Dance of the Forests, The Lion
and the Jewel, The Trials of Brother Jero; novels – The Interpreters,
Season of Anomy; poems – Idanre and Other Poems, Poems from
Prison, A Shuttle in the Crypt, Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems.
Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng
Major Writers
D. Chinua Achebe (1930) is a prominent Igbo novelist acclaimed for his
unsentimental depictions of the social and psychological disorientation
accompanying the imposition of Western customs and values upon
traditional African society. His particular concern was with emergent Africa
at its moments of crisis. His works include, Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God,
No Longer at ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of Savanah.

E. Nadine Gordimer (1923) is a South African novelist and short story writer whose
major theme was exile and alienation. She received the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1991. Her works include, The Soft Voice of the Serpent, Burger’s
Daughter, July’s People, A Sport of Nature, My Son’s Story.

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

Major Writers
F. Bessie Head (1937-1986) described the contradictions and shortcomings of
pre- and postcolonial African society in morally didactic novels and
stories. She suffered rejection and alienation from an early age being born
of an illegal union between her white mother and black father. Her works
include, When Rain Clouds Gather, A Question of Power, The Collector
of treasures, Serowe.

G. Barbara Kimenye (1940) wrote twelve books on children’s stories known as

the Moses series which are now standard reading fare for African school
children. Among her works are: Kalasandra Revisited, The Smugglers,
The money game.
Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng
 Activity: Differentiated Tasks
Read and Analyze Group 2
Group 1
the ff poems:
-The Artists -The Researchers
1. Totem by
- The Actors - The Developers
Leopold
Senghor - The Writers/Poets - The Discussants
2. Once Upon a - The Singers - The Participants
Time- by - The Dancers - The Assessors
Nadine
- The Story tellers - The Monitors
Gordimer

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

 AFRICAANS’ HALL OF FAME

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

 Let’s Practice:
Read and Analyze any of the following poems. Consider context and
historical background surrounding your chosen piece then reflect
on the themes that emerge. What is the overall message or idea
does that author try to convey? Support your interpretations with
evidences from the poem by referencing specific lines, phrases and
other works to back up your claims. Write in a 1 whole sheet of
paper.

1. Africa by David Diop

2. Anticipation by Mabel Dove Danquah

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

 Reading Assignment:
Read and analyze the following poems.

1. My African Child
2. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng

Outline of the Lesson Proper of
Teaching Demonstrations
◦Important Facts (ex. Culture and Religion, Literacy
and Education)
◦History and Development of their Literacy
◦Famous Authors and their Literary Works
◦Analyze sample Literary Piece

Survey of Afro-Asian Literature / SAMBAY P. MLA, MAEng