Representative Texts

and Authors from

Africa
At the end of the discussion, the students should be
able to:

1. identify representative texts and authors from Africa;

2. value the contributions of 21st-century literature

writers fromAfrica; and

3. write a close analysis and critical interpretation of a

text.
African Literature

 Africa is the world's second-largest and

second-most populous continent, after Asia
in both cases. The continent is bounded on
the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north
by the Mediterranean Sea, on the east by the
Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and on the
south by the mingling waters of the Atlantic
and Indian oceans.
• African Literature generally refers to a comprehensive,
complex and creative literature of and from Africa. But
different critics belonging to different schools of thought
have provided varying interpretations about African
literature.
• Chinua Achebe doesn’t “see African literature as one unit
but as a group of associated units in fact the sum total of all
national and ethnic literatures of Africa.” Nobel Laureate
Nadine Gordimer believes that “African writing done in any
language by Africans themselves and by others of whatever
skin color … who share the African experience and who
have African centered consciousness”.
• There may be three distinctly and widely accepted
categories of African literature - traditional oral
literature of Africa, literature written in indigenous
African languages and literature written in European
languages.
• Oral literature, including stories, dramas, riddles,
histories, myths, songs, proverbs, and other
87expressions, is frequently employed to educate and
entertain children. Oral histories, myths, and proverbs
additionally serve to remind whole communities of
their ancestors' heroic deeds, their past, and the
precedents for their customs and traditions.
 FAMOUS CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN WRITERS

• Chinua Achebe
 Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and
critic. He is one of the world’s most widely recognized and
praised writers. He is often called the father of modern African
literature.
 Chinua Achebe wrote some of the most extraordinary works of
the 20th century. He died on March 21,2013 in Boston. He was
82. His most famous novel, Things Fall Apart(1958),is one of the
most widely read- books in the world is a devastating depiction
of the clash between traditional tribal values and the effects of
colonial rule, as well as the tension between masculinity and
femininity in highly patriarchal societies.
• Achebe is also a noted literary critic,
particularly known for his passionate critique
of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899),
in which he accuses the popular novel of
/rampant racism through its othering of the
African continent and its people.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichieis a Nigerian writer

whose works range from novels to short stories
to nonfiction. He is part of a new generation of
African writers taking the literary world by storm.
Adichie’s works are primarily character-driven,
interweaving the background of her native
Nigeria and social and political events into the
narrative.
 Adichie’s works have been met with
overwhelming praise and have been nominated
for and won numerous awards, including the
Orange Prize and Booker Prize.

 Her novel Purple Hibiscus (2003) is a

bildungsroman, depicting the life experience of
Kambili and her family during a military coup,
while her latest work Americanah (2013) is an
insightful portrayal of Nigerian immigrant life
and race relations in America and the western
world.
AyiKwei Armah

 AyiKwei Armah is a Ghanaian writer best

known as an essayist, as well as having
written poetry, short stories, and books for
children. AyiKwei Armah’s novels are known
for their intense, powerful depictions of
political devastation and social frustration in
Armah’s native Ghana, told from the point
of view of the individual.
 His works were greatly influenced by French
existential philosophers, such as Jean Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, and as such hold
themes of despair, disillusionment and
irrationality. His most famous work, The
Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968)
centers around an unnamed protagonist who
attempts to understand his self and his
country in the wake of post-independence.
Mariama Bâ

 Mariama Bâ is a Senegalese author and

feminist, whose French_x0002_language
novels were bothtranslated into more than a
dozen languages. She is one of Africa’s most
influential women authors, Mariama Bâ is
known for her powerful feminist texts, which
address the issues of gender inequality in her
native Senegal and wider Africa.
Bâ herself experienced many of the prejudices
facing women: she struggled for an education
against her traditional grandparents, and was left to
look after her nine children after divorcing a
prominent politician.

Her anger and frustration at the patriarchal

structures which defined her life spill over into her
literature: her novel So Long A Letter (1981) depicts,
simultaneously, its protagonist’s strength and
powerlessness within marriage and wider society.
Nuruddin Farah

 Nuruddin Farah is a Somali novelist. He has also

written plays both for stage and radio, as well as
short stories and essays. Nuruddin Farah has written
numerous plays, novels and short stories, all of
which revolve round his experiences of his native
country.
The title of his first novel From a Crooked Rib
(1970) stems from a Somalian proverb “God
created woman from a crooked rib, and anyone
who trieth to straighten it, breaketh it”, and is a
commentary on the sufferings of women in
Somalian society through the narrative of a
young woman trapped in an unhappy marriage.
His subsequent works feature similar social
criticism, dealing with themes of war and post-
colonial identity.