THE FUTURE OF

AFRICAN
LITERATURE
Helon Habila

Reporter: Michaela S. Abalos

HELON HABILA
 Professor of Creative Writing at George
Mason University , Virginia
 His novels includes; Waiting for an Angel,
Measuring Time, Oil on Water, and Travelers
 Published one book of non-fiction: The
Chibok Girls
 He is a regular contributor to the UK Guardian
and a contributing editor to the Virginia
Quarterly Review

His works has won many awards including the Caine Prize, the
Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region), The Virginia Library
Prize for fiction, and the Windham-Campbell Prize
Q: How might the continued growth and
evolution of African literature contribute
to a more comprehensive understanding
of African culture and identity on a
global scale?

A: The continued growth and evolution of African

literature can contribute to a more comprehensive
understanding of African culture and identity on a
global scale by promoting diverse narratives
and fostering empathy and cross-cultural
awareness.
Background of Oil on Water
• It is a work of eco-fiction, specifically about the
politics of oil extraction and environmental pollution
in Nigeria’s Niger Delta
• 2 Types of Environment
Physical Environment
Mental Environment
• Started life as a film script
• Visual or cinematic
The Chibok Girls
• Non-fiction account of the kidnapping of over 200 school girls in the Northeast of Nigeria by the Islamist group, Boko Haram
• Habila almost expected the Boko Haram terrorist to come out and claim credit for being conservationist: “we are actually helping the environment by killing
and driving off the villagers.”

• m
Slow Violence and the
Environmentalism of the Poor
• It refers to the often overlook, long term effects of environmental
degradation which affect marginalized communities and the poor.
• Nixon says, “expose the profound resistance—local, national,
international— to the temporal and geographical incorporation of
blackness into modernity.”
• According to Alok Kumar in his monograph titled; Colonial
Consciousness in the African Novel: “if any one issue could define,
however tentatively, the reigning concern of the African novel it
would be none other than the precariousness of the black existence.
Subjugation, displacement and depersonalization were the
concomitants of colonialism.
• “What African Literature does, the African novel in particular, is to try
to counter this trend. The African novel, from the time of its earliest
practitioners to now, always tries to insist on the materiality, the
existence, the humanity of the African. It seeks to inscribe the African
in time and place.”

“The Writers in the African State”

• Essay from Soyinka
• 3 Stages of the Development of African Writer
1. Nationalist Stage
2. Consolidation of Post-independence Era
3. Disillusionment
 Observations of Habila on
African Literature
• African literature in European languages often sparks debates about authenticity and identity.
• Early African writers like Achebe chose to write in English, infusing it with an African flavor and aesthetic.
• Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of using language as a tool for protest is exemplified in writers like Kafka
and Marechera.
-The House of Hunger
That night, we were at prep; it must have been about 9.30—a great charge of lightning exploded, striking
the humid air with a sinister violence. At once massive rocks of rain hurled themselves down upon the
sleeping earth. The noise was deafening to the ear, the sight awesome to the eye, and the great torrents
almost startled me into premature senility. Such a madness of the elements did not seem possible. Rude
buckets of water poured over the school. It rained as though it would flood us out of our minds. It drummed
on the asbestos roofs. It drummed on the window panes. It dinned into our minds. It drummed down upon
us until we couldn’t stand it. It poured darkly; plashed; gutted; broke down upon our heads like the smack of
a fist … it rose. It swelled. I cracked its side like a whip … ”
• Marechera’s writing serves as a protest against being defined by
others, rejecting the label of an “African writer” and embracing
modernist European influences.
• Achebe and Marechera represent two opposing aesthetic
strains in African literature, with Achebe being more traditional
and Marechera more modern.
• “The future of African Literature will depend to a large extent
on recognizing these deleterious forces and countering them,
and I am not saying that African writing must only concern itself
with doing combat with oppositional forces, there are so many
things to write about, but it is important for the writer,
especially the writer, to be aware of these limiting forces and to
be able to engage them.
 The Transformative Power of Literature
• “Literature is a torch with which we navigate the darkness of this world.
Fiction is a song that tries to console the broken hearted, and the best fiction
is that which offers hope even as it illustrates the often dark and airless
human condition.”
• “As writers our concern must go beyond the nation, we mustn’t let our brief
be too narrowly defined for us by a vague notion of tradition or duty to a
particular group or nation, our concern is to try to set the record straight, to
bear witness wherever there is a need for it, to try to explain and reorder
what was distorted by politics and partisanship. To reclaim the narrative, as it
were.”
• "We must be rooted in culture, but we must break out of tradition, tradition is
only there to guide us, it is a starting point, not a destination."