African Literature debate
It’s now dialogue between individuals and cultures
By Henry Akubuiro (ifeanyi_mcdaniels@yahoo.com)
Sunday, June 18, 2006



Formerly known as George Awoonor-Williams, Prof. Kofi Awoonor is one of the most celebrated Ghanaian and African writers. A poet, novelist and critic, Awoonor was born in 1935 and educated at the University of Ghana, the University of London, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he bagged a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature.

Former Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at SUNY Stony Brook, and Head, Department of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Cape Coast, South Africa, he has served as Ghana’s ambassador to Brazil and Cuba and Ghana's representative at the United Nations. He was awarded the National Book Council Award for poetry in 1979.

A writer with a predilection for tradition, especially traditional Ewe folklore and poetry, his creative works include: Rediscovery (1964) Night of My Blood, and This Earth, My Brother (1971), Ancestral Power and Lament (1972) Ride Me, Memory (1973), Guardians of the Sacred Word, which is a translation of Ewe poetry. He was once arrested for aiding a political fugitive, and his works, The House by the Sea (1978) and Until the Morning After: Collected Poems (1987), contain poetic and narrative accounts of his experiences as a prisoner in Ghana's Ussher Fort prison. His second novel, Comes the Voyager at Last (1992), is a mythic tale of the return of a slave from the New World to his native land.

His most ambitious critical work as a scholar is The Breast of the Earth: A Critical Survey of Africa's Literature, Culture and History (1975), a book that contains essays on African writers, music, oral literature, arts, and politics. His books on political commentary include: Ghana Revolution: A Background Account from a Personal Perspective (1984) and Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times (1990).

Meeting Awoonor for the first time in Accra, Ghana, you get stuck to his bonhomie. When mine colleague from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, Dr. Shola Olarunyomi, wants to introduce himself as a scholar, he cuts in humorously: “You can tell that to a vice-chancellor; I ‘m not one,” and extends a handshake to him, his face glowing with a grin. And when this writer is about to press the recording bottom, he retorts: ‘No need to hurry. Let it be as informal as possible”. So, he smiles and jokes and laughter peals off without notice, his jocularity pouring forth like manna.

His speech is couched confidently and eloquently, accentuating the right words. He tells you how African literature in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s was a departure from the preceding era, when literature was a child of national consciousness, in the context of Africa’s history and civilization, and later as an instrument of self-examination. “When I look at a great deal of their writings (1970 – early 1990s), I see the possibility of making individual statements, self-analytical statements constructed out of the whole range of gamut of experience, which we gained as individuals, defining, therefore, our place in the broader frame of things,” he says.

Awoonor speaks in a listenable tone, and his gesticulations fall briskly with a choirmaster’s fluidity: “I ‘m seeing our literature now as a dialogue between individuals: individual experiences, individuals acquiescence and the socio-cultural matrix within which we ‘re functioning. While, once upon a time, we made a broad statement about collective consciousness as it were, we ‘re locating ourselves as individual creative artists within the scope of that collective consciousness. The young writers writing now ’re like the storytellers who ’re doing a very active consciousness vis-a-vis who we are. People ’re even writing novels set in London,” his baritone voice booms in the silence.

He is in an ebulient mood, and the sunniness of his personality envelops the air. So, it’s just like a dog’s breakfast to find which direction African literature is headed. His face creases with optimism. “This phase is going to be the dominant phase of our literature that the artistic expertise of the writer ’ll inevitably come to terms with the reality of that socio-political matrix and set up his own debate within that matrix,” he says, flattered by the Ghanaian female writer, Nana Ama Dankwa, who has been tackling the contradictions of self-abandonment by Africans in her writing – skin bleaching, for instance.

Issues like this, says Awoonor, should be espoused by the writers of this generation. “We aren’t going to go back and talk about slavery, colonialism and imperialism. Of course, this forms the distant backdrop – we ’ve dealt with that already. If there’s any schoolboy in Africa who hasn’t heard about slavery, that’s the failure of our educational system. We should garner from the functioning myths, just as myths ‘re dominant in European literature: the myth of Sisyphus, the myth of Promesius, Ulysses, etc. African writers should refurbish African myths as part of the statements we give to ourselves.”

Awoonor has an inviting personality and he barely parries questions. Ask him what’s the role of memory in literary work as a function for historic recovery, and the genius responds: “Memory isn’t purely individual. It’s also collective. When people deny, first and foremost, the collective memory, then they ‘ve a problem constructing any individual memory within the framework of that collective memory.” Going down from the general to the specific, he avers that “we tend not to tell the story of slavery, both domestic slavery and when we were selling our kinsmen across the ocean at the instigation of the European marauders.”
What, then, is the way forward?

A fleeting smile trespasses across his flinty countenance. Just then, the myth issue re-echoes: “We need to construct out of that historical memory the myth based on survival, the myth of endurance and ultimately, in the process of that progression, the myth of triumph. It’s not enough to survive; it’s not enough to endure; and that’s where I think we Africans, the intellectual groups – writers, philosophers, historians, journalists, sociologists, etc. – must make this a project. I don’t believe that we should be eternally be mirred in the mud and the morass of despair, the so-called Afro-pessimism that is so predominant now, where everybody throws up his hands in the air and says ‘We Africans are useless’. I don’t accept that.

“We must use myths more and more for validation and re-enforcing ourselves. If I write a book now, and I ‘m borrowing from European myths, and I set out an elaborate thing on existentialism with the myth of Sisyphus, I ‘m shortchanging myself. We don’t lack myths. This is why I’m very much interested, for example, in the Yoruba myth of creation, Obatala. Wole Soyinka did a beautiful work in his book, The Interpreters, where he assembled all these artists who ‘ve become spokespersons for various types of consciousness from the spiritual realm to human world. It’s so exciting. This is what the African writer must do,” he says, his voice rising preacherly.

“Okey Ndibe [a Nigerian] is writing a novel, which is almost ready, on the phenomenon of Western art collectors, who ‘re asking people to steal gods from various shrines, and the gods ‘re being stolen and sold to the collectors, who take them to the West. The potency of that myth in validating the African consciousness is where I’m looking at,” Awoonor declares, noting that African writers should also explore other anxilliary and major issues, including the economy and the AIDS pandemic.

Awoonor, from the word go, has been an exemplar of neo-traditionalism in his writings. “I haven’t changed at all,” he says. “Wherever I ‘ll go, I must start from that point. I must move from a point of departure. I must take it off from somewhere. I mean am not a disembowelled. None of us is a disembowelled factor.


We came from somewhere – unless I ‘ve naturalized as an African. Even at that, I ‘ve seen African Americans who ‘ve come to Ghana, looked around and selected villages and towns to settle in, bought land and claimed some form of affinity, hoping that their children ’d live there.” He asserts that unless we exhibit that penchant for our tradition “as our fundamental reality, we ‘re going nowhere.”
Awoonor doesn’t mull over his thoughts. He speaks animatedly, particularizing his points, and holding you enraptured like a grand opera.

“To me, neo-traditionalism is still part and parcel of what I ‘m talking about vis-*-vis the resurrection of the myths – myths for the purpose of validating ourselves. If I fly into fancy, and I use the myth from another culture, you ‘ll be wondering what has gone wrong with me. If Wole Soyinka suddenly moves away from the Yoruba concept he has brilliantly dealt with, he ‘ll be muddled here and there. If Achebe moves away, too, it ‘ll be the same; even those who ‘re writing out of the mulatto consciousness, like Alex Laguma, in A Walk in the Night, a miscegenation that created new Africans with light skin.

“All of these must be part and parcel of the discourse. We can’t shy away from these. We need to come to terms with these. Nobody should be ashamed of where he comes from. When people tell me ‘My great-grandfather was a slave’, I say to the person ‘Good for you. Construct something out of that. How did he end? Did he triumph or succumb? I ‘m sure he did, because, since you ‘re here, he triumphed’. These ‘re the legitimate elements of our literary engagements, otherwise, what do we ‘ve as our models?” he asks , his eyes glistening with sagacity.

Ghana, like Nigeria, has a strong literary tradition. The poets, Benigengor Blay, Michael Dei-Anang, Raphael Ernest Armattoe and Gladys May Casely-Hayford were among the pioneer West African poets, together with Nnamdi Azikiwe and Dennis Osadebay of Nigeria, Crispin George of Sierra Leone and Roland Tombekai Dempster of Liberia. Kwesi Brew, Francis Kobina Parkes, Ayi Kwe Armah, Efua Sutherland, Ama Ata Aidoo, Kofi Anyidoho and, of course, Kofi Awoonor himself are among the best writers to have come out of Ghana.

“Sometimes people underrate the new writers, but we ‘ve quite a few of them who ‘re doing well,” he says, mentioning Benjamin Kwakye [winner, 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book Award, Africa Region], Nana Ama Dankwa and Naa Otua Codjoe-Swayne, among the leading light of the new generation. But he admits he has been lazy reading new writers. “I ‘m marooned in the classics of the Achebes and so on. I can talk about them more confidently.”

African writer in the 21s century should write whatever they like as long as they do not shortchange themselves, he insists, but he is concerned about the positive side. “I ‘m interested in the word triumph – that the triumph of a race is coming, not so much as how many wonderful streets and glistening cities that they ‘ve, but that the human will did not succumb to whatever may be the internal tragic fixtures of existence itself. So, let them write a book that puts us in the year 5000 or beyond.”

Delving into politics, he tells you about the UN provision that has the encouragement of homosexuality by countries as one of the indices of freedom in the world, condemning it as unAfrican. “Why must the West be the one to dictate the agenda every time?” he queries with an incendiary glare. “We [Africans] need to be alert what’s being sold to us.”

Does he still write? “Oh yes”, he intones. He is currently writing a book on collective essay entitled The African Predicament: A Writer’s Notebook, a collection of essays on his travels, encounters, ideas, political engagements, and his African heritage. The book, to be published by Subsaharan Pub. Ghana, will be out before the end of the year. Awoonor now teaches Creative Writing at the University of Ghana, Legon. “I ‘m excited by the good young writers coming up from the class,” he announces eagerly.
It is rare to find a literary scion of any great African writer who has won the same renown.

Awoonor’s children are no exceptions. But he has a feeling that his last son, Kekelie, would turn to a great artist in future. “He ‘s very artistic. He likes to drum, draw and do other creative things, but I ‘m going to move him into creative writing. I told him, ‘I don’t give a damn whether you ‘re going to be an engineer or whatever, but you ‘ll also write’,” he remarks, smug laughter pealing out like the twang of the Spanish flamenco.