Who are we, really? A provocation on definitions and influences of African writing

By Ray Mawerera | 10h ago

This weapon assists us in defining such things as the African book and the African writer, which is the basis of this piece.

The creators of Artificial Intelligence bots designed them and continue to upgrade them after the fashion of their lived experiences. This is not surprising as it follows the pattern in which the western worldview has been foisted upon the world, for centuries now. And in the face of western cultures and values that have permeated the very fabric of societies around the world — in terms of language, food tastes, governance systems, science and mathematics — assimilation has become an inevitable consequence. Mimicry has subtly invaded senses, as if those cultures and values are the go-to standard for how life ought to be lived and a compelling aspiration is to live how the west lives. Anyone who dares to rebel and reject these invasions is perceived to be in denial of today’s realities.

Its overwhelmingness is so powerful that only those nations who consciously shielded themselves from it before it took root, such as in the eastern bit of the world, can claim pride of identity even though that, too, is debatable from a scale and extent viewpoint. The rest of us, shamefully, have become like our colonial masters, hearts and minds having been completely taken over, and we measure ourselves by the same yardsticks that they introduced to us as “the right way”.

We are thus defined, not by ourselves, but by an adapted worldview which we do not fully understand and, therefore, misinterpret with regular naivete. The Shona have an almost untranslatable idiom, chakabaya chikatyokera, which refers to a sharp object thrust bone-deep into the skin only to break once inside; it is difficult to remove and meanwhile, may rust and spread its gangrenous contamination wherever it can within the body’s blood stream.

This weapon assists us in defining such things as the African book and the African writer, which is the basis of this piece. These definitions place African life, cultures and values in a single capsule, a kind of one-size-fits-all frame and its interpretation is the preserve of those from whom Africa adapted writing as a craft, for it is they who have the wherewithal to help the rest of the world make sense of their identity, such as it is.

Do African books have to be written the same way? Must they all be full of idiomatic metaphor, themed around mysticism and cultural contradictions to pass muster as the “genuine article” authenticating identity and strong connection with, and awareness of, roots? In the dynamic fluidity of today’s world, what is “the African writer”?

And while we’re at it, what is “the African book”?

We have had conversations with fellow writers and literary academics about these matters, yet they remain topical. The questions were rekindled in my mind as I re-read an old (1990 and 1992 reprint) edit of interviews with some of our continent’s iconic authors of yore, titled Talking with African Writers (Heinemann, Portsmouth NH/James Currey, London, 1990). The interviewer, Jane Wilkinson, seeks to explore the drivers of writing for a people for whom the very act of writing is a relatively recent adaption of alien cultures. Indeed, she acknowledges this in the introduction to the interviews, when she finds that the African writers whom she spoke to were products of a “lively tradition of creative talking, and to an art set firmly within the life of the community…”

Creative talking is reference to oral literature, passed down through generations in its disparate traditional forms: dance, fireside storytelling of different exploits, agricultural activity, spirituality and connection with the occult arts, among others. Wilkinson observes “the difficulty of creating written literature in countries where writing itself is a relatively recent phenomenon”, almost without exception.

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Wilkinson also found many of her interview subjects appearing “more willing to speak about the traditions they find significant about their work than about the work itself; [T]hus talking about writing means going into their relationships to the written and oral literature that has already been produced within their countries, or countries with which, for historical, political and cultural reasons, they in some way feel connected…discussing the official paradigms of Writing, Literature, Culture and perhaps even Civilisation they were presented with at school: the writings of Shakespeare, Dickens, Wordsworth, Keats, Hardy and Lawrence, but also… of Conrad, Kipling, Cary, Forster and Greene.”

Remember, this is a seminal work published in 1990, just ten years after Zimbabwe’s independence. At the time the literary arts sector was among the most vibrant of interactive disciplines in the country, which had enjoyed much regional and international support in that first decade. Ruling the roost were award winning authors boasting such international acclaim that literature lovers visited the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, which had its own pulsating effervescence, just to see them… and perhaps brush shoulders or even land an autograph. Here they could attend a lively workshop featuring the best of the country’s writers and poets: Charles Mungoshi, Musa Zimunya, Chenjerai Hove, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Shimmer Chinodya, Yvonne Vera, Wilson Katiyo, Dambudzo Marechera, Stanley Nyamfukudza, Ollie Maruma, Virginia Phiri; and their comrades from the continent: Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Chinua Achebe, Micere Mugo, Nadine Gordimer, Nuruddin Farrah, Dennis Brutus, Wole Soyinka, Lewis Honwana, Ngugi wa Mirii, Lewis Nkosi, Jack Mapanje, Flora Nwapa, Cyprian Ekwensi…

Stylistically, a common thread that ran through the writers’ works was an enchanting poetry-prose that was captivating in the rhythmic structure of its construction, flowing smoothly in a caressing manner which made most of the books frustratingly un-put-downable. The popular themes seemed to revolve around peasant hardship and ordinary people doing extraordinary things under less-than-friendly environments, colonialism, independence in all its guises pre and post, feminism, identity. These seemed to frame the African story, well captured in the “creative talking” Wilkinson found with the writers she interviewed.

But the political environment — for we cannot underplay the impact any political environment can have on the socio-cultural fabric of a nation — was steadily changing. The issues which occupied conversations began to be replaced by other new ones which had little to no respect for the stories of old, as fascinating as they might be. If there was a connection with the past which could be salvaged through this written literature, it was and is still being systematically eroded by the fast and subtly dynamic advancements in technology which underpinned the shrinkage of global spaces. It gave new meaning to “the global village” concept of bringing all the peoples of the world together in a boundary-less environment in which everyone speaks the same language and understands the same things the same way.

NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel We Need New Names, published in 2013, is a typical example of the departure from the styles of the pioneers of the writing craft mentioned earlier, and the indigenous language writers who preceded them. Before her, other newer writers such as Ignatius Tirivangani Mabasa and Memory Chirere, while maintaining the seductive poetry-prose style, appeared to throw away the frames, themes and linguistic boundaries that were a preoccupation of the past in favour of a style that captured every-day speak, without risking losing the reader.

The result is a sincere connection with today’s cultures – or is it culture? – where the mixing and mingling of the world’s peoples has blurred the lines of difference and separation and, in the process, challenging stereotypes including definitions such as “African writers”. In today’s every-day speak, languages are mixed freely and new proverbs and idioms are created. With conservatism not yet dead, the older generations cringe and shake heads at the inability of the young people of today to complete a sentence without throwing in a foreign language – usually English to pinpoint the level of “wokeness”, but also catch-phrases or words from other tribes or nations.

When NoViolet’s main protagonist in “New Names” travels from Zimbabwe to the United States and experiences a different worldview, how is the writer to capture that without breaking out of a cocooned definition which seems to suggest certain expectations based on geography and perceived notions of reality? Away from that though, and perhaps more importantly, should geographical-cultural descriptives continue to be used to define writers given the erasure of boundaries? Or is that an issue that touches on matters of identity and the role of writers in helping to preserve it? What identity are we talking about, anyway, when the lines have become so blurred? Who are we, really, when so many different influences and cultures shape our responses to the world in which we now live?

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