Postcolonial African Literature

African literature written in the postcolonial era by authors of African descent.
INTRODUCTION

Postcolonialism
in Africa refers in general to the era between 1960 and 1970, during
which time many African nations gained political independence from their
colonial rulers. Many authors writing during this time, and even during
colonial times, saw themselves as both artists and political activists,
and their works reflected their concerns regarding the political and
social conditions of their countries. As nation after nation gained
independence from their colonial rulers, beginning in the mid-twentieth
century, a sense of euphoria swept through Africa as each country
celebrated its independence from years of political and cultural
domination. Much of early postcolonial writing reflects this sense of
freedom and hope. In the years that followed, as many African nations
struggled to reinvigorate long-subservient societies and culture,
writers of postcolonial Africa began reflecting the horrors their
countries suffered following decolonization, and their writing is often
imbued with a sense of despair and anger, at both the state of their
nations and the leaders who replaced former colonial oppressors.
Critics, including Neil Lazarus, have proposed that this sense of
disillusionment, reflected in the works of such authors as Ayi Kwei
Armah, marked the beginning of a major change in African intellectual
and literary development. Beginning in the 1970s, writes Lazarus, the
direction of African fiction began to change, with writers forging new
forms of expression reflecting more clearly their own thoughts about
culture and politics in their works. The writing of this period and
later moves away from the subject matter of postcolonial Africa, and
moves into the realm of new and realistic texts that reflect the
concerns of their respective nations.

Postcolonial studies gained
popularity in England during the 1960s with the establishment of
Commonwealth literature—in the United States, this phenomenon did not
reach its zenith until the 1990s. Because postcolonial writers are
studied by and read most often by Western audiences, their works are
often seen as being representative of the Third World and studied as
much for the anthropological information they provide as they are as
works of fiction. This, notes Bart Moore-Gilbert in his Postcolonial
Theory, has led to the creation of a criticism that is unique in its set
of reading practices, which are “preoccupied principally with analysis
of cultural forms which mediate, challenge, or reflect upon … relations
of domination and subordination.” In his study of postcolonial African
fiction, Graham Huggan also comments on this phenomenon, theorizing that
western critics need to make an increased effort to expand their
interpretive universe in order to study African texts as fiction, rather
than as windows into the cultures they represent. This difficulty is
further compounded by the fact that many indigenous African authors in
the postcolonial era and beyond remain un-translated, and are thus
unavailable to western critics. In the meantime, the canon of translated
or European-language works that are available, although but a minor
part of African literature in general, have come to define postcolonial
literature and its critical response.

African writers are
themselves very conscious of this gap between texts that are accessible
to the West and those that remain in Africa. In fact, the language issue
became a central concern with many African writers in the years
following decolonization, and some, including Ngugi wa Thiong'o, have
chosen in the years following independence to reject English and other
European languages in favor of native African writing. Ngugi and his
supporters were opposed by several African writers, including Chinua
Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and others, who challenged the usefulness of such a
stance. In contrast, Ngugi theorized that by writing in English or
French and other European languages, African authors are continuing to
enrich those cultures at the expense of their own. Writers who support
African-language literature are also concerned that European languages
are unable to express the complexity of African experience and culture
in those languages, along with the fact that they exclude a majority of
Africans, who are unable to read in these languages, from access to
their own literary success. In contrast, critics such as Jeannine
DeLombard have pointed out that while African-language literature is
popular with indigenous African populations, such writing tends to be
formulaic and stereotypical. While the language debate continues, many
authors, including playwright Penina Muhando Mlama, Ngugi, and several
others, have expanded their literary horizons by collaborating with
everyday African people to produce writing that is popular in both
origin and destination.