Beyond Survival: African Literature & the Search for New Life (Ala Annuals Series) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865437092 ISBN 13: 9780865437098

Publisher: Africa World Pr, 1998

Synopsis

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About this title

About the Author

Kofi Anyidoho is a poet, literary scholar, professor of literature and acting director of the School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, Legon. He is the current President of the African Literature Association.

Abena P.A. Busia is a poet, literary scholar, associate professor of English, Rutgers University, and a former President of the African Literature association.

Anne V. Adams is associate professor in the Africana Studies & Research Center, and associate director of Women's Studies at Cornell University. She is the former President of the African Literature Association.

From the Back Cover

Even in the best of times, the artist is constantly reaching beyond the present; the severity of Africa's present situation of crisis must urge our artists even farther into their version of a new life. In "Beyond Survival," some of the best interpreters of African literature focus on "the role of the creative artist as a critical assessor, confidence builder and inspirer to excellence."

The central theme of this important collection of essays is inspired by the belief that given the severity of the current crisis of life for African peoples, and given the intuitive and cultivated ability of the creative artist to monitor and accurately capture the complexities of any human institution, close attention to the world of African and African-heritage writers should provide not only important insights into various dimensions of the problem, but also and perhaps even more crucial, subtle but reliable pointers to probable solutions. More than any other group of people, it is perhaps to the artists we must turn for a creative but timely realizable version of the future.

The contributors fall under five broad headings, beginning with an introductory section featuring three important addresses delivered during the 1994 ALA annual conference in Accra, Ghana, at which these papers were first presented, as well as a specially commissioned essay in memory of the late Flora Nwapa, one of Africa's best known pioneer women writers. The four other sections present a total of twenty essays focusing on "shifting paradigms," "New Life: Language and artistic tradition," "New Life: Language, Literature & National Policy," and "Resistance Strategies."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

SECTION B: Shifting Paradigms
Graves Without Bodies: The Mnemonic Importance of Equiano's Autobiography K. Opoku-Akyemang University of Cape Coast, Ghana

Celebrating Equiano: The Triumph of an Interesting African

American literature makes available to us direct autobiographical knowledge about life in American slavery from the point of view of the enslaved. This achievement is related directly to the New England Anti-Slavery Society which was founded in 1831 and went on to become a major force in American social and political history. In the thirty years between 1830 and 1860, an age that nearly encompasses the grand Romantic Period in American literary history, a number of autobiographical accounts about life in slavery by escaped slaves appeared as a part of the abolition movement. This body of work is recognized in the literature today by the term "slave narratives." slave narratives became the popular reading of the time, and many former slaves such as Charles Ball, Moses Roper, Josiah Henson, Solomom Northrup, Sojourner Truth and William Wells Brown, who was also the first American novelist (Holman and Harmon 1986: 560) wrote their stories. The most representative and best achieved specimen of these important historical and literary documents is Frederick Douglass' epynomous "A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" (1845). Douglass' personal account dramatizes his quest to escape enslavement and to shape an identity for himself outside the caste and strictures of slavery.

The story Douglass tells is detailed enough to give a clear insider's view of life in slavery in America: the diurnal activities on Colonel Lloyd's plantation in Maryland; the quality of the white overseers - not always, but often enough atrocious; the desperate need of slaves like himself to escape up north to freedom; the equally urgent desire for an education, which is seen as the gateway to freedom; and the utterly dehumanizing impact of slavery on both the victim and those who enjoy its profits. The most interesting sections of the autobiography occur, however, when Douglass stands back from the details to reflect on the significance of his life and experiences. For example, early in his life, while living with the Auld family, he came to see a crucial connection between slavery, freedom and education. Slavery and freedom are two opposite conditions of life mediated by education, for the knowledge that comes with education intensifies awareness of the intolerable condition of slavery. He became dedicated, therefore, to acquiring the ability and the habit of literacy so that, as Mr. Auld predicted, he would make himself unsuitable for slavery.

Douglass offers some other interesting insights into life in slavery, one of which is worth noting here. Indeed his comment that there is no joy without sadness in the songs one heard on the plantation is a valid and accurate description of blues music. In a fine book on African-American culture, "Stomping the Blues'" Albert Murray (1976) has elaborated on the subject by making a distinction between Blues as music, and blues as such:

"The blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Blues music is not...With all its preoccupations with the most disturbing aspects of life Blues music is something contrived specifically to be performed as entertainment." (Murray:45)

Albert Murray's optimistic interpretation of Blues music is qualified by "the most disturbing aspects of life"; this gives the music its quality of "discordia concors," abject melancholia that simultaneously transforms itself into harmony, release and joy, or what Frederick Douglass identified as "no joy without sadness."

Douglass' autobiography epitomizes the many stories of hardship, escape, and the dignity of self-discovery common to the slave narratives. These narratives are interesting as both history and literature, but in a more specific sense their major appeal lies in the fact that together they are the considered reflections and historical evidence of one of the three moving forces in the history of slavery, the other two being the African on one hand, and the European and the American of European descent on the other. In other words they are as important as literature.

The verdict is not unanimous regarding the literary status and acceptable definition of autobiography (Roy Pascal 1960; James Olney 1972; Stephen Butterfield 1974; Estelle Jelinek 1980; Paul Eakin 1985). In the view of some scholars, however, autobiography occurs in a formal sense when there is coincidence between author, protagonist and narrator in a prose narrative (Philippe Lejeune 1982).

As autobiography the slave narrative cannot by definition be duplicated for the reason that each specimen of the genre is the unique representation of a life. It is self-reflexive, imaginative activity in which the autobiographer must decide, within the given facts, the proper way to imagine and present the individual self. Whereas the autobiographer may not imagine the facts of the life, he or she is at liberty to formulate the voice of the persona and the personality of the protagonist in the direction of prediction. Another reason why each text of autobiography stands alone is the unique and individual interpretation it gives of the life experiences which forms its subject. Even when distorted by suppressed or half-truths the autobiography remains valuable in what that unfaithful allegiance to facts shows of character. Thus even when an autobiographer clearly lies about the facts of his or her life this should not affect the value of the work in any major way; it may merely reveal to us the writer's attitudes to those facts, and that revelation should help us in forming our picture of the character. Frank Harris (1963), the Victorian philanderer, exaggerated his sexual exploits beyond belief, but the value of "My Life and Love" remains intact, if only because it privileges entry into Harris' frenetic world of sexual fantasies. Autobiography as a whole rests on historical accuracy but our attention is claimed first and foremost by the perceptions, the quality and selection of material, and the exercise of judgement by the writer. The successful autobiography is one that shows a mind reflecting upon, sifting and relating to events; it must display a person changing and being changed by life's experiences, and sometimes even by the very process of writing the autobiography.

Edition details

• Publisher: Africa World Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0865437092
• ISBN 13: 9780865437098
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 350
• Editor: Anyidoho Kofi, Busia Abena P. A., Adams Anne V.