Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - TUNDE LEYE: The Myth of Nigerian Publishing

does one, anyone , really believe there is a single story that western presses have been choosing, western readers demanding, that characterizes all those authors listed below?
and does the "single story syndrome" apply every time an african author creates a scenario describing something that is less than positive about africa?
i will repeat my student's objection, many years ago, to the ending of Things Fall Apart. according to the logic of this posting, achebe should go back to rewrite it so that okonkwo doesn't commit suicide.
ken

On 10/18/13 5:07 PM, Ikhide wrote:

"So it was that when the great Chinua Achebe died, there were all sorts of cries from all sorts of corners for us to revive the good old days of Nigerian publishing, to bring the publishing industry back to its old glory. On the surface of it, this seems correct, after all, it was that great time that produced works from great writers like Wole Soyinka, Chris Okigbo, Chinua Achebe, J.P Clarke, Amos Tutuola, D.O. Fagunwa, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Cyprian Ekwensi, Zulu Sofola, Elechi Amadi and many others. But peel away the writers, to see the publishing machinery that delivered the works of these writers to the world and we see that there really were no good old days. Virtually all of their books, even Fagunwa's book written in Yoruba and Tutuola's in Pidgin-English were published by foreign publishing houses. Fast forward to the next generation after these men, the Okey Ndibes and Pius Adesanmis generation, and the same thing applies. In the generation that is emerging after Mr. Ndibe's, Chimamanda Adichie, Teju Cole and Nnedi Okorafor's generation, it is the same. A brief Google search would prove the veracity of this. The confinement of Nigerian writing to a certain straitjacket is a direct result of this – the foreign publisher is in business after all and will publish only the Nigerian stories that conform to the expectations of their readers, and which they can sell. The single story which we often scream hoarse about has its roots here. We simply have not given our authors the opportunity to tell our own stories, from the multiplicity of angles and spanning the old and emerging Africa without going through the prism of foreign Western publishing."|

- Tunde Leye

http://1pageweekly.com/tunde-leye-the-myth-of-nigerian-publishing/

 

- Ikhide

 

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--   kenneth w. harrow   faculty excellence advocate  professor of english  michigan state university  department of english  619 red cedar road  room C-614 wells hall  east lansing, mi 48824  ph. 517 803 8839  harrow@msu.edu