FW: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ben Okri: A mental tyranny is keeping black writers from greatness

"The black and African writer is expected to write about certain things, and if they don't they are seen as irrelevant."

 

BO

 

"Expected  to" by who? Why does BO think this is still the case? It used to be may be but no longer.

People read for their edification and enjoyment. Writers who deliver these benefits while being different are very likely to be appreciated. Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" shows that a good story and writing style will be appreciated regardless of context. Chimamanda Adichie's current success for example, is evidence if any is needed, that it is for a writer to chooses their audience, interest, story and style. What makes a writer "irrelevant" in my considered opinion, is not what they believe is expected of them, but the work they produce which work is the result of the impactful choices that a writer makes.

A necessary condition for successful exertion of this independence is intellectual courage. Another is that the story must be a good one. To be successful, a writer like a musical artist must meet their readers' expectation and earn their acclaim by being different. Ray Charles was reported to have said that he achieved respectable acclaim and commercial success as a musical artist, after he stopped trying to be Nat King Cole.

Mental tyranny or slavery in this age and time especially as it affects writers, it seems to me, is a choice if it is anything at all. As Bob Marley famously said "only one can free oneself from it". I say only one, especially a writer, can keep oneself in mental slavery.

 

oa

 

 

 

     

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 1:38 AM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue; Ederi@yahoogroups.com; krazitivity@yahoogroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ben Okri: A mental tyranny is keeping black writers from greatness

 

"The black and African writer is expected to write about certain things, and if they don't they are seen as irrelevant. This gives their literature weight, but dooms it with monotony. Who wants to constantly read a literature of suffering, of heaviness? Those living through it certainly don't; the success of much lighter fare among the reading public in Africa proves this point. Maybe it is those in the west, whose lives are untouched by such suffering, who find occasional spice and flirtation with such a literature. But this tyranny of subject may well lead to distortion and limitation."

 

"It is time that black and African writers woke up from their mesmerism with subject. By it they gain a brief success, a small flutter of fame. Then with time the work sinks; but other works whose subject was perhaps less sensational, but whose art is more compelling, make their way through time and win the appreciation of eternal readers.

 

The first freedom is mental freedom. We have to seize the freedom to be what we can be, to write whatever we want, with all the mystery and fire of art. It is our responsibility to illuminate the strange corners of what it is to be human."

 

- Ben Okri 

 

And I say, about time!

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/27/mental-tyranny-black-writers

- Ikhide

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