Lord Anunoby,
CH is so happy to be on the same page with you and to agree with you completely about this.
Yes, as Marley put it, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!"
It's also been a constant theme of Dr. Bedford Umez
Aminatta Forna's "The Hired Man" takes a departure from African characters and an African landscape...
When Ben Okri or anyone else starts whining like that, the question always is, "Who is tying their hands? Who has imprisoned their minds? " It's like Nollywood churning out soap operas in commercial quantities to provide entertainment for a public which constantly wants more of the same. As to the almost non-existent quality African reading public , fact is that many African men and women of the pen set out with great expectations and anticipate critical acclaim from the Oyibo, have to write understandably about racism and female circumcision etc to attain at least commercial success. Not to mention the mimic men. It's there in music too; everybody's singing someone else's blues, others trying to sound like Bob Marley as if they don't have a voice of their own, expect the next song with the same beat, and yet others as if Athol Fugard had never been born..
Inevitably some African writers will write about what's uppermost in their minds, a social or artistic response to their immediate environment or what's burning in their hearts. Right now I'm in the middle of an indictment of corruption in Nigeria, Teju Cole's "Every Day is For The Thief" (with photographs) a revised and updated 2014 edition, originally published in 2007 (before "Open City"). The title is from a Yoruba proverb, which translates as "Every day is for the thief, but one day is for the owner." It's not a "Gulliver's Travels" but Teju Cole's fictionalised real-time travelogue of a young man's brief prodigal visit to motherland Nigeria after an absence of thirteen years in New York, and his travails there, in Nigeria, against a background ( sadly) of endemic corruption being part of the very fabric , the woof and warp of modern Nigerian culture. It is immensely readable , the smoothness of the language, sensitive , never sardonic, reminding me of Philip Roth and the story itself, so far, sometimes reminds me of episodes from Shiva Naipaul's very critical "North of South " one of the differences being that in Teju's case it is more of the return of the native son and that means that his critique is not that of a foreigner or a mere "Been to" - or even the Ayi Kwei Armah's thinly fictionalised follow-ups to "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born" which got my late friend Cyprian Lamar Rowe exonerating Achebe over Armah who he unjustly accused of seemingly seeing Africa through foreign eyes.
A touching song:
Sorry about this abrupt ending, not a second more to spare - I've got a train to catch!
Pray for us all, you & me, Brother Goodluck & Brother Buhari
Sincerely,
CH
We Sweden
On Sunday, 28 December 2014 12:03:29 UTC+1, Anunoby, Ogugua wrote:
"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: usaafric...@
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Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 1:38 AM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue; Ed...@yahoogroups.com; krazi...@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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Beautiful
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