kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2021 4:34 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Abdulrazak Gurnah, Not Ngugi Wa Thiongo!
The Booker Prize is also interesting. Ideally, Wa Thiong'o could also win there.
Professor Harrow, I read Nobel Laureate J. M. G. Le Clézio's " Onitsha" and was not terribly impressed.
When it comes to Jorge Luis Borges and all the other great writers, literary artists, voices that the Swedish Academy has either evaded or ignored, the list is long.
For Literature, the list could be even longer
Re - Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire and the many others, there's also the matter of chronology: Wole Soyinka was crowned in 1986 ( thus boosting the image of the Nigeria and Africa who produced him) and talking about chronology, that was fifteen long years before Sir Vidia who is commonly known as V.S.Naipaul could also claim the prize as his long overdue recompense and recognition. We all recall Sir Vidia, bristling with indignation and sinking to the lowest depths of literary despair - unlike George Bernard Shaw's alleged put-down of William Shakespeare ( "With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.")
In Sir Vidia's case, I imagine that when Sir Vidia was informed that Wole Soyinka had bagged The Prize in 1986, he must have spat on the ground or the floor. At least according to Paul Theroux, "Sir Vidia retorted, "Has he written anything?" And added that the Nobel Committee was "pissing on literature from a great height"
The Prize and regional representation. Hmm...
Every year, there's the patient expectation that The Prize will be going to Africa ( the same prayers and expectations for the FIFA World Cup) South America also wants it, so do many of the nations in Europe, the United States ALWAYS wants it. In 1973, Australia was most ably represented by Patrick White, a great writer, with a keen ear for dialects..
Indeed, there's also the language issue – some of the prize-winning languages so far, in alphabetical order: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish (Isaac Bashevis Singer !)
Pan African literary champions are slowly approaching - at a snail's pace, the idea of granting a mighty, worthy, grand, literature prize of Nobel-like stature - Mo Ibrahim could chip in a few million dollars annual prize money..... and just like the humble Mt. Sinai which the Almighty chose to announce in His own Voice, the first and second of the ten commandments, so too we could humbly propose e.g. Ile-Ife as the centre from which the African Nobel Prize for Literature would be announced, annually...
In the meantime, if Toyin Adepoju wants to nominate his namesake Toyin Falola for the Stockholm based Nobel Prize, he should follow this nomination procedure
BTW, I would also like to nominate Adepoju's good friend Kperogi, for his storytelling / telling stories. I discussed the matter with Baba Kadiri this evening, but the idea was anathema to his ears. He says that instead of awarding the Nobel Prize for mere big grammar, he would prefer to see some electric light coming out of darkness, Africans being awarded the Nobel Prize in other categories such as Physics, Chemistry, Medicine...
there are other africans, not yet mentioned, who didn't win the award.i can't get too excited about the nobel prize overlooking african authors because, as i've said before, they never awarded the argentinean borges, who was by the 1960s perhaps the greatest writer of his time. sure, we can debate that. but they also did not award, nor bring into the conversation of the award, senghor. why is that? or cesaire. why is that. can anyone honestly, i mean honestly, imagine awarding naipaul over those two, and why?
for sure we should be considering ngugi as a prominent candidate, along with farah, but what bugs me is imagining the swedish academy counts more for us than african awards, like the nommo, the caine, the tchicaya u tamsi poetry award, le grand prix litteraire d'afrique noire, and no doubt many others.
there is a real eurocentric preoccupation at play here, when the nobel prize and the academy awards are cited as the veritable imprimaturs of value.k
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Okey Iheduru <okeyi...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2021 5:21 PM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Abdulrazak Gurnah, Not Ngugi Wa Thiongo!
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Not Ngugi Wa Thiongo!
by adminThe Africans, however defined, have their own idea of which African writer should win the Nobel Prize on Literature. The Swedish Academy which decides who wins have their own idea of which African writer should win the prize. So, each time the award is given to an African, a clash of preferred meaning occurs. Although the 2021 award is to an African writer of postcolonial theory persuasion, that is not stopping the clash. What appears to be the first shot is Bhakti Shringarpure's piece on that theme, originally titled 'But, first we'll take the win'. Africaisacountry.com which first published it did so with its own rider: Abdulrazak Gurnah's Nobel Prize for Literature win raises questions about the role of the LitNobel and how they construct what we think of and buy as African literature.
Africaisacountry.com introduced Bhakti Shringarpure, the author, as an associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut and Editor-in-Chief of Warscapes as well as author of Cold War Assemblages (Routledge, 2019).
Well, not to Chimamanda yet but it is not beyond the Swedish Academy, says its critics
Prof Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 winner
The feeling was stronger than previous years, and it did seem like the Swedes were gazing towards Africa. One of the most infuriating things about the Nobel Literature prize committee is how hard they try to be cool and to surprise everybody, and to make sure never to pick anyone who's on the betting rosters. That's why I was certain that the Nobel Prize in Literature would not go to perennial Ladbroke favorites, Kenya's Ngugi wa Thiong'o or Somalia's Nuruddin Farah. I was ready for something outrageous like the prize going to Chimamanda Adichie (you never know though, they may give her the Peace one). I was frankly ecstatic that this year's choice was Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose novels come to us by way of the sea, from the Swahili coast of Zanzibar.
Read more: https://intervention.ng/24900/
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Okey C. Ihedurue-mail: okeyi...@gmail.com
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