African and Caribbean Literature

Abstract

The emergence of a people, oppressed for centuries, into articulate awareness of their insulted and traumatic history is a matter of concern to everyone. But the matter is a highly complex one, as one learns most easily of all, perhaps, from V.S. Naipaul’s (q.v.) essays The Overcrowded Barracoon (1972), in which he shows how not only the foundation of the British Empire but also its dissolution caused untold suffering. One can extend his humane concern and explanations to other empires and other places than those he deals with. The literature of Black Africa is, of course, only one aspect of this confused but increasingly evident emergence. But its intrinsic literary importance has sometimes — with every justification — been somewhat exaggerated. Such works (I take a random example) as the Ethiopian Sahle Sellasie’s (1936) Shinega’s Village: Scenes of Ethiopian Life (1964; tr. 1970), the first work written in Chaha — a hitherto unwritten Ethiopian dialect which Sellasie used an Arabic script to transcribe — are important in sociological and historical terms. So is his The Afersata (1969), written in English, describing how a remote Ethiopian community with no police force investigates an outbreak of arson by its age-old ‘Afersata’ method. But neither is a work of great literary importance. Even the more famous African writers, such as Senghor (q.v.), have had exaggerated claims made for them. These writers will be important figures in the history of the literature now emerging; but the intrinsic importance of their work — as literature — will surely be seen to be smaller than is now apparent.