Exploring Life Through

African Literature
 AFRICAN LITERATURE

 African literature consists of a body

of work in different languages and
various genres, ranging from oral
literature to literature written in
colonial languages (French,
Portuguese, and English).
 Literary Background of the
 The most notable literary
African selections are those that
Literature
capture the life and struggle of the African people.
There have been significant struggles that could
have been left untouched, but writers choose to
face courageous task of answering the call of pen,
and begin the process of social healing through
literature. Perhaps, it is this brilliant characteristic
of African literature that enables it to shine and
fulfill one universal function of literature.
 Literaryof
 The literary tradition Background
Africa becameof the
richer
African
than ever as it gained Literature
artistic and sophisticated
expression in different languages. Traditional
languages became vehicles of cultural thoughts.
Poetry, drama, novel, and short story flourished
as the literary genres. The people’s struggle to
cope with – or oppose – the changing atmosphere
of their homelands was dramatically recorded in
what is known as African literature.
 Literary Background of the
 Literature represents the breadth
African and depth of
Literature
universal experiences of man. The texts for the study
of African literature shed light on controversial issues
such as racial discrimination, apartheid, political
conflicts, civil wars, feminism and gender sensitivity,
and human rights issues. These have given the
selections the flavor of relevance and universality,
which are outstanding themes of a meaningful literary
study.
 NEGRITUDE
 “A sudden grasp of racial identity
and of cultural values and an
awareness of the wide discrepancies
which existed between the promise of
the French system of assimilation
and the reality.”
NEGRITUDE
 Although Africans had been writing in Portuguese as early
as 1850 and a few volumes of African writing in English
and French had been published, an explosion of African
writing in European languages occurred in the mid-
twentieth century. In the 1930s, black intellectuals from
French colonies living in Paris initiated a literary
movement called Negritude. Negritude emerged out of "a
sudden grasp of racial identity and of cultural values and
an awareness "of the wide discrepancies which existed
between the promise of the French system of assimilation
and the reality."
NEGRITUDE
 The movement's founders looked to Africa to
rediscover and rehabilitate the African values
that had been erased by French cultural
superiority. Negritude writers wrote poetry in
French in which they presented African
traditions and cultures as antithetical, but
equal, to European culture.
:Literary Forms

WRITTEN
ORAL LITERATURE
LITERATURE
ORAL LITERATURE
 Oral literature, also called as “orature,”
have flourished in Africa for many
centuries and take a variety of forms
including folk tales, myths, epics,
funeral dirges, praise poems, and
proverbs.
WRITTEN LITERATURE
 Written literature
includes novels, plays,
poems, hymns, and
tales.
 WRITTEN LITERATURE
 The African authors who produced literatures
in European languages have been described as
literatures of revolt. These texts move away
from the project of recuperating and
reconstructing an African past and focus on
responding to, and revolting against,
colonialism and corruption. These literatures
are more concerned with the present realities
of African life, and often represent the past
negatively.
PERIOD OF COLONIZATION
 With the period of Colonization, African
oral traditions and written works came
under a serious outside threat. Europeans,
justifying themselves with the Christian
ethics, tried to destroy the "pagan" and
"primitive" culture of the Africans, to
make them more pliable slaves.
THEMES OF AFRICAN LITERARY
WORKS
 Oral literature, including stories, dramas,
riddles, histories, myths, songs, proverbs, and
other expressions, is frequently employed to
educate and entertain children.
 Oral histories, myths, and proverbs additionally
serve to remind whole communities of their
ancestors' heroic deeds, their past, and the
precedents for their customs and traditions.
FAMOUS AFRICAN
WRITERS
AND THEIR
WORKS
Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe
 He is a prominent Igbo novelist acclaimed for
his unsentimental depictions of the social and
psychological disorientation accompanying the
imposition of Western customs and values upon
traditional African society. His particular
concern was with the emergent Africa at its
movement of crisis. His works include: Things
Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease,
A Man of the People, Anthills of Savanah.
(1930)
Chinua Achebe
 Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist and author.
 His groundbreaking novel Things Fall Apart went
on to sell more than 12 million copies and been
translated into more than 50 languages. 
 Things Fall Apart, a work that in part led to
his being called the “Patriarch of the
African novel“.
THINGS FALL APART
 This groundbreaking novel
centers on the cultural clash
between native African
culture and the traditional
white culture of missionaries
and the colonial government
in place in Nigeria.
THINGS FALL APART
 The story's main theme concerns
pre- and post-colonial life in late
nineteenth century Nigeria. It is seen
as the archetypal modern African
novel in English, one of the first to
receive global critical acclaim. It is a
staple book in schools throughout
Africa and is widely read and
studied in English-speaking
countries around the world.
Bessie Head
Bessie Head
 She described the contradictions and
shortcomings of pre- and post-colonial
African society in morally didactic novels
and stories. She suffered rejection and
alienation from an early age being born of
an illegal union between her white mother
and black father. Among her works are:
When Rain Clouds Gather, A Question of
Power, The Collector of Treasures, Serowe.
(1937 – 1986)
Bessie Head
 Bessie Amelia Emery Head, known
as Bessie Head, though born in South
Africa, is usually considered Botswana's
most influential writer.  
 She is the child of a wealthy white South
African woman and a black servant when
interracial relationships were illegal in South
Africa.
Bessie Head
 Bessie Head was one of the first female authors
from Africa to attract an international audience. The
stories she told were sometimes the first glimpses
that people from other countries gained of the strict
and often life-threatening segregationist political
system in South Africa called “Apartheid”.
When Rain Clouds Gather
 When Rain Clouds Gather is about a troubled young
man called Makhaya Maseko who runs away from his
birthplace, South Africa, to become a refugee in a little
village called Golema Mmidi, in the heart of Botswana.
Here he is faced with many challenges, one of which is
the fact that Chief Matenge does not allow his presence
in the village. He meets a white man named Gilbert and
starts a whole new journey into the unknown.
 Makhaya Maseko has suffered under the Apartheid
system in his homeland. Under Apartheid, all black
people had no rights to vote. They were poorly
educated and often imprisoned and beaten.
Okot Okot p’Bitek P’Bitek
 He was born in Uganda during the British
domination and was embodied in contrast of
cultures. He attended English-speaking school,
but never lost touch with traditional African
values and used his wide array of talents to
pursue his interests in both African and Western
cultures.
 Part of Ugandan football team; Education in
University of Bristol, Law in University of
Wales, and British Literature in University of
Oxford.
Okot P’Bitek
 Okot p’Bitek, a Ugandan poet, novelist, and
social anthropologist whose three verse
collections—Song of Lawino (1966), Song
of Ocol (1970), and Two Songs (1971)—are
considered to be among the best
African poetry in print.
Song of Lawino and Song of
Ocol  Song of Lawino, addresses the issue of the
conflict of cultures. It is the lament of a
illiterate woman over the strange ways of
her university-educated husband, whose
new ways are incompatible with traditional
African concepts of manhood.
 'My husband's tongue is bitter', is
considered to a timeless creation.
 Song of Ocol is the husband's reply,
reveals him to be just as predictably
inadequate as his wife had declared.
Two Songs
 In Two Songs, he addressed
other issues, in the same
style. 
 Song of a Prisoner drew on
his reactions to Kenyan
politics,
 Song of Malaya deals with
the life of a prostitute.