Literature And Politics Today: The Political Nature Of .

AABRAHAMS, PETER (1919– )Born in Vrededorp, in the South African city of Johannesburg, the son of an Ethiopian émigré miner and a Cape Colored mother, Abrahams was cast into desperatepoverty following the death of his father. He then lived the life of a street urchinon the wrong side of the color bar, but his fortunes changed dramatically when hediscovered the Bantu Men’s Social Centre in Johannesburg, whose library exposedhim to the African American Harlem Renaissance writers, from whom he took afervent black nationalist ideology. He obtained scholarships to two leading Anglican mission schools, where he was drawn to the liberal Christian humanism of thestaff, whose vision of a nonracial democracy provided a critical and redemptiveperspective on South Africa.The “new liberalism” of the period was developed by whites in the industrializing Witwatersrand as a response to the threat of black proletarian militancy, and ittried to convince the black leadership to abandon militancy and rely on education,moderation, and patience. This depended for its success on the gradual reform of theracist state apparatus, and was thrown into crisis as white domination rooted itselfmore firmly through the 1930s. Thus, while at school, Abrahams was converted toMarxism, which he described as a “miraculous revelation” that, unlike liberalism,offered a radical opposition through organized mass militancy to colonial capitalism.The three discourses of Christian liberalism, black nationalism, and Marxism(or Socialism) would weave their way through Abrahams’s writing career. His second novel, Mine Boy (1946), merges all three to articulate a radical liberalism relevant to the militant ambitions of the black working class. Abrahams went intoexile in 1939, arriving in London in 1941, where he moved in bohemian left-wingcircles. He was briefly a subeditor at the British Communist Party newspaper, theDaily Worker, but was increasingly disillusioned with Communists, complaining oftheir political intransigence and racism. He was instead drawn to the IndependentLabour Party and what he called its “pre-Marxist” socialism, which was “Christian,humane, caring.” In 1948 he married Daphne Miller; they have three children.The family moved to Jamaica in 1956, where as a supporter of the social democratic People’s National Party he achieved success as a journalist and daily commentator on Radio Jamaica, from which he retired at the age of 80. Abrahams haspublished youthful collections of short stories and poetry; eight novels, five ofwhich are set in South Africa; two powerful autobiographies; and two travelogues.Of his novels, The Path of Thunder (1948) shows the impossibility of cross-racial reconciliation in the face of Afrikaner intransigence. A Wreath for Udomo (1956) controversially identifies the greatest obstacle to African development as a backward

2Achebe, Chinua“tribalism.” This Island Now (1966) is a critique of neocolonialism in an islandnation modeled on Haiti and Jamaica, while The View from Coyoba (1985) employsa Jamaican setting to fulfill Abrahams’s lifelong interest in the “color question”; itadvocates a strategic retreat for blacks around the world from the West in orderto build a confident and independent identity. Some of Abrahams’s best writing iscontained in his autobiographies, Tell Freedom (1954) and The Coyoba Chronicles:Reflections on the Black Experience in the 20th Century (2000).Jean-Philippe WadeFurther ReadingEnsor, Robert. The Novels of Peter Abrahams and the Rise of Nationalism in Africa. Essen:Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1992.Harris, Michael T. Outsiders and Insiders: Perspectives of Third World Culture in British andPost-colonial Fiction. New York: Peter Lang, 1992.Wade, Jean-Philippe. “Song of the City and Mine Boy: The ‘Marxist’ Novels of PeterAbrahams.” Research in African Literatures 21.3 (1990): 89–101.Wade, Michael. Peter Abrahams. London: Evans, 1972.ACHEBE, CHINUA (1930–2013)One of the most prominent and influential African novelists and essayists, ChinuaAchebe’s international recognition grew from acclaim for his first novel, Things FallApart (1958). Read and studied around the world either in the original Englishor in one of many translations, the novel dramatizes in an accessible and incisivemanner the integrity of traditional African culture and the divisive, destabilizingimpact European colonialism and Christian evangelism had on it. Achebe’s reputation has flourished due to the dignity and insight that characterize not only ThingsFall Apart but also his four other novels his short stories, poems, essays, and children’s books; the many interviews he has granted; and his work as a broadcaster,speaker, editor, and teacher. In addition, his essay “An Image of Africa” (1976),which describes what he sees as the racist aspects of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, has become one of the most controversial and widely read works of literarycriticism in the past several decades.During his career, Achebe has been a stern critic of colonial and postcolonialWestern domination and exploitation of Africa, and the cultural, racial, and economic arrogance on which such domination rests. Nevertheless, he has been periodically criticized for being too mild in his strictures against the West and for writingmainly in English. Certainly Achebe’s varied oeuvre attests to a humane vision thathonors the arts and progressive contributions of many cultures—including thoseof the West—and that resists narrow political categorization. All the same, Achebehas presented a clear-eyed view of the cultural, political, and economic ravagesimposed on the non-Western world by Western systems of power and influencesince the colonial era, while casting a withering eye on the injustices and failuresof leadership in Africa, particularly those in his native Nigeria.

Achebe, ChinuaAchebe was christened Albert Chinualumogu Achebe on November 16, 1930,in Nneobi, in the southeastern part of colonial Nigeria. The son of Christian missionaries, Chinua was nevertheless highly attentive to the vestiges of traditionalIgbo culture around him. He showed exceptional academic talent from an earlyage and read avidly. His formal education followed the British colonial and churchcurricula available to promising students, and included study of African culturesand languages. He attended St. Philip’s Central School, Ogidi, and Nekede Central School, and later won prestigious scholarships to the Government CollegeUmuahia and University College, Ibadan, from which he graduated in 1953 withspecialties in English, religious studies, and history.In 1954, Achebe was hired as a producer for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service,which became the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) in 1961. In that year,NBC appointed him director of external broadcasting, and the same year saw hismarriage to Christiana Chinwe Okoli, with whom he has raised two daughters andtwo sons (and who presently teaches, like her husband, at Bard College in NewYork). Achebe’s work at NBC came to end in 1966 when persecution of the Igboforced him to leave Lagos. He returned to southeastern Nigeria, the homelandof—among others—the Igbo people, and in 1967 this part of the nation declareditself the independent Republic of Biafra.Achebe supported, and served as a spokesman for, Biafra during the NigerianCivil War (1967–1970), but the cause was doomed. Biafra suffered catastrophiclosses to the federal government with its vastly superior resources, and among thecivilian population alone, more than 1 million may have died from malnutritionand disease. Although the Achebe family survived the war, barely managing tostay out of harm’s way, they endured devastation of various kinds. Achebe lost,for example, his longtime friend and associate Christopher Okigbo, an importantNigerian poet of Igbo ancestry, who was killed while serving in the Biafran army.The war itself became a focus of Achebe’s creative attention in both poetry andshort stories. One volume of poetry, Beware, Soul-Brother and Other Poems, appearedin 1971 (and was later published in the United States, in a revised and expandededition, as Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems), while Achebe’s volume of shortfiction, Girls at War and Other Stories, was published in 1972 and includes not onlyworks directly related to the war but also stories that he had written well before it.Achebe’s novels have become one of the best-known bodies of work in modern world literature. Things Fall Apart portrays the British and Christian missionaryforces arrayed against coherent cultural survival in the Igbolands, and Arrow of God(1964), Achebe’s third novel, treats the attempts by a traditional head priest, Ezeulu,and other members of a recently colonized Nigerian village to accommodate thenew colonial regime and religion while maintaining aspects of their own culturalheritage. Achebe’s second novel, No Longer at Ease (1960), takes up the story of theOkonkwo family two generations after the demise of Okonkwo, the protagonist ofThings Fall Apart. Set in the late 1950s, No Longer at Ease depicts Obi Okonkwo’sembrace of British education, Western modernity, and a concept of Nigeria that inessential ways has already been defined by the soon-to-depart colonizer. His ultimatedisgrace prophesies the danger that lies ahead for the postcolonial African nation.3

4A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n L i t e r at u r eA Man of the People (1966) is a political satire detailing the corruption of postcolonial politics, leading to a military takeover of a newly independent, democratic, but corrupt African nation, obviously based on Nigeria. In fact, the eventsso closely anticipated those that unfolded in Nigeria immediately after the novel’spublication that Achebe was actually accused of involvement in the coup. In themuch later Anthills of the Savannah (1987), Achebe further elaborates on some ofthe same dilemmas he raised in A Man of the People: the ruthless drive for politicalpower in an African nation, the processes that corrupt that power, and the heavyimpact of Western influences on those processes. Still, one source of hope thatmay be discerned in the volatile context that Achebe portrays in both novels is thegoodness and decency of some exceptional and ordinary people. Yet individualgoodwill is clearly insufficient, and while Achebe offers in this novel no elaboratemodel for African political success, he does make clear that the bane of so manystruggling African nations is the recurring consolidation of power by autocraticrulers or ruling elites.Badly hurt in an automobile accident in Nigeria in 1990, Achebe spent his latteryears paralyzed from the waist down. He continued to be active, however, teachingat Bard College until 2009, when he moved to Brown University. He also spoke outon various causes and, in 2012, published There Was a Country: A Personal History ofBiafra, which renewed international interest in the legacy of the Nigerian Civil War.Thomas J. LynnFurther ReadingAchebe, Chinua. Home and Exile. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. New York: Doubleday, 1989.Achebe, Chinua. Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays. New York: Doubleday, 1975.Achebe, Chinua. The Trouble with Nigeria. Oxford: Heinemann, 1984.Booker, M. Keith, ed. The Chinua Achebe Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003.Carroll, David. Chinua Achebe: Novelist, Poet, Critic. 2nd ed. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan,1990.Ezenwa-Ohaeto. Chinua Achebe: A Biography. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997.Gikandi, Simon. Reading Chinua Achebe: Language and Ideology in Fiction. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann, 1991.Innes, C. L. Chinua Achebe. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990.Killam, G. D. The Writings of Chinua Achebe. London: Heinemann, 1977.Ogede, Ode. Achebe and the Politics of Representation. Trenton, NJ: Africa World P, 2001.Wren, Robert M. Achebe’s World: The Historical and Cultural Context of the Novels of ChinuaAchebe. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents P, 1980.A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R EAfrican American literature expresses 300 years of resistance, reformation, and revolutionary response to U.S. racism, gender inequality, and capitalism. It has been mostpolitically efficacious when leading or conjoined to widespread social justice movements, such as abolitionism, Communism and Socialism, civil rights, and feminism.

A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n L i t e r at u r eBlack literature has often served a vanguard function in eras of progressive politicalchange. Likewise, aggressively political African American writing has suffered frombacklash: the post-Reconstruction era, the Cold War purges of the postwar period,and the post–civil rights era of the 1980s and 1990s saw a loss of political significance in African American literature. Formally, African American literature oftenrelies on repetition, revision, and reconstruction of earlier themes, techniques, andideas, many of them also political in nature. African American poet and critic AmiriBaraka has referred to this strategy as the “changing same,” a creative dialectical tension between tradition and improvisation. In recent years, African American literature has developed an international audience and a sizable commercial market. It hasdeveloped its own canon, critical schools of thought, and benchmarks; it has beenespecially central to the establishment of liberal multiculturalism in the university.For most of the 19th century, African American “literary” productivity in vernacular form remained primarily oral, though written slave narratives from the periodhave drawn considerable critical attention. Du Bois’s call for attention to “sorrowsongs” (spirituals) in The Souls of Black Folk in 1903 was part of an aesthetic andpolitical reconsideration of earlier literary subgenres, and coincided with otherretrospective gestures by black authors: Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “dialect” poems,often written in idioms reminiscent of white authorial renderings of black voicesduring slavery; Charles Chesnutt’s Conjure Woman (1899), stories drawn from slavery’s oral traditions; and James Weldon Johnson’s recasting of early black sermonsand creation tales. Significantly, later blues musicians would also return to andcodify in musical form slave legends and tall tales—for example, the Ballad of JohnHenry, the Signifying Monkey, Stagolee—and a variety of work songs and field hollers. Gospel music would both inspire and repel the secular themes of the so-called“devil’s music.” Robert Johnson’s blues classic “Hellhound on My Trail,” recordedin 1936, would invoke—indirectly and directly—fugitive slave rhymes like “Run,Nigger, Run.” More direct literary adaptation of 19th-century orature also came inthe form of 20th-century black poetry. Sterling Brown’s “Strong Men” recuperatedthe rhythms and protest intent of work songs; Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropological studies, such as Mules and Men (1935), recuperated legends like High John theConqueror; and during the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration oral historyproject and producer Alan Lomax’s field recordings of work songs, shouts, andhollers signaled a Depression-era populism’s reclamations of folk tradition. RalphEllison’s Invisible Man (1952) is a compendium of allusions to tricksters and liars,as well as allusions to vernacular black culture in general. During the Black Artsmovement of the 1960s, Baraka, Larry Neal, and a generation of poets would use19th-century orature as a touchstone for a new protest vernacular, captured inpoetry and prose and social histories like Baraka’s Blues People.Written black literature would rise to prominence in the early 20th centurythanks to publications such as Crisis, from the NAACP; founded in 1910, Crisisdedicated many of its early articles to the antilynching campaign that had givenimpetus to the organization. Crisis itself became a vanguard vehicle for publication of black poetry and short fiction. Much more than The Souls of Black Folk, hisseminal 1903 book, Du Bois’s stewardship of Crisis was responsible for the publicshaping of black intellectual and artistic discourse.5

6A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n L i t e r at u r eThe Harlem Renaissance, or New Negro Movement, synthesized and absorbedmany of the intellectual currents preceding it, while producing a polyphony of newpolitical ideas catalyzed by world events. As scholars like William Maxwell haveshown, the Renaissance arguably begins with the publication of the Jamaican poetClaude McKay’s “If We Must Die” in the radical African Blood Brotherhood newspaper The Liberator. The poem was written to commemorate the “Red Summer” of1919 in which black workers in northern industries were slaughtered “like hogs /Hunted and penn’d in an inglorious spot.” McKay’s sonnets—informed by his nativeanticolonialism, Bolshevist sympathies, and daring experiments with literary form—foreshadowed the numerous “roots and routes,” as Paul Gilroy calls them, of 20thcentury black cultural politics. Post-1919 African American literature was utterlychanged by the globalization of black intellectual experience, earth-shattering eventslike World War I and the Russian Revolution, and the concomitant world interestin the question of race in the United States. Alain Locke’s 1925 New Negro anthology, for example, argued for Harlem as the political and cultural equal to Ireland’sDublin; Locke’s own contribution to the volume contradictorily argued for both anationalist and an internationalist understanding of black culture. Marcus Garvey’sNegro World newspaper, popular in Harlem in the 1920s, was a forum for his ethnocentric Pan-Africanism and its allure to working-class blacks in particular. Du Bois’sundervalued 1928 novel Dark Princess described an imaginary coalition between ablack train porter and an Indian Socialist revolutionary with ties to the Comintern.Jean Toomer’s Cane (1923), though produced outside of Harlem (four months as asuperintendent at a black school in Sparta, Georgia, inspired the book), includedlynching and post–World War I racist hysteria in its purview.Likewise, black women writers were central to Harlem’s renaissance and offeredthe beginnings of a black protofeminism. This took two forms: female participation as leaders in pioneering black cultural projects, and coded if unmistakablyfeminist writing. Jessie Fauset—author of the novel Plum Bun: A Novel Withouta Moral (1929)—gained cultural prominence as fiction editor for Crisis in 1919;Gwendolyn Bennett’s poems were included in James Weldon Johnson’s 1922 Bookof American Negro Poetry, and her artwork appeared on the covers of both Crisisand Opportunity, the journal of the Urban League. Nella Larsen, of mixed Scandinavian and black ancestry, wrote two of the best “passing” novels of the century:Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929). Especially in Passing, Larsen also used thepassing theme to connote black women’s bisexuality or lesbianism. A young ZoraNeale Hurston, meanwhile, collaborated with Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, and Bruce Nugent to produce Fire!!, a single-issue magazine that includedshort stories by both Hurston and Gwendolyn Bennett. The Hughes-Hurston collaboration took other forms, which emblematized their mutual interest in AfricanAmerican folk culture, including blues and jazz. Hughes’s first book of poems,The Weary Blues, was a companion to his seminal 1926 essay “The Negro Artistand the Racial Mountain,” in which he invoked the “tom-tom”—a black vernacular musical expression—as the sounding board for his own poetic ideas. In thelate 1920s, Hughes and Hurston coauthored Mule Bone, a play based on AfricanAmerican folk style and stories. Their collaboration ended angrily, but of the

A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n L i t e r at u r eHarlem Renaissance writers, Hurston and Hughes went on to earn the most lasting reputations. Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, a small andunappreciated book in her time, was much later “discovered” by Alice Walker, whoquickly made Hurston an ancestral muse for contemporary black feminists. TheirEyes is a tour de force bildungsroman of intense lyricism. It is especially ahead ofits time regarding the representation of female sexual development and domesticviole

PN51.L57395 2015 809’.933581—dc23 2014034824 ISBN: 978-1-61069-935-8 EISBN: 978-1-61069-936-5 . W. E. B. 91 Dystopian Literature 93 Eastern and Central European Literature 97 Eliot, T. S. 100 . Valentin Petrovich 165 Kipling, Rudyard 166 Kiš,