Written by Carmen McCain in the Weekly
Trust, 12 May 2012 (reproduced by permission)
On 23 April 2012, the chair of judges for the Caine Prize for African
Writing, British-Nigerian writer Bernadine Evaristo wrote a blog post about
selecting the soon to be released short-list: “I’m looking for stories about
Africa that enlarge our concept of the continent beyond the familiar images
that dominate the media: War-torn Africa, Starving Africa, Corrupt Africa - in
short: The Tragic Continent. [… W]hile we are all aware of these negative
realities, and some African writers have written great novels along these lines
(as was necessary, crucial), isn’t it time now to move on?” Her critique of
“stereotypical” African stories is similar to those made by other African
writers, such as Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina in “How To Write About
Africa” and Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole in “The White Savior Industrial
Complex.” Her opinion piece also invokes previous critiques of the Caine prize.
Last year columnist Ikhide R. Ikheloa wrote, “Aided by some needy ‘African’
writers, Africa is being portrayed as an issues-laden continent that is best
viewed on a fly-infested canvas.”
I share these concerns about dehumanizing images of Africa. When living
and teaching in the U.S., I tried to “enlarge” my American students “concept of
the continent” by emphasizing exciting current trends in African fashion,
music, and movies, as well as the daily lives of ordinary people. My aim was
much like that of Samantha Pinto, one of the other Caine Prize judges who
blogged this week: “I hope as a teacher that my students learn to carry some of
these beautifully crafted stories into a much larger conversation about Africa
than the one that exists in mainstream American media.” My own scholarly
interest in Hausa popular literature and film began precisely because I was enchanted
by the love stories and tales of everyday life consumed by popular audiences
but largely ignored by African literary scholarship preoccupied with grand
narratives of the nation.
However, I admit that as I read Evaristo’s comments, I felt a tension
between her impatient charge to “move on” past representations of suffering,
and the context of currently living in northern Nigeria, where people leave
their homes daily knowing that they could be blown up or shot at by unknown
gunmen. Only two weeks ago in Kano, an attack on churches that met on Bayero
University’s old campus killed dozens of university students and professors,
the very cosmopolitan middle class often celebrated by writers abroad, and more
bombs were found planted around campus. Suffering is not limited to bombs, as I
was reminded when recently attending a church in Jos. Pointing to a dramatic
decrease in tithes and offerings as evidence of hard times, an elder sought
prayer for those who lost their livelihoods in the Plateau State’s demolition
campaign of “illegal structures” and would lose more in the recently-announced
motorcycle ban.
Kaduna-based writer Elnathan John wrote in a conversation with other
African writers on Facebook (quoted by permission), “When I am told to tell a
happy African story, I ask, why? Where I live, EVERYTHING is driven by fear of
conflict, bomb blasts, and daylight assassinations unreported by the media.
Every kilometer of road has a checkpoint like those in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories. Now, I am a writer writing my realities. […]Our problems in Africa
will not disappear when we stop writing about them.”
While not every place in Nigeria is bomb-torn and certainly not every
story from as big and complex a continent as Africa must reflect such
tragedies, a predicament remains that Kano-based writer Abdulaziz A. Abdulaziz
identified in a Facebook conversation with me. While agreeing with Evaristo on
the need to move past stereotypes, he wrote, “There is a dilemma here; what do
Africans have to export again. For me, African contemporary artists have no
better theme than corruption and bad governance as the main issues dominant in
our everyday life[…]”
Elnathan John continued, “A lot of the Happy Africa story activists live
outside the continent. Not that I begrudge them anything, but it is easier to
dictate to people living a reality when you don’t know or live that reality.
[…] Every Sunday morning (in many Northern States), we expect a bomb or a
shooting spree. People who live in Maiduguri even have it worse. Their entire
lives are ruled by violence and chaos. Nigerians, like Zimbabweans (and many
other African countries suffering decay and violence) do not have the luxury of
Always writing about beach house romances. Our problems are too real, too
present, too big to be wiped out from our stories.”
Thus, while we can all identify with Evaristo’s frustrations in how
Africa is misread by the West, her first flawed assumption seems to be that
African writers who write out of tragic settings are not writing of their own
experiences but rather pandering to a Western audience that expects to hear
about tragedy. To say we must “move on” past stories of hardship suggests to
those who are suffering that their stories don’t matter—that such stories are
no longer fashionable. Writers who live amidst suffering are in the unfortunate
position of inhabiting an inconvenient stereotype. They are silenced by threats
of terrorists inside the country and by the disapproval of cosmopolitan
sophisticates outside.
Such literary prescription begins to feel like Dora Akunyili’s erstwhile
rebranding campaign—a luxury of those who do not want to be embarrassed while
abroad, which does little to solve the problems on the ground. Although Evaristo
asks, “are too many African writers writing for the approval of non-African
readerships”?, her admonition to avoid stories of suffering seems to be just as
implicated in seeking the approval of those “big, international markets
in Europe and America”. Directly after she asks “to what extent does published
African fiction pander to received notions about the continent, and at what
cost?” , she argues “For African fiction to remain more than a passing fad on
the world stage, it needs to diversify more than it does at present. What about
crime fiction, science fiction, fantasy, horror, more history, chick lit?”
Now, I love science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction et al, and know
of African writers, including Evaristo, who are doing exciting things with
these genres, especially in African languages, but Evaristo’s focus on the
“world stage” reveals her second problematic assumption—that the most important
readers of African literature reside outside of Africa. It is a reminder that
though the Caine prize is awarded to “African writing”, it is still based in
London.
Last week, overwhelmed by the attacks on Bayero University, I printed
reader responses to an earlier article on film rather than writing about the
tragedy. Afterwards, one of my readers chastened me for writing about film
rather than about what the “army are doing to our people.” While, like Evaristo,
I defend my right to talk about a diversity of subjects, the comment reminded
me that there is a large reading public here in Nigeria looking for writing
that is relevant to their lives. It also made me think of my dear friend, Hausa
novelist, Sa’adatu Baba Ahmad’s refrain that “literature is a mirror to
society.” That every conversation these days seems to return to bombs and
shootings does not mean that people do not laugh or joke or gossip or dream or
love. Indeed, I believe that the best writing captures the humour, the
humanity, and the gossip alongside the backdrop of suffering.
So, by all means let us, as Evaristo appeals, have new genres, new
styles, that are “as diverse as, for example, European literature and its
myriad manifestations.” Let us have “thousands of disparate, published writers,
with careers at every level and reaching every kind of reader.” But let us also
be true, let us be relevant. And let us not, in pursuit of a global
recognition, erase the voices of ordinary people, who so often bear up under
immense suffering with grace and humour. For it is these stories of survival
that give us the most direction in how to navigate an increasingly terrifying
world.
For further discussions on the issue, please look at http://carmenmccain.wordpress.com/
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