African Writers Conference

On 1 June 1962[1] a conference of African literature in the English language, the first African Writers Conference, was held at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Officially called a "Conference of African Writers of English Expression", it was attended by many prominent African writers, including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka (later Nobel Laureate in Literature), John Pepper Clark, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Bloke Modisane, Lewis Nkosi, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (then known as James Ngugi), Ezekiel Mphahlele, Robert Serumaga, Rajat Neogy (founder of Transition Magazine).[1][2] The conference was "not only the very first major international gathering of writers and critics of African literature on the African continent; it was also held at the very cusp of political independence for most African countries."[3]

Conference topics

The conference dealt with the issue of how the legacy of colonialism had left the African writer with a dilemma with regard to the language choice in writing. The questions raised and debated at the conference were:

Controversy

At the conference, several nationalist writers refused to acknowledge any literature written in non-African languages as being African literature. Ngũgĩ noted the irony of the conference's title, in that it excluded a great part of the population that did not write in English, while trying to define African literature but accepting that it must be in English.[4] As he would describe it in his 1986 book Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature: "The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation."[5]

In an essay entitled "The Dead End Of African Literature", published in Transition in 1963, Obiajunwa Wali stated: "Perhaps the most important achievement of the last Conference of African Writers of English Expression held in Makerere College, Kampala, in June 1962, is that African literature as now defined and understood leads nowhere. The conference itself marked the final climax on the attack on the Negritude school of Léopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire.... Another significant event in the Conference, is the tacit omission of Amos Tutuola."[6]

Effect

The conference is often regarded as a major milestone in African literature, and is thought to have defined many African authors' style of writing. For example, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o rejected Christianity in 1976, and changed his original name from James Ngugi, which he saw as a sign of colonialism. He also resorted to writing in Gikuyu language instead of English.

References

  1. 1 2 "The First Makerere African Writers Conference 1962", Makerere University.
  2. ↑ John Roger Kurtz, Urban Obsessions, Urban Fears: The Postcolonial Kenyan Novel, Africa World Press, 1998, pp. 15-16.
  3. ↑ Announcement of conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the June 1962, Humanities & Social Sciences Online.
  4. ↑ Kristina S. Ten, "Vehicles for Story: Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o on Defining African Literature, Preserving Culture and Self", Student Pulse, Vol. 3, No. 05, 2011, pp. 2–3.
  5. ↑ Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, Heinemann Educational Books, 1986, ISBN 978-0435080167, p. 9.
  6. ↑ Obiajunwa Wali, "The Dead End Of African Literature", Transition, No. 10 (September 1963), pp. 13-16.
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