By: Jonah Lazar, Staff Writer
In West Africa in the 1960s, the literary scene in the newly independent nations stretching from Senegal to Nigeria was booming. Writers such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Léopold Sédar Senghor defined not just the literary landscape of the time, but also spearheaded mass political dialogue. Through political and literary movements such as négritude, which aims to celebrate and reclaim pride in identifying as African, these authors became vital to constructing post-colonial theory within West Africa. This list will celebrate a few of the defining works within this incredible literary niche.
The Suns of Independence by Amadou Kourouma
This novel takes place in the newly independent Ivory Coast, and tells the story of Fama, a descendant of the former fictional royal family. However, in the years following independence, Fama’s royal blood has lost all meaning, leaving him with no authority to govern his struggling, poverty-ridden community. Struggling to adapt to the changing landscape around him, Fama dreams of pre-colonial times, when his royal status would have allowed him to govern the fictional province of Horodougou, his ancestral lands. This book offers a sharp insight into the evolving national identity and unstable political landscape of 1960s Ivory Coast, and a telling critique of the way in which monarchic figures in the country fell out of touch with the evolving times.
No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe
No Longer at Ease concludes Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s famed African trilogy, which follows the evolution of Nigeria throughout the colonial experience, from first contact with European colonizers to independence. This novel is about Obi Okonkwo, a Nigerian man educated in Britain, returning to his homeland for a position in the British colonial government in Nigeria at the twilight of British colonial rule. The idealist Okonkwo quickly finds himself amid the rampant corruption within the government’s ranks, forced to choose between the easy money of bribes and his morality, in a telling critique of British Nigeria’s corrupt governmental system in the middle of the 20th century.
Scarlet Song by Senegalese author Mariama Bâ was written in 1981, about two decades after most of the others in this list, however it offers a gripping critique of the négritude movement itself. This novel takes place in the years following Senegal’s independence from French colonialism, and it follows the love story between a working-class Senegalese student, Ousmane, and a daughter of French diplomats, Mireille. In this book, Bâ explores the nuances of patriarchy and the stigma around interracial marriage in Senegal. Can their love surmount the community’s pressures on the intelligent and enigmatic Ousmane, who is viewed as abandoning his people? Will Mireille’s rich, French family forbid the union of their daughter with a Senegalese man?
Kongi’s Harvest by Wole Soyinka
Kongi’s Harvest is a play adapted to film, starring Soyinka as the titular character Kongi. While it is not a book, this film perfectly satirizes the friction between traditional leaders and post-independence dictators, and is an excellent starting point for those wishing to understand the essence of the post-independence struggle of West Africa. Kongi’s Harvest follows the political maneuvering and the struggle for power between Kongi, the dictator of fictional African country Isma, and King Daodu, the traditional leader of the nation. This culminates into a dilemma of which of the two leaders will eat the ceremonial yam at the first harvest of the year — the modernizing dictator or the traditional king, thus representing Africa’s familiar post-independence struggle between Westernization or returning to cultural heritage.
