Introduction
- Introduction
In drama, novel, poetry or short story, the writer's dialogue with his physical and human environments comes out as a mirror in which his people and society can see what they look like. Every image painted by a skillful artist is expressed or put into writing / print, becomes public property and leaves itself open for evaluation by those who read and understand the language and expression. There is a need to identify the thematic preoccupation of African sociopolitical postcolonial literature which is the focus of this section with a view to identifying their peculiarities with textual references.
This section deals with some of the themes in Post-colonial African literature such as colonialism, liberation, nationalism, tradition, displacement and rootlessness. First of all, it is necessary to have an idea about what constitutes the African literature. Most of African literature comes from West Africa, East Africa, South Africa and its suburb Rhodesia. These literatures are quite naturally different from each other. But they have in common the fact that they are written by young and middle-aged authors, most of them born after 1930. The term, post-colonialism, has been widely used for critiquing the postcolonial situation in a society signifying the political, linguistic and cultural experiences of previously colonized nations. Thus, the postcolonial discourse is the discourse of the colonized, which begins with colonization and doesn't stop when the colonizers go home. It covers "all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day" (Brydon, 2000).
As a direct result of the colonialism that Africa underwent, the relation between individual, society and government witnessed a radical transformation resulting in several maladjustments in the African society. Among the worst consequences of colonization was the cultural subjugation of the Africans by generating ideas like Africa is "a land of toms-toms, drums and ... mysterious rites and customs" as a result the "colonized were ... despised ... marginalized, dispossessed, subjugated within their own land" (Parker & Starkey, 1995).
African literature means different things to different people. Some consider it a new world literature, a new genre with new messages. Others regard it as a political document, characterised by the protest against colonialism’s downgrading of the blacks. For some it is another form of English and French literature. However, Post-colonial African literature is instructive, informative and documentary literature.
African writers who wrote in English were often accused of addressing themselves to a Western audience and, to some extent, they were engaged in a debate with the West about the Western interpretation of Africa, and in a sense they were directing a message both at the colonizer and the colonized. They were trying to reform African ideas about African experience but they were also trying to reform European ideas about the African experience by using the colonizer’s language to express his ideas. This happened during the Negritude movement in Africa- Francophone Africa, which was an attempt also to place positive value on African culture and to make Europeans aware that Africa has a culture, local traditions, that Africa was capable of high-quality literature often based on the same premises that the Europeans were using. It was addressed to Africans themselves; who could change their own minds about the experience they have been through, and today most of the African writing is addressed to a local audience.