Ongoing Dialogues in African Literature by Yakubu Saaka and Leonard Podis
Related Links: • Faculty Observations Home Page • Yakubu Saaka's Home Page • Leonard Podis' Home Page		JANUARY 3, 2003--Looking at the scholarly title of this piece, readers probably assume that we have always known we would turn out to be specialists in African literature. However, that is far from true. In fact, one of us is a scholar of African politics with a doctorate in political science, and the other is a professor of rhetoric with a Ph.D. in American literature. So how did we wind up collaborating as teachers and scholars of modern Anglophone African literature? One day in 1986 after a lunchtime tennis match, as we were heading back to our offices, we casually began to discuss the idea of applying to teach in the Danenberg Oberlin-in-London Program. Conferring with some colleagues back in Rice Hall, we thought that a collaboration in Commonwealth literature would make a great deal of sense. Although literature had customarily been taught from a formalist perspective--emphasizing the ways in which its aesthetic constitution distinguished it as high art--we were keen to focus on some of the more contextual aspects of literature, to contemplate it as a reflection of the culture in which it was created. At that time, Commonwealth writers were engaged in a period of impressive productivity, and critics around the world were beginning to recognize the value of their output. Flash forward to London, historically a center of publication for literatures written in English. In February of 1988, It was cold, our umbrellas kept getting ruined by unexpected gusts of wind, and our students were complaining that their feet had yet to dry out during the two weeks they had been on British soil. On the other hand, the opportunities to explore non-Western literature were unparalleled. There was, for example, the New Beacon bookstore, which seemed to have every work of African literature ever to appear in paperback. There were scholars from British universities ready to visit our class to lecture on Commonwealth literature for what American academics would consider the merest pittance. There were aspiring authors from the African diaspora lurking in the shadows at performances of their own plays in small, avant-garde theaters, playwrights whom our students were eager to buttonhole and entice to visit our classes. Even though we had worked tirelessly to prepare ourselves for this new venture, the area of Commonwealth literature was, for us, a new area of specialization, and, as we expected, the band of intrepid students who came with us soon started to pepper us with questions and requests for more information, more background, more suggestions for secondary sources, more--knowledge. The students aided us in strengthening our sense of what we really wanted to pursue. We were aware, for example, that although the course had "Commonwealth literature" in the title, we did not want to lecture on the history or literature of, say, the Crown Colony of Hong Kong--we knew nothing whatsoever about it. Students who wished to know more about that topic would just have to go out and do their own research (and one did). Although we included works from India and Britain, we decided that African literature was our true passion. To supplement our own knowledge of the material, we invited many speakers to address our classes. They covered an impressive range, representing history, politics, and literature. There was Professor DeGraft Johnson, the former vice president of Ghana; Paul Boateng, a Labour Member of Parliament who has since become a minister in Tony Blair’s Cabinet; the Reverend Barney Pytynga, a South African exile who headed a social service agency; Rozina Visram, a British-Indian scholar who wrote a book called Ayahs, Lascars, and Princes about Indians in the U.K.; and Peter Fryer, a British writer who, he told us, had been sent out in 1948 as a brand-new journalist to do a story on the first boatload of Jamaican workers arriving to answer Mother England’s distress call to the Empire for workers to come and help rebuild war-ravaged Britain. Mr. Fryer, subsequently dismayed at the shabby treatment accorded those Jamaicans after the first flush of enthusiasm that greeted their arrival, had decided to write a book, The History of Blacks in Britain. Although he generally refused offers to lecture to itinerant groups of American students, he was persuaded that Oberlin students would be well worth talking to, and indeed it turned out that he was glad he had made the exception, for the students proved to be a most stimulating audience. So, a host of eminent people, many of whom had written authoritative books on their subject matter, paraded through the basement common room of the rectory of All Saints Church at 84 Margaret Street, which the Danenberg Program was at that time renting. The whole experience was revitalizing for us, and we decided that our collaboration was something worth pursuing. We determined that we must keep the momentum going. Thus, upon our return to Oberlin (it was right after the campus had united in the aftermath of a proliferation of white supremacist graffiti), we applied to offer a version of the course as a Mellon colloquium. At the same time, we convinced ourselves that we ought to collaborate as scholars, too, and not only as teachers. Go to page: 1 | 2 | 3
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