Ongoing Dialogues in African Literature...continued by Yakubu Saaka and Leonard Podis
Related Links: • Faculty Observations Home Page • Yakubu Saaka's Home Page • Leonard Podis' Home Page		1 | 2 | 3 Our first scholarly production began humbly one day as we were casually discussing Chinua Achebe’s latest book, Anthills of the Savannah, over lunch. Having taught Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel, Petals of Blood, on the London Program, we were struck by the ways in which Achebe’s latest book was similar to Ngugi’s work. The interesting twist here was that Achebe was always considered the "granddaddy" of modern African literature, and it was widely acknowledged that Ngugi, at least in his early writings, had been influenced by Achebe. So to us budding African literature scholars, this was big news! We had to share it with the world! (Or at least with that portion of the world who reads scholarly journals in this area of specialization.) What better way to disseminate our discovery than to co-author an article? And the rest, as they say, is history–or almost so. It’s true that the article was published in 1991 in the Journal of Black Studies; however at one point we were compelled to deal with a problem raised by one anonymous reviewer. This reviewer asked: could we prove this so-called influence of Ngugi on Achebe? Well, that almost derailed the piece, because we could not offer airtight proof. We suspected influence, but there was no direct evidence. However, thinking collaboratively, we solved the problem: we would change the offending term, influence, to the more open-ended term, confluence. In the end, this proved to be more accurate, and the story ended happily. Emboldened by our success, we next felt that we could enhance our teaching by producing a book that spoke to some of the central issues raised by students in our Mellon colloquium. We taught that course several times in the early 1990s. Repeatedly, students asked questions and provided insightful interpretations that we felt were good enough to supply the organization of an anthology. We issued a call for papers and set about writing some contributions ourselves. A key focus of the collection, which came out in 1998 as Challenging Hierarchies: Issues and Themes in Colonial and Postcolonial African Literature, was a related set of issues raised time and again in our classes at Oberlin: feminism, the fictional portrayal of women, and the literary challenges to traditional and colonially inspired patriarchy. We were fortunate enough to obtain three selections from a colleague who happened to be teaching at Oberlin College in 1993-94, Ama Ata Aidoo, the eminent Ghanaian author of poetry, fiction, and drama. It was the success of this book that prompted us to continue our scholarly collaboration (though any fantasies we might have had of making a fortune in royalties were far off the mark). Much as we enjoyed the process of editing Challenging Hierarchies, we were surprised at how difficult it is to coordinate and complete such a project. To speak frankly, it is generally hard to get contributors to submit the contributions they have pledged. So the next book, we decided, we would do ourselves. Just as we had agreed to proceed with our new project, Neither a "Dark Night of Savagery" nor a "Technicolor Idyll:" Ongoing Dialogues in African Literature, our proposal to teach a First-Year Seminar on modern African literature was accepted. We have been teaching that course this fall with the thought of the new book in mind. Our students have been an inspiration, posing very thoughtful questions and offering refreshing perspectives. Go to page: 1 | 2 | 3
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