H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-AfrLitCine@h-net.msu.edu (November, 1998)

Anne V. Adams and Janis A. Mayes, eds.  _Mapping Intersections:
African Literature and Africa's Development_.  Annual Selected
Papers of the ALA, No. 2.  Trenton, N.J.:  Africa World Press,
1998. 316 pp.  Bibliographical references and index.  $69.95
(cloth), ISBN 0-86543-633-9; $19.95 (paper), ISBN 0-86543-634-7.


Reviewed for H-AfrLitCine by Dayna Oscherwitz
<oscherwitz@mail.utexas.edu>, University of Texas

_Mapping Intersections:  African Literature and Africa's
Development_ is the second of a series of conference proceedings
from the African Literature Association to be published.  It is
comprised largely of papers presented at the twelfth annual
meeting of the ALA at Cornell University in 1987, although it
does include essays solicited specifically by the editors.  The
challenge of producing a text of this nature is to maintain the
diversity of opinion and methodology which characterizes the ALA
itself, while at the same time providing a clear and coherent
interrogation of the topic at hand--in this case, the
relationship between literature and development on the African
continent and in the African Diaspora. Anne V. Adams and Janis
A. Mayes have succeeded admirably in both cases, and they have
produced a scholarly work of focus and clarity, which presents
multiple insights on a compelling subject.

In their introduction to the text, Adams and Mayes address the
problem of investigating the role of literature in Africa's
development, especially since, as they note, "African
development, as a concept, is not generally construed to
incorporate 'the literary'" (p. 2).  Given this oversight in
academic and political studies of Africa, the first task of this
book has to be to assert the ties which bind literature and
development.[1] Adams and Mayes insist on the primacy of such
ties, pointing out that Africa's writers "function--in an
evolved African tradition--as Public Intellectuals; insightful,
incisive, visible, activist commentators" (p. 2); as skillful
editors, Adams and Mayes then let the essays which follow their
introduction elaborate and illustrate their point.

One of the many strengths of this work is its organization.  The
essays presented in the book are divided into five sections,
each of which is organized around a particular aspect of African
literature and African development.  The first section, entitled
Literature and Development:  Conceptualizing Frameworks,
explores development through questions of literacy and access to
literature.  Underlying all of the essays in this section is the
axiom that literacy is fundamental to the development of a
society.  In her essay, "Literature and Development:  Writing
and Audience in Africa," Molara Ogundipe-Leslie draws attention
to the fact that much of what is written about Africa is not
written by Africans, or if it is, it is written by a very small
minority of Africans.  For Ogundipe-Leslie, this fact is
disturbing, since, as she suggests, "culture is the repository
of values, in which crucible literature is also burnished to
reflect, change, and be changed by society" (p. 28).  The
ability of a people to write itself, she maintains, is
fundamental to the potential of that people to develop in a way
that is "locogenetic; developed by its users" (p. 27).

The essays which follow Ogundipe-Leslie's explore the very real
barriers to the development of indigenous literature on the
African continent.  Micero Githae Mugo discusses the obstacles
faced by many African women who wish to become literate, and
John Chileshe, using Zambia as a case in point, examines the
ways in which the educational systems in African countries often
function to render the production of literature in African
languages all but impossible.

The difficulties faced by African writers and readers are
enormous, but there are successes to be noted, and these
successes are also examined in this first section.  Bernth
Lindfors, in his article "African Little Magazines,"
investigates the role played by the many small, independent,
African magazines in promoting and analyzing African literature;
 Matthew Umukoro, in his article, "Radio and Development,"
points to the yet unrealized potential of radio for
disseminating native literature to the African public.  Niyi
Osundare's article entitled "Bard of the Tabloid Platform:  A
Personal Experience of Newspaper Poetry in Nigeria" recounts
Osundare's own efforts to bring poetry to the person in the
street. This article demonstrates that, despite the problems of
poverty and illiteracy, the determined writer can create an
interested audience for his work.  As Osundare himself puts it,
the newspaper is a forum where he, as poet, can "stress the
inevitability of change and the possible triumph of justice" (p.
81).  Also in this section is an article by Eustace Palmer, in
which she affirms that despite the many barriers to its creation
and reception, African literature has an enormous potential for
inspiring change in Africa.

The second section of the book, Literature in Development:
Critical Models, is comprised of essays which examine concepts
of individual and collective identity in the literature of
African writers.  In "Discourses of the Self:  Gender and
Identity in Francophone African Women's Writing," Renee Larrier
explores the role of race and gender in self conceptualization
through the autobiographical works of writers such as Nafissatou
Diallo and Ken Bugul.

Addressing one of the fundamental questions of African
literature and African development--agency--Larrier concludes
that the existence of such narratives demonstrates that the very
act of "[w]riting oneself, or rather, a women's experience, into
history is empowering" (p. 133). Taking the question of agency
from a different angle, Cecil Abrahams explores the relationship
between the works of Alex La Guma and Ongane Waly Serote and the
political reality in South Africa.  Abrahams examines the
representation of racially motivated social injustice in the
works of both writers, and shows how the call for action these
writers issued in their works coincided with changing attitudes
and action in racially divided South Africa.

Other articles in the section explore ideas of development in
the works of writers such as Haiti's J.S. Alexis, Morocco's
Tahar Ben Jelloun and Guadeloupe's Maryse Conde.  Although
heavily Francophone in its orientation, this section does
provide analyses of questions of development in both English and
African language texts.  Robert Philipson, for example, points
out the evolution of the individual in the Swahili novel; Thelma
Ravell-Pinto undertakes the question of whether the white
perspective of black South Africans has shifted with the change
in social structure in that country through a reading of Nadine
Gordimer's _My Son's Story_.

The third section of the book, Literature for Development:  A
Principle, contains only George Lamming's keynote address at the
1987 conference.  This address, entitled "On Cultural
Sovereignty" is placed so that it constitutes a thematic center
of the book, and rightly so.  In his address, Lamming deals
directly with the potential of literature to effect social and
political change; he also brings in, for the first time, the
role of the critic, who functions as "a mediator of the text"
(p. 257).  Lamming suggests that the critic, the writer, the
reader and the text interact to create what he calls
"sovereignty...the capacity and therefore the intention of a
people as total society to exercise control over the material
base of their survival and a commitment to define and redefine
their own reality" (p. 258).  Literature, he asserts, is
fundamental to a people's ability to control their own destiny,
which is to say, to evolve in the "logogenetic" manner about
which Molara Ogundipe-Leslie wrote in her essay.

Lamming also emphasizes that the connection between literature
and change is well known to those who would stifle development
in Africa, which is, as he reminds us, why writers in Africa
(and elsewhere in the world) are so often imprisoned, and even
killed.

The fourth section of the book, Literature as Development:
Activist Pedagogy, follows from Lamming's recognition of the
critic as teacher and teacher as critic, and examines the ways
in which the teaching of African literature, both on the
continent and elsewhere, can contribute to positive change in
and for Africa.  The two articles in this section, Mildred Hill-
Lubin's "Putting Africa into the Curriculum through African
Literature" and Stephen Arnold's "Creating African Literature in
an Oral Environment:  The Guelph/Yaounde Project and the
Association For Creative Teaching in Cameroon," present
practical steps which can be taken to promote the creation and
reception of African literature.  Hill-Lubin provides very
concrete advice on bringing African literature into U.S.
classrooms at all levels and in various subjects, while Arnold
relates the successes realized by one project attempting to
bring African literature to African classrooms.  Very practical
in their subject matter, both articles have at their core the
premise explored in the more theoretical essays--that literature
is essential to Africa's growth.

In lieu of a formal conclusion, the editors have included, as
the last section of the book, transcripts from a roundtable
entitled "Writers and Critics on African Literature and
Development."  Here, writers such as Assia Djebar, Amadou Kone,
and Barbara Gloudon, along with critics such as Eustace Palmer
and Biodun Jeyifo, speak about their own experiences as writers
of African literature and their views on the direction
development of Africa.

These writers echo the sentiments presented earlier in the book,
and often go even further, to suggest political and social
action which should be taken to promote growth in Africa.
Abiola Irele, for example, opens the roundtable by calling for a
"capturing of Western technology...to improve [Africa's]
material state," along with the simultaneous participation of
literature as a means for "bringing [Africans] to a certain
understanding of ourselves" (pp. 290-91); Femi Osufan closes the
session by asserting that "the writer who wants to produce
better literature has to try to...make sure literature is a part
of the struggle of [African] people to survive" (p. 305).

The words of these writers reinforce the ideas and sentiments
presented elsewhere in the book and provide confirmation that
African literature is closely tied to African development, and
consciously so.

As a whole, _Mapping Intersections:  African Literature and
Africa's Development_ provides a thorough interrogation of the
relationship between literature and development in Africa.  The
structure of the book and the content of the essays included
function together to provide a multi-faceted exploration of the
problems and potential for literature on the African continent
to encourage social and political change.  The inclusion of
essays on education, literacy, government involvement, and
reception of texts, as well as direct analysis of African
literary texts, ensures that there is something in this book to
appeal to every Africanist.

Notes

[1].  The relationship between literature and development has
been examined, of course, by Ngugi wa Thiang'o in several of his
works.

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