Cover news reporter Yan Wenwen
2021, the harvest year of African literature.
On October 7, the British Tanzanian writer Gurna won the Nobel Prize in Literature; on November 3, the South African writer Damon Gargut won the 2021 Booker Literary Prize, plus on the same day, the Senegalese writer Sal won one of the most important awards for French literature, the "Goncourt Literary Prize", in just one month, the three major literary awards were spent in Africa.
In fact, this list of winners can not be missing the "Camons Literary Prize". The award is the highest honor in the Portuguese literary scene, and is judged and presented by a jury of veterans of the literary circles of the two countries, co-founded by the Portuguese and Brazilian governments. On October 20, 2021, the Cammons Literary Prize announced this year's winning writer, Paulina Chigiani, a female writer from Mozambique.
For a time, African literature seemed to show a posture of a hundred flowers, which made many readers flock to it. So, what is it that makes African literature explode in 2021? When we talk about African literature, what are we talking about?
The theme of African literature is most important to show a real Africa
Jiang Hui, a distinguished researcher at the School of Foreign Chinese of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, has conducted in-depth research on the problem of African literature. In his view, African literature is very active, and many important writers have been born, but because Africa has not produced an independent literary movement like Latin America, it has not attracted much domestic attention.
"Magic realism was born in Latin America, which had a great impact on Chinese writers and, therefore, on Chinese readers. But what kind of world literary movement is named after Africa? What kind of literary forms and techniques were invented in Africa? Without these things, it is difficult to have a worldwide impact. But if you really go to Africa and read the works of African writers, they still have a lot of good writers. ”
One of the themes of the development of African literature is to criticize the image of Africa in the Western pen, to tell the world what a real Africa looks like. Therefore, an important theme of African writers' writing is "What is real Africa", which shows why the image of Africans in western writing is distorted. Researcher Jiang Hui believes that this theme has not become obsolete to this day, "Even in 2005, Kenyan writer Wanena wrote a work called "A Guide to Writing Africa", still exploring how to liberate oneself from a colonial perspective. ”
In His Guide to Writing Africa, Vanenna sharply satirizes the monotonous, stereotyped Africa of white writers: "Use 'Africa', 'darkness' or 'safari' in the title, with sub-labels including 'Zanzibar', 'Maasai', 'Zulu', 'Zimbabwe', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Haze', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Past'." Useful words include 'warriors', 'eternity', 'primitive', 'ethnic'... Don't use a well-dressed photograph of an African in the book unless the person has won a Nobel Prize. Use AK-47s, protruding ribs, or bare breasts. If you have to use images of Africans, the person must be dressed in The costumes of the Marseilles, Zulus, or Dogons. ”
Almost all African writers in the 1950s and 1960s wrote from the standpoint of national literature, such as important writers such as Ngugi and Achebe, "who pioneered the African tradition of Enlightenment literature and revolutionary literature." The purpose of writing is to enlighten the people, celebrate the heroes of the people, and reshape African cultural traditions. But at the same time, most of these writers were pan-African. They believe that African cultures have common roots. Ghanaian writer Alma is a representative of this. ”
"In the 1960s, when racial literature arose, nationalist writers at that time did not think that there was a division within blacks, so in the 70s and 80s the so-called class literature began to appear, and at that time, due to the black people in power, there was a lot of corruption and Western agents, so the eyes of young writers began to pay attention to the class struggle within the newly independent African countries." Researcher Jiang Hui introduced that since the beginning of the era of globalization, african literature has paid more attention to the topic of concern and paid more attention to the issue of identity, "Where do I come from?" How do I identify with gender? Reconciliation and integration among peoples, modern and traditional relations, corruption, environmental issues, etc. are all social issues that African writers care about today. ”
None of the four major literary prize winners wrote in the language of the local ethnicity
After winning the Booker Prize, Galgut's acceptance speech said: "This is a great year for African writing, and I want to accept this award for all the stories that have been told and have not yet been told on that great continent, for those famous and unknown authors." Keep listening to us, there's a lot more to come. ”
Indeed, the winning authors are writing about what's happening on the continent. Galgut's award-winning book, The Promise, is set against the backdrop of South Africa, which has just emerged from apartheid, and explores the interrelationships of members of a dying white family. Sal's work, Man's Secretest Memory, tells the story of a young Senegalese writer living in Paris who stumbled upon a novel published in 1938 by an African novelist named TC Elimane. The story is based on the true experience of Malian writer Yambo Ullog, who in 1968 became the first African winner of another prestigious French literary award, the Lenodo Prize, but was later accused of plagiarism and left France, disappearing from public life.
Nobel laureate Gurna's work is mainly on refugee themes, while the only female writer, Chigiani, has delved into Mozambican society, exploring a range of social issues, such as polygamy.
A series of awards are bound to make these African writers shine internationally, for example, before Gurna won the Nobel Prize, his works were not published in China, but immediately after the award, the publisher signed the copyright to a total of ten books.
But behind the four awards lies a depressing truth: although these writers are white and black in color and are all African, they all write in an internationally popular language without exception: Gargut, as a white Afrikaner, may be justifiably angry; however, sal's French and Chigiani's Portuguese are the official languages of his country rather than their native languages. The most controversial is the Nobel Prize-winning Tanzanian writer Gurna, whose mother tongue should be Swahili, who immigrated to the UK at the age of 20, his higher education background, work experience are done in Britain, and his writing is entirely in English.
Therefore, the African literature we can see does not belong entirely to Africa.
The unfinished business of African literature: the autonomy of literature is not in the hands of Africans
In the view of researcher Jiang Hui, the fact that African writers have won the award is a good thing on the one hand and promotes the promotion of African literature; on the other hand, it also needs to be treated with caution and not to take the award too seriously. Behind any award are specific values and aesthetic standards. We do not understand these hidden discursive powers, and only treat the winning works as treasures, which lacks the spirit of criticism and reflection. Literary prizes awarded to African writers carry Western perspectives and aesthetic standards, and works that do not meet these standards will not win awards. It is difficult to see the real society of Africa at present in these works: "Although African literature seems to be very prosperous, with various literary awards, and even a 'Kane African Literature Prize' for African writers, the production mechanism, distribution mechanism, appraisal mechanism and readership mechanism of African literature have not been established, and the autonomy of African literature is not in the hands of Africans. ”
The works of these African writers must enter the vision of international publishing groups, and through international distribution, these local writers can be guaranteed economically, so if local writers want to support themselves through writing and become a professional writer, they must enter the circle of writing for international readers. "This creates a situation where the works of these writers are not understood by a large part of the local population. In South Africa, for example, if a local writer writes a work that is only distributed in South Africa, due to the low literacy rate, one of his works can only earn about 40,000 rand, about 20,000 yuan, and cannot live through writing. ”
As a result, African literature is vulnerable to international capital.
"With the rise of the independence movement that began in the 1960s, western influence in Africa has declined dramatically, but ideological control remains strong." Researcher Jiang Hui believes that the Western world to give awards to African literature, in fact, to establish a framework of Western literature, the selected award-winning writers actually still reflect the literature understood by Westerners, "for example, the Kane African Literature Prize, although it is said to be an award for African writers, in fact, most of the winners are not people living in Africa, but African writers living in Britain, the United States, Canada and other countries." In the works of these winners, it is difficult to see the real society of Africa. These awards are ideological control over African writers, because the right to speak is still in the hands of Westerners. But how important are the creations of African writers who will never win prizes? Is it really worse than the winning work? On the contrary, many of them are very important African works, which are for local people to see, to write about the lives of local people, to write about African things. ”
Cover Dialogue: Those works that really write about the lives of Africans are difficult to enter everyone's field of vision
Cover News: What is the current state of African literature? Which regions are writers very active?
Jiang Hui: African literature is very active, and there are many literary and artistic youths. Most african countries declared independence in the 1960s, and modern literature was also established in that period, counting from independence, there have been 60 years, and the self-accumulation of African literature has also reached a certain level.
Africa has produced many excellent poets, novelists and dramatists. Writers from Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. African literature has several particularly active areas, and the languages of writing include Arabic, French, English, etc. Most writers in North Africa write in Arabic, and the highest award for Arabic writing in the world is the Arabic International Fiction Award, which is frequented by Egyptian writers and Sudanese writers. Last year's World Prize for Arabic Fiction was won by Algerian writers. The French-speaking community is mainly active with a group of Senegalese and Congolese writers. There are more writers in the English-speaking area, including South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and so on. Of course, there are also writers in some areas who write in local languages, such as Swahili.
Cover News: What are the biggest characteristics of African writers?
Jiang Hui: African writers are very concerned about society. The American literary critic Frederick Jameson once proposed that "third-world literature is all national fables." This is true to some extent, because they are always thinking about the survival of the race. This year's Booker Prize winner Galgut's "Promise" is still a national fable, writing about the problem of white South Africans' attachment to land, which is still written within the framework of national fables.
There is a big difference between the writing of African writers and the writing of Western writers: African writers reflect an ethnic group from the individual, while Western writers are more and more concerned with the value and meaning of existence of individuals. In Africa, African writers must become teachers of society, while in Western countries they need to oppose the central mainstream culture in order to become a true artist. This distinction also gives us an idea of how to understand African literature: African literary techniques are not original, but they are allegories of Africans' own peoples. We can understand Africa's social problems and understand African culture through African literature, so as to see the value of African literature.
Cover News: Galgut writes in English, Gurna writes in English, and Sal writes in French, does that mean African literature still has a strong Western perspective?
Jiang Hui: The biggest theory for studying African literature is postcolonial theory. Postcolonialism studied only the literature of colonial languages, not indigenous languages, which strengthened the position of colonial languages in African literary writing, but discouraged the use of indigenous African languages to write. The West always influences the writing of African writers through non-cultural institutions such as NGOs, because NGOs have many resources that African governments do not provide to writers, which can invite writing tutors from the West for African writers, can fund writers to work and study in the West, and can teach writers the trend and fashion of international writing. Through these means, African writers have westernized their writing in terms of subject matter, narrative techniques, and values.
This year's Booker Prize winner, Gargut's "Promise," is an example. This work makes you feel familiar, like Faulkner's Southern novel: the decline of the white world, the formation of the unhealthy world of the family, the pluralistic perspective of the narrative. Although Gargut is a South African writer, you can feel that it is still a work of Western literature when you look at it. Many African countries lack political and economic sovereignty, and cultural sovereignty is even more problematic. The full marketization of literature and the lack of protection of artists by the state doom the culture to be subordinate to vulgarity or international capital. Up to now, Africa's independent distribution channels have not been established, there is no channel for funds, and it is difficult for those works that really write about the lives of Africans to enter everyone's field of vision.
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