I must admit that I had lost hope in this country’s and Africa’s readers’ adoption and absorption of works from young and progressive African writers. But after reading Tony Mochama’s well analysed piece in today’s Standard Newspaper titled Ngugi made his mark, but it’s time to restock literature shelves, I can confirm to you that I feel more rejuvenated than ever.
Seeing the way we, as post ‘90’s writers, struggle to penetrate the field dominated by post colonial themes, makes us sick and we often find ourselves dumping our papers and donating our pens. However, in an attempt to not to feel left out and most importantly for the love of literature, we start ‘debates’ (that never conclude) on who and who is the king of African literature. Notably, these ‘debates’ always pitted Achebe against Ngugi – and sometimes Soyinka. Nothing and no one else after them.
In the article, Mochama confirmed what I had for a long time been wanting to shout out as I felt the agony that young writers go through in their attempts to be accepted and ‘integrated’ into the Africa-today literary world. This, sadly, is caused by our very own over-celebration of the literature of the days; in the processes locking out more up-to-date works that would keep African literature dynamic and ensure its progress through the coming ages.
I had overtime been asking
myself how come Kenyans can spend a huge chunk of their time online and yet
they are by fact so reluctant and evidently ill-informed when you ask them
about current Kenyan fiction. But try asking them about what is trending on
twitter, which video is doing rounds on Whatssup or which celeb is dating who
on instagram and you will discover how naïve and backward you’re.
The answer is that is that
the society is changing rapidly but our curriculum is stagnated with ‘aged’
thinkers – who are charged with the onus of determining which books and what
themes are supposed to be studied by our students. To me that’s where the rain
starts beating our backs ‘cause we all know what these fellows have been giving
us, don’t we?
The result? We end up
feeding our children with scenes characterised by grass-thatched houses, yet we
strive so hard as a nation to eradicate the same; we give them the chauvinist Okonkwo,
yet we out there push for equality and shout at the top of our voices for
affirmative action; give them philanderer characters of Chief Nanga, yet we
always force the ”Tume-Chill” slogan
into their bloodstreams!
The solution is simple
though. Let’s review our school curriculum.
After all, all what our
bookstores need are reader-synchronised works – not those that tell you of
children being told ogre stories when you live in a world where children are
being bought animated movies!
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