The following item from the Lagos paper the Vanguard was seen on AllAfrica.com at http://allafrica.com/stories/200606050524.html . Noting the amount of material published in Igbo, it would be interesting to know more about which dialects etc. were used. DZO
Nigeria: The Igbo Novel Dates Back to 1857 - Emenyonu Vanguard (Lagos) http://www.vanguardngr.com/ INTERVIEW June 4, 2006 Posted to the web June 5, 2006 MCPHILIPS NWACHUKWU _Professor Ernest Emenyonu, a notable critic, theorist and writer is chair, Africana Studies of The University of Michigan, Flint in the United States of America. As a critic, Professor Emenyonu has written very constructive works that have added meaning and depth to the Igbo, Nigerian and African literature. His very important landmark critical work, The Rise of The Igbo Novel, is no doubt one of the most important studies not only in Igbo indigenous literature, but has also helped in igniting interest in the entire ourve of works done in the other emerging literary productions in the continent. Beyond that ground-breaking work, he also authored Cyprain Ekwensi, The Rise of African Literature for Schools and Colleges, Studies on The Nigerian Novel, Goatskin Bags and Wisdom: New Critical Perspectives. He also wrote Adventures of Ebeleako, Uzo Remembers His Father and recently, a collection of short stories._ _He has also edited a number of critical essays and as well, wrote the brilliant biography of Most Reverend Benjamin Nwankiti. Beyond all this, Professor Emenyonu has served in almost all the highest echelons of educational administration in Nigeria and abroad, having served as head of departments of English of various universities and colleges across the globe, chairman, Committee of Deans, deputy vice- chancellor of the University of Calabar and many years provost of the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri and currently, the editor of the highly respected journal, African Literature Today. In this chance meeting that took place at the prestigious Palm Royal Beach Hotel, venue of the just concluded African Literature Association Conference in Accra, Ghana, the erudite scholar took, Vanguard Arts round his familiar turf of literary production and criticism even as he took a swipe on the unperforming leaders of the continent who have continued to drag their people into an all-time cataclysmic journey. Excerpts:_ I DON'T think that another person will tell some other person what to write. Just like you framed that question that "does it mean that the younger generation's works are not engaging enough as to deserve critical attention?" What's the point of reference you may want to ask? The young generation is not supposed to write like Chinua Achebe, the young generation is not supposed to write like Soyinka, the writer is a product of his time. It is true that we can reach back into time and recreate through our consciousness what represents the reality of the time. You cannot tell a writer what to write about, but you can teach a writer how to write. I listened to one of my friends' arguments that Nigerian writers are not meeting their expectations. Whose expectations? I can teach creative writing in my class where I can tell students that this is how to structure a paragraph or this is how to develop a theme. But I cannot teach or tell him that this is how to write a novel about tom orrow or about the Christian faith. No. I can only mould him in the mechanics of writing but not to force him to write about what I have in mind nor is anybody likely to do that. But my response to people that accuse the young generation that their works are not critically engaging is that those people haven't read them. Some years ago, I wrote a book that talked about the Igbo novel. That was precisely in the 70s, when I wrote that work titled,The Rise of the Igbo Novel and there, I defined Igbo novel as any novel written by any person of Igbo origin. Okay, at that time, I didnt focus the work only on novels written in Igbo language because there was only a few of them as at that time. But two, three years ago, I went back into research and began to collect novels written in Igbo language and by 2003, I had collected 70 novels written in Igbo language and also 45 plays written in Igbo language. Now, if I am talking about Igbo novels, I talk essentially about novels written in Igbo language. You will be surpris ed how uniformed we are when we don't take the time to investigate. So, young Nigerians are writing and they are making a lot of impact. But we cannot always begin to feel the impact if we expect them to write like Chinua Achebe or Soyinka. When for instance Things Fall Apart was written, the publishers didn't believe it will sell and they printed only two thousand copies as library edition. Today, the book has sold more than twelve million copies. It takes somebody to write an engaging theme and also task the reader to acknowledge that. How many Nigerian writers take time to read what these young people are writing? In Nigeria, apart from the mainstream international publishing companies, the journal, which I now edit, African Literature Today, will be publishing a special issue on new novels in Africa. By new novels, I mean those novels published may be in that unknown and remote streets in Orlu or Owerri or Mushin or Soba in Zaria or Malumfashi or Funtua so that people will begin to realize that a lot of writing is going on around the cont inent. Last December, I was privileged to be with the Association of Nigerian Authors, Imo State chapter, and come and see where they were reading their poetry. Some read from published collection, some from hand written papers while others read from memographs. But outside such forum, how many people will know that such level of writing is going on around there? So, what is missing in that argument, from people who make that generalization statement about our literature is lack of the investigative process. *Last year while I was recuperating from an operation in South Africa, I was privileged to read your critical work,The Rise of The Igbo Novel. But after reading the work, I was surprised to find out that you didn't include the Black American freed black slave, Oludah Equiano in the discourse as an Igbo novelist. But you did mention all the other Igbo novelists. I want to know if that was a purposeful exclusion?* No. No it wasn't an exclusion. In fact, I have done now a new book, The Evolution and Development of Igbo Novel, which of course will still not include Oludah Equiano or Chinua Achebe or Cyprian Ekwensi or Flora Nwapa or Buchi Emecheta. This is because now, I have enough materials to show that there is an evolution of the Igbo novel dating back to 1857. When I wrote The Rise of The Igbo Novel, I had done a research to the extent on the beginnings of the earliest writings in Igbo. And I was in England as at that time where I visited several archives and could see the writings as far back as 1850s, when they had already started writing things in Igbo. And then the missionaries came and trained the first crop of writers and the first novel in Igbo emerged in 1933 and that was Omenuko by Pita Nwanna, then another novel by D.N. Achara was published, then another one, Ije Odumuodu Jere was also published. Thereafter, there was a lull. Then I began to investigate why the writing in Igbo seemed to have stopped, and I found out that it was a political concept in the choice of what orthography the writing should continue again. Since then, nothing has happened. Since then, Igbo writers who were writing then began to write in English and that is why you have Chinua Achebe, that is why you have John Munonye and that is why you have Cyprian Ekwensi, etc. So, my conclusion then was looking at Igbo people writing literature and their contributions to Nigerian literature in general. Theoretically now, I have moved away from that very simplistic definition. Now I am concerned with literature written in Igbo and reflecting Igbo world view and ethical values. But works like Things Fall Apart and Jagua Nana are national literatures because they are written in Nigeria's national language. There are a number of my former students and number of my colleagues, who refuse to accept this my change of position and they say that as far as they are concerned, that Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is an Igbo novel and that a novel is defined by the world that it projects. Yes, that is true, but language is also of essence. Even if I were to write that work all over again, I will not still put Oludah Equiano. But if you look at the introduction of that book very well, you will find out how I acknowledged how he traced his Igbo origin. The ceremonies and folklores in that novel, The Interesting Narratives of Oluadah Equiano and that work was published in 1789. So, today, African Americans claim him as an African American novelist, Africans claim him as an African novelist and Igbos claim him as an Igbo novelist. That is okay. But really, the definition of Igbo novel now can not escape being done in terms of the language and in terms of the world that it projects. *What do you think of the fate of Igbo novel in contemporary literary discourse. In the course of this discussion, you have mentioned very fresh names that are engaged in writing in English language. What is the fate of Igbo literature now?* It is going very fine. I don't even want to go as far as to F.C. Ogbalu. The present day writers are doing a lot . These 70 novels, I said I collected in 2003 are all written by young people. I also told you that I collected about 45 plays in Igbo, I also collected about 15 short story collections in Igbo. I have also collected poetry in Igbo. The literature is thriving and the people are writing and the universities have even done more. You asked what is the fate of Igbo. Yes, there are millions of Igbo people in Nigeria today and they form a reasonable audience and readership for the Igbo writer. Okay, today I understand that Things Fall Apart has been translated into more than fifty- five languages and it also now has a translation in Yoruba. If you have the same book in Igbo and you ask an Igbo man to buy, which one do you think he will buy? Of course he will buy the English edition. He will tell you that he can't read the Igbo version. That is the irony. The only way that the Igbo literature can survive and make a point in the literary history of Nigeria, in Africa and in the world is for Igbo people to begin to read their own literature in their own language. *Literature is the central thrust of our discourse this morning and you are eminently qualified to tell us. If I may ask you, as both a teacher and critic of literature in Africa and in the diaspora, to what extent does the diasporic literature connect with Africa's home experience and to what extent can it be truly called African literature?* Let me tell you this, who you are, projects your reality. Who you are projects the story you tell. And I happen to believe that an African outside the continent is as African as any other African elsewhere if he understood fundamentally who he was. The diaspora literature should better be seen as an extension of the African reality. The African story has many dimensions. It also has many ramifications. It is being told in Africa by African people and it is also being told outside Africa by African people. But you have to understand first of all the being that is you because unless you understand the being that is you , you cannot be able to tell the truth, which comes out of you. Okay, I can see the very thrust of your question. Let us take Wole Soyinka for instance. Does it make any difference whether he is in or out of Africa because he is always telling the African story. Chinua Achebe, the same thing. Africans outside the continent are still part of the African reality and still tell the African story just like Nigerians outside Nigeria are still part of the process of telling the Nigerian story. It depends again on how you define yourself, how you define your commitment and how you define your own understanding of who you are. Yes, I can be in and out of Africa like you have said but such a situation does not affect the very way I project my Nigerian reality. You know you cannot change who you are. I am talking about reality, something that is much more than physical. So, my being a Nigerian is always there with me and will always remain with me until I die. So, if I understand that clearly in any story I tell, I will be telling the Nigerian story because that is the formation of my being. So, the story is not disconnected in any form or manner. All one needs to do is to read all the things that Africans who are outside the continent write. I don't know if you have had the opportunity to read a recent novel by Isidore Okpewho titled, Call Me By Rightful Name. It is a novel that treats the African-American presence in America and then, the African origins and cosmology in Africa and then shows a link. Then, you can describe African-American history as African history that was suspended for four hundred years. But it is still there. So, Okpewho wrote this story that shows the interconnectedness or link between African-American diasporic reality and African historical origin. So, anybody looking at the story may wonder if anybody can write such story outside Africa. An essential part of the working theme of this conference is ...generational discourse in creative discourse. And I must frankly tell you that I feel very uncomfortable with that expression given the fact that there is a deep sense of de-linking if you like or some glaring generational divide in the discourse of contemporary literature in Africa. Even in the course of our discussion this morning, your references have bordered on either Achebe, Soyinka, Awoonor, Armah, Ngugi, Oyono, Okpewho and all that. I am surprised that there is no linkage or emphasis on the literary currents being generated by the likes of say Chris Abani, Chimamanda Adichie, Helon Habila, Sefi Attah etc. What would be the interpretation of this attitude? Is it that the works of the new writers are not engaging enough to solicit scholastic intervention or what? Let me state one theoretical concept. I don't accept whatever concept that is embedded in post-colonialism because there is nothing like post-colonialism as we are still there. Secondly, when people talk about generational divide, my reaction is that people are not looking at what's being written. When I make reference to Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka or Isidore Okpewho, I am only making a point. But it is also important for us to read what the likes of Chimamanda Adichie writes in her novel, Purple Hibiscus or Iweala's Beast of No Nation. In Iweala's story, the young man recreates situations that could have applied to the Nigerian/Biafran civil war and could as well apply to any civil unrest anywhere in the continent. He was born in 1982, I believe, twelve years after the Nigerian civil war, but he could still be able to imagine the kind of suffering, imagine the kind of insanity that went into heightening the war, which made the people to, in the middle of it, lose their direction. I have argued in different fora that people are underestimating what the younger generation is writing. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Everything you need is one click away. Make Yahoo! your home page now. http://us.click.yahoo.com/AHchtC/4FxNAA/yQLSAA/TpIolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
