Teaching Yaa Gyasi's "Homegoing"

On June 4, here at St. Olaf College, I started teaching a summer course on African Literature, which I have taught several times before. Following my introduction to the course, we started reading Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, a young Ghanaian writer raised in the USA. I met her on March 2 at the Hemingway Festival in Moscow, Idaho, where she was the guest of honour as winner of the prestigious PEN/Hemingway Award for 2017. She gave a magnificent reading and signed copies of her book.

Homegoing takes us several centuries back to the country known today as Ghana and portrays the life of the people then. Apart from themes such as marriage, the family, and the customs associated with them, as well as racial and ethnic relations and consciousness, the novel delves into the issue of slavery and the slave trade. The characters--African and European--who ran the slave trade describe it as a business.

The novel depicts life in the Cape Coast Castle, with Europeans and their families living quite comfortably while beneath them, in the dungeons, the enslaved Africans endure abominable conditions. Seamlessly, the novel transports us to the United States, where we witness the lives of the African slaves and the slave owners on the plantations. From the Castle to the plantations, we witness a continuation of the monstrous tale of human suffering wrought by human beings.

My students and I are still reading the novel, but I think it would be a great idea to read it alongside Ama Ata Aidoo's The Dilemma of a Ghost, first performed in 1964 and published in 1965. A comparative study of the two works would be rewarding. Apart from their common preoccupation with the African and African American experience, and the theme of slavery, both draw inspiration from African folklore in significant ways.

A Thank You Message From Global Minnesota

On July 10, I mentioned on this blog that I had been invited to speak at Global Minnesota. I did make the presentation and described it on my Swahili blog. Subsequently, I have received a letter of appreciation from Global Minnesota, which says:

Dear Dr. Mbele,

On behalf of Global Minnesota, I would like to thank you for speaking at the Global Conversations program on "African Folktales to Contemporary Authors" at the Minneapolis Central Library on July 12.

Your extensive knowledge and skillful storytelling captured and kept our audience's attention throughout the program. The program was both informative and entertaining, and the feedback we received from the attendees and our partners was extremely positive.

We were also so pleased that you brought your daughters to the program and rekindled an old MIC/Global Minnesota connection.

Thank you for partnering with us on this program and helping us in our mission to bring greater awareness and appreciation of African culture to the general public in Minnesota. We look forward to engaging with you again on future Global Minnesota programs!

I can only say that I am always ready and happy to share whatever knowledge I have that people want me to share with them. I have a high regard for Global Minnesota. I got to know about it when my daughter Assumpta worked there as alluded to in the letter above. I look forward to future collaboration.

My Forthcoming Presentation to Global Minnesota

I have been invited by Global Minnesota to give a presentation on African verbal art on July 12.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Global Conversations: African Folktales to Contemporary Authors

JULY 12 @ 6:00 PM CDT / Free

From ancient oral traditions to contemporary literature, African stories reflect wisdom, cultural identities, and social values developed over countless generations. Join us, St. Olaf College Associate Professor Joseph Mbele, and Augsburg College Associate Professor Mzenga Wanyama for an exploration of how these stories find expression today, both in Africa and in the African diaspora.

Speakers
Joseph Mbele, Associate Professor of English at St. Olaf College, is a folklorist and author. His writings, including Matengo Folktales, illuminate the underlying values that shape cultures. Dr. Mbele has done fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania, and the U.S., and has given lectures and presented conference papers in Canada, Finland, India, Israel, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and the U.S. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and before coming to St. Olaf in 1990 to teach post-colonial and third-world literature, he taught in the Literature Department at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Over the years, he has taught courses such as Swahili Literature, Theory of Literature, African Literature, Sociology of Literature, Postcolonial and Third World Literature, The Epic, and African-American Literature.

Mzenga Aggrey Wanyama, Associate Professor of English at Augsburg College, was born and raised in Kenya where he received his bachelor’s of education and master’s degrees from the University of Nairobi and then taught English language and literature in Kenyan High schools and at Kenyatta University. In the United States, he had a two-year stint in the graduate program at Howard University in Washington, D.C. before attending the University of Minnesota where he earned a Ph.D. in English. Mzenga also worked as an Assistant Professor of English at St. Cloud State University where he taught courses in literature and writing. His areas of focus are Postcolonial theory and literature and African American literary history.

Presented in partnership with the Friends of the Minneapolis Central Library.

Global Conversations: African Folktales to Contemporary Authors
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
6:00 PM

My Study Guide on the "Song of Lawino"

After several years of both reflection and procrastination, I have published a study guide, Notes on Okot p'Bitek's Song of Lawino. I wrote it hoping it might interest students and teachers of Okot p'Bitek's famous work and of African literature as such.

Years ago, I published another study guide, on Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and have been encouraged by its reception. It was, for example, recommended as a resource for incoming students of Cornell University who were reading Things Fall Apart.

These study guides constitute a reliable indication of the kinds of ideas I share with students in my African literature courses. I look forward to writing more.

Teaching "The Thing Around Your Neck"

In my African Literature course this semester, one of the works we have been discussing is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck. I have taught Adichie's works before, as I wrote on this blog, but not this collection of stories.  reads like a panoramic survey of modern African Anglophone literature in terms of the themes it covers.

In terms of its themes, The Thing Around Your Neck reads like a panoramic of modern African Anglophone literature. At the same time, it deals with themes common in Adichie's works: life on a Nigerian university campus, which features in Purple Hibiscus; the Nigerian civil war, the focal point of Half of a Yellow Sun; the experiences of Nigerians abroad, which is a key theme in Americanah; as well as corruption in its various guises and manifestations.

Though often dealing with painful themes, such as abuse and alienation, Adichie infuses her stories with humour and sarcasm. The last story in the collection, "The Headstrong Historian," bears the influence of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, moving briskly through the main themes of that novel, while reworking them in various ways.

Adichie's fictional works are notable for their cosmopolitanism; they tend to feature contemporary urbanized Africans for whom the world is indeed a global village. They travel between Africa and the outside world, especially Europe and the USA, and maintain their global networks wherever they are. This is a feature of much contemporary African literature, as can be seen in works I have taught, such as Athol Fugard's Sorrows and Rejoicings, Leila Aboulela's Minaret: A Novel, Doreen Baingana's Tropical Fish: Tales From Entebbe. and Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.

I Started Teaching Today

The fall semester started yesterday here at St. Olaf College, and I started teaching today. I will be teaching on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the courses on each day are First Year Writing, African Literature and Muslim Women Writers.

As I always do on the first day of class, today I talked about myself, my teaching philosophy, and my courses, highlighting, in particular, my commitment to academic freedom, vexed as that concept is. I don't plunge into the course on the first day of class, mindful that it is rife with uncertainties. I want first to put the students and myself at ease.

It is pleasant to be on the threshold of another season of academic engagements: reading, exploring and discussing ideas, writing, challenging ourselves, and broadening our intellectual horizons. It is a privilege to be a teacher, entrusted with the mission of inspiring a new generation of critical thinkers and socially responsible citizens of the world.

Summer School Started Today

Today, the second term of summer school started here at St. Olaf College. I did not teach the first term. Instead, I pursued my interests in Ernest Hemingway. I went to the J.F. Kennedy Library to do research in the Hemingway Collection, and, upon my return, read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, The Sun Also Rises, and a few of his letters and stories.

Returning to the classroom today felt like embarking on a new adventure, even though the course I am teaching this time, African Literature, is familiar territory. I met my students and talked about myself and my teaching philosophy, and about basic issues of the course, starting with the significance of Africa as the cradle of humanity, language and story telling, which evolved as an oral tradition and later embraced writing.

Before we dispersed, I told the class that I would continue my introduction during our second meeting. I want to reflect on the evolution of written African literature, starting from ancient Egypt and moving into the colonial era, which created the conditions for the emergence of African literature in European languages.

Here are the works I have decided to use this term:

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, The Thing Around Your Neck.

Aidoo, Ama Ata. The Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa.

Ba, Mariama. Scarlet Song.

Couto, Mia. The Tuner of Silences.

Fugard, Athol. Valley Song.

Mengestu, Dinaw. The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears.

A Discussion on Adichie's "Purple Hibiscus"

This evening, we had a discussion at St. Olaf College on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, organized by Professor Joan Hepburn f the English Department. She had lined me up as discussion leader together with herself.

I started the discussion by giving the context of Adichie's life and work. I stated how she fit in the tradition of African Anglophone literature which goes back to the days before independence as is exemplified  in Nigeria by writers like Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, and Cyprian Ekwensi.

I then discussed Adichie, her upbringing on a university campus in Nigeria and her travels abroad, including her time as a student in the USA. I emphasized the cosmopolitanism in both her life and writings. I talked about her writings, highlighting her novels and short stories and giving an overview of her key themes. I mentioned her TED lectures as well.

After my presentation, Professor Hepburn led a discussion of Purple Hibiscus, which moved through key themes such as family, religion, and politics. We dwelt at length on the theme of religion and its peculiar effects on characters like Papa. We probed these themes in depth and discovered the complexity with which they are realized.

My African Literature Summer Course is Over

Yesterday, August 19, was the last day of my African Literature summer course. During the last week or so we had been reading Leila Aboulela's Minaret. In my syllabus, I had planned to conclude the course with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck. As it turned out, however, we found ourselves going slowly through Minaret, having worn ourselves out in the previous five weeks of meeting daily, except on Saturdays and Sundays.

Nevertheless, I am pleased we were able to read Minaret, a novel that had a major impact on my students when I first taught it. Its deft and nuanced exploration of the world of Muslims was a valuable learning experience that was also aesthetically satisfying.

I was able this time to focus on aspects of Minaret that I had not dwelt on when I first taught it. Given the works we had read before, I made connections across them. I was interested, for example, in the occurence of letter writing in Minaret, a feature we had observed in Mia Couto's The Tuner of Silences as well as in Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. I also gained a deeper understanding of the thematic aspects of Minaret and of the relationship among its characters.

Thinking about letter writing as a literary device led me to bring up the tradition of the epistolary novel. I explained this concept and cited examples that came readily to my mind, including Mariama Ba's So Long a  Letter and Fyodor Dostoevsky's Poor Folk.

Concluding the course yesterday, I gave the students the following final examination:

Answer Two Questions.

1) Based on the works we have discussed in this course, write an essay titled, "Language in African Literature."

2) Write an essay titled, "Religion in Leila Aboulela's Minaret."

3) What kind of person is Najwa, the main character in Leila Aboulela's Minaret?

4) Discuss the Western (i.e. European and American) influene or presence in Leila Aboulela's Minaret.

Teaching "Americanah" This Semester

This week, in my Post-colonial Literature class, we have been discussing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, among other awards. Since then, she has continued to write and to win award after award.

In September 2006, she attended the Twin Cities Book Festival in Minneapolis, as one of the invited authors, to launch Half of a Yellow Sun. I attended her book reading and signing, and had the opportunity to have my copy signed, chat with her, and take a photo.

Having taught Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, I decided to include Americanah in my Post-colonial Literature course this semester.

Although we are not yet half-way into this novel, we can see that it is a moving tale of the lives of Nigerian characters at home and abroad, mainly in the USA. With a keen insight and enjoyable writing style, Adichie explores themes such as relationships between men and women and between races, cultural differences, and the mystique of America.

Africans who have lived in America can relate to the situations and experiences described in Americanah. I can guarantee this, having written Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences.

Farewell, Chinua Achebe

Around 8:20 this morning, my youngest daughter told me that her older sister had texted to say that Chinua Achebe had passed away. I was dumbfounded and could hardly say anything.

I have struggled the whole day, in vain, to find the appropriate way to pay tribute to this giant and icon of modern African literature.

 Achebe helped shape the direction of African literature, not only through his own writing, but also through his role as editor of the African Writers Series which launched the careers of many African writers.

Achebe was a sage, in the best tradition of the wise village elders. Watching interviews, I note that he exuded humility and charm. Committed to the idea that the artist is a teacher, Achebe helped us Africans to understand our place in the world, our weaknesses and our potential.  A profound humanist, he touched hearts and minds around the world.

Although I never met Achebe, I have been lucky to have taught his works regularly, discovering, each time, more dimensions of his creative genius and timeless lessons.

Though no longer with us in person, Achebe will continue to touch people. For the rest of our lives, we will be paying tribute to this gifted storyteller, who gave Africa a voice in the world.

Teaching "God's Bits of Wood"

After discussing Ferdinand Oyono's The Old Man and the Medal, my African Literature and Politics class picked up Sembene Ousmane's God's Bits of Wood, enabling us to continue our exploration of African Francophone writing.

I was happy to introduce Sembene Ousmane, Africa's leading film maker and one of its most accomplished writers. I talked about his life, work and travels, the evolution of his writing and his decision to make films. I talked about his politics as reflected in his life, writings and films.

After years of studying epics, I now see God's Bits of Wood in terms of the epic genre. The struggle of the workers, epitomized by the strike, is a classic epic tale, reinforced by Maimouna's songs from the ancient legend of Goumba N'Diaye, "the woman who had measured her strength against that of men."

This legend foreshadows the role women play in God's Bits of Wood. Mindful, however, of the many female characters and their roles, we dwelt on specific characters: Old Niakoro, Maimouna, Ramatoulaye, Ndeye Touti, and the little girl Adjibidji, who reminds me of another little girl, Raka, in Anita Desai's Fire on the Mountain. Both are free spirits, perpetually crossing the boundaries their societies impose on girls and women.

God's Bits of Wood methodically explores the trials and tribulations of a society under siege, reminiscent, in some ways, of Albert Camus's The Plague. Both texts explore what happens or might happen to human beings under such extreme conditions, as suffering persists and intensifies, seemingly with no end in sight.

We talked about themes in the novel: oppression, discrimination, racism, religion, colonial education, the politics of language, the relationship between the old generation and the new, and between men and women. In discussing these themes, we invoked the ideas of people like Frantz Fanon and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. I gave the class plenty of time to read the novel, and I believe the experience was worthwhile.

Teaching "A Wreath for Udomo"

When I started teaching Peter Abrahams's A Wreath for Udomo in my African Literature and Politics course, over a week ago, I did not know what would happen. I might have read this novel as a young man, back in Tanzania, but I am not sure. Whatever the case, I had never taught it.

We are now about halfway through the novel, and what an experience it has been. Having started with Cesaire's Discourse on Colonialism my students and I now read A Wreath for Udomo in the light of that classic. It is interesting to see how a writer of fiction approaches the very problems and issues Cesaire raises in his political discourse, to discover and explore the overlaps and intersections between the two texts. What Cesaire discusses in a general theoretical way acquires concrete expression in the individual and collective experience of Abrahams's characters.

When I designed this course, I wanted the readings to project the spirit of the fifties as the Africans, suffering under colonialism, mobilized themselves and fought for independence. A Wreath for Udomo meets that goal very well.

Peter Abrahams is a skillful writer. His prose is engaging, and there are many passages in his novel that I have found impossible not to read and re-read, because of their descriptive power. Here is one:

The door near which Udomo stood opened quietly. A little black man, not much more than five feet tall, stood framed in it. The others didn't notice him for a while. His face was long and lean, tapering to a point at the chin. His long thin black fingers were strong and restless. His huge mop of kinky hair was a crown about his face. He had big pop-eyes. The lids drooped over them like an owl's, giving him a sleepy appearance (p. 31).

This book provides a sense of what living under colonialism and struggling for independence was like for Africans in the fifties and earlier. But this book is not only about the past; it is very much about today's Africa, which dwells in both the past and the present, so to speak. Abrahams captures this duality very well in his description of the African market:

The market was old, timeless Africa; loud, crowded and free. Here, a man sat making sandals from old discarded motor-car tyres; there, another worked at an old sewing machine, making a nightgown-like affair while the buyer waited; a little further on an old goldsmith worked at his dying art, but using, now, copper filings instead of gold to fashion the lovely trinkets women wear the world over; elsewhere a woman sold country cloth fashioned with such fine art that only Africans think of it as a garment of utility. Trade was slow and loud everywhere. This was as much a social as a shopping centre (p. 148)

The description does not end there. By observing the dynamics of the market, Abrahams reveals key aspects of African culture. I was delighted to read this passage, recalling what I wrote about the African market in my Africans and Americans book.

We are halfway through A Wreath for Udomo, even though we have spent more than a week on it. I decided that spending a lot of time on a book like this would help the class build a good framework for understanding not only key aspects of the African experience but also other texts we are going to read.

An English Class at Augustana College

I was a guest of Augustana College, Illinois, from January 30 to February 2. The highlight of my visit was a talk I gave to over 40 students and faculty preparing to go to Ghana and Senegal on a study program. However, as often happens during such visits, I did other activities as well, one of which was to visit Professor John Tawiah-Boateng's English class.
Professor Tawiah-Boateng had told me that at the time of my visit, the class would be reading Chinua Achebe's short story, "Marriage is a Private Affair," and I was to lead the discussion on that story. Introducing me to the students, he mentioned my various academic activites, travels, and publications. He noted that I had written a study guide on Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart." Before this invitation to Augustana College, I had not read Achebe's "Marriage is a Private Affair." Reading the story, as I was preparing for this visit, I found it to be vintage Achebe.
Not only does Achebe dwell on conflict between indigenous African and European culture, but he also explores the contradictions within the so called indigenous culture. His description of an elder torn between the two conflicting worlds is memorable, if ironic, at the same time.In discussing the story, I led the students through an exploration of its themes, such as the dialectic between rural and urban reality, gender and the relations between men and women, language and communication.
I dwelt on the central place of marriage in African culture as depicted in folklore and literature. I highlighted the specific issue of choosing a spouse and the cautionary narratives depicting young people who defied tradition and parental wishes: Amos Tutuola's "The Complete Gentleman" and Ama Ata Aidoo's "The Dilemma of a Ghost" and "Anowa."On the subject of parental wishes and injunctions, I mentioned Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" and the theme of the three caskets.
With imput from the students and Professor Tawian-Boateng, I think we had a good class. I can sit back, relax, and remember that class, reflecting on what a priviledge it is to be a teacher, blessed with the opportunity to touch minds across the world.

My e-book on "Things Fall Apart"

Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, continues to fascinate and touch people around the world in ways that no other African literary work has managed to do. I have taught this novel from the time I was doing teaching practice as an undergraduate student.

In 1988, I published some study notes on this novel, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I revised these notes and produced an online guide which was popular among students and teachers around the world. I revised it still, expanding and publishing it. I have now published it as an e-book. Click here.