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.

A Note on Leila Aboulela's "Minaret"

One of the works we read in my Post-colonial Literature course this Spring was Leila Aboulela's Minaret. I planned to focus on two areas of the Post-colonial world: Africa and South Asia. We started with Athol Fugard's Sorrows and Rejoicings, read  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, and then Minaret, before venturing into South Asia.
 

Minaret explores the lives of Sudanese Muslims in Sudan--especially Khartoum--and in England. It unfolds initially at the University of Khartoum, where we encounter Najwa, the main character. We see how she relates to the community around her, especially fellow students, whose adherence to Islamic principles--such as praying five times a day--she observes with a certain aloofness.

Mostly middle or upper class, the characters in Minaret are a diverse community in terms of their political beliefs and their degrees of attachment to Islam. Cosmopolitan in outlook, they embrace, or easily coexist with, foreign, especially Western, influences. They communicate with friends and relatives abroad, and are able to travel abroad themselves.

Following a coup in Sudan, and the execution of her father by the new regime, Najwa finds herself in exile in England, together with her brother. Though she had not been particularly religious back in Khartoum, after arriving in England and experiencing alienation and other social problems, she embraces Islam, finding meaning and comfort in being a pious Muslim woman. Leila Aboulela presents this transformation in a seamless, persuasive manner.

Minaret offers a refreshing image of Islamic Sudan, a place which many associate with a rigid, conservative society. In contrast to conventional negative stereotypes, Minaret humanizes the Muslims, showing them as people like any other. My students and I liked this novel, and I plan to teach it again this summer.