AFRICAN

LITERATURE
Background of Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At
about 30.3 million km including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total
surface area and 20.4% of its total land area. With 1.1 billion people as of 2013,
it accounts for about 15% of the world's human population. The continent is
surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, both the Suez Canal and the
Red Sea along the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the
southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes
Madagascar and various archipelagos. It contains 54 fully recognized sovereign
states (countries), nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited
or no recognition
Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in
2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Algeria is Africa's
largest country by area, and Nigeria by population. Africa, particularly central
Eastern Africa, is widely accepted as the place of origin of humans and the
Hominidae clade (great apes), as evidenced by the discovery of the earliest
hominids and their ancestors, as well as later ones that have been dated to
around seven million years ago, including Sahelanthropus tchadensis,
Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster
with the earliest Homo sapiens (modern human) found in Ethiopia being dated
to circa 200,000 years ago. Africa straddles the equator and encompasses
numerous climate areas; it is the only continent to stretch from the northern
temperate to southern temperate zones.
Africa hosts a large diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. In the late
19th century European countries colonized most of Africa. Africa also varies
greatly with regard to environments, economics, historical ties and government
systems. However, most present states in Africa originate from a process of
decolonization in the 20th century.

Map of Africa
AFRICAN LITERATURE
 DAVID DIOP (1927 1960)
David Mandessi Diop was one of the most promising French West African poets
known for his contribution to the Ngritude literary movement. His work reflects
his anti-colonial stance and his hope for an independent Africa
David Diop was born in Bordeaux, France, of a Senegalese father and a
Cameroonian mother. He had his primary education in Senegal. He started writing
poems while he was still in school, and his poems started appearing in Prsence
Africaine since he was just 15. Several of his poems were published in Lopold
Senghor's famous anthology, which became a landmark of modern black writing
in French. He died in the crash of Air France Flight 343 in the Atlantic Ocean off
Dakar, Senegal, at the age of 33 on August 29, 1960. His one small collection of
poetry, Coups de pilon, came out from Prsence Africaine in 1956; it was
posthumously published in English as Hammer Blows, translated and edited by
Simon Mondo and Frank Jones.
 Africa by David Diop

Africa my Africa
Africa of proud warriors in ancestral savannahs
Africa of whom my grandmother sings
On the banks of the distant river
I have never known you
But your blood flows in my veins
Your beautiful black blood that irrigates the fields
The blood of your sweat
The sweat of your work
The work of your slavery
Africa, tell me Africa
Is this your back that is unbent
This back that never breaks under the weight of humilation
This back trembling with red scars
And saying no to the whip under the midday sun
But a grave voice answers me
Impetuous child that tree, young and strong
That tree over there
Splendidly alone amidst white and faded flowers
That is your Africa springing up anew
springing up patiently, obstinately
Whose fruit bit by bit acquires
The bitter taste of liberty.
 BUCHI EMECHETA (1944)
Buchi Emecheta OBE was born to Ibo parents in Lagos on 21 July 1944. She
moved to Britain in 1960, where she worked as a librarian and became a student
at London University in 1970, reading Sociology. She worked as a community
worker in Camden, North London, between 1976 and 1978.

Much of her fiction has focused on sexual politics and racial prejudice, and is
based on her own experiences as both a single parent and a black woman living
in Britain. She had published more than 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen
(1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of
Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female
independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical
acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta
once described her stories as "stories of the world[where] women face the
universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter
where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical."
She has been characterised as "the first successful black woman novelist living
in Britain after 1948".
 The Joys of Motherhood Summary by Buchi Emecheta
The book opens as Nnu Ego runs away from her home in Lagos, Nigeria, where
her first baby has just died. She has decided to commit suicide.

The story flashes back to the story of how Nnu Ego was conceived. Her father,
Agbadi, though he has many wives, is in love with a proud and haughty young
woman named Ona. Ona refuses to marry him because she is obligated to
produce a son for her father's family line, and not a husband's. But when Agbadi
is almost killed in a hunting accident, Ona nurses him back to health and becomes
pregnant with his child. She agrees that if it's a daughter, the child will belong to
Agbadi.

Nnu Ego is Agbadi's favorite daughter and she grows into a beautiful young
woman. Her first marriage is to the son of another wealthy and titled family.
Unfortunately, the marriage soon grows sour because Nnu Ego fails to have
children. Her husband takes a second wife, who quickly conceives. Nnu Ego
grows thin and worn out because she's so unhappy. She goes back to live with
her father, who arranges a second marriage.

Nnu Ego's second marriage is to Nnaife, a man who works in Lagos as the washer
for a white family, Dr. and Mrs. Meers. Though Nnu Ego is disappointed with
Nnaife he isn't her ideal man she quickly becomes pregnant. This is the child
that dies and propels her to almost commit suicide by jumping off a bridge.

When she's talked out of jumping off the bridge, Nnu Ego returns home and
becomes pregnant again rather quickly. World War II interferes in Nnu Ego's and
Nnaife's happiness. The Meers return to Europe, and Nnaife is out of work for
months while Nnu Ego supports the family through petty trade. Nnaife eventually
gets work on a ship, which means he's gone for months at a time. Nnu Ego
struggles to make ends meet while he's gone. When he finally returns, it's only to
be greeted by the news that his elder brother has died and Nnaife has inherited
all his brother's wives and children. Most of the wives remain in Ibuza, but Adaku
comes to Lagos and moves in with Nnu Ego and Nnaife.
Nnu Ego learns to become the senior wife, and to share Nnaife's pitiful salary with
Adaku and her children. Life is a constant struggle for survival, but it only gets
worse when Nnaife is conscripted into the army and sent to fight in World War II.
He's gone for four years. His wives must wait patiently with no news and no salary.

Adaku takes up trading to support herself and her two children, while Nnu Ego
struggles to support her four children. Nnu Ego goes home to Ibuza because her
father dies. During her long absence, Adaku's trading becomes very successful,
while Nnu Ego's dwindles to nothing. Nnu Ego has to start all over again, but she
is jealous of Adaku's success. The two women have a conflict, and the family men
settle in favor of Nnu Ego even though she's wrong. It turns out that the men side
with Nnu Ego because she is the senior wife. Adaku finally recognizes that
because she is the junior wife and has only has daughters, her position in the
family is nothing. She leaves to become a prostitute.

After many years, Nnu Ego discovers that she has been sent three years of
Nnaife's salary. She is finally able to pay her children's school fees and feed them
well. Nnaife arrives home not long after. The war is over. He apparently feels the
sting of Adaku's defection because he decides to go home and assert his rights
of inheritance with his brother's eldest wife, Adankwo. He gets her pregnant and
brings home yet another wife, a young girl named Okpo.

Nnu Ego is frustrated. They can hardly afford the children they have, yet Nnaife
keeps fathering more children and demanding more wives. Yet Okpo is a good
girl, and has the same traditional values that Nnu Ego has, so their relationship is
a good one, almost like that of a mother and daughter. Nnaife surprises everybody
when he offers the rest of his military money to pay for Oshia's expensive
schooling. (Oshia is Nnaife and Nnu Ego's second child , but the first to live.) The
expectation is that Oshia will graduate and get a good job and help pay for his
younger brothers' schooling, as well as provide for his parents in their old age.

Oshia has other ideas, however. He wants to continue with university in America.
His disregard for his own duties as the first-born son causes his parents great
anguish. Nnaife is never the same again after he feels betrayed by Oshia. When
his daughter, Kehinde, breaks his rules by running away with a Yoruba man, he
assaults the father of Kehinde's husband. Sent to prison, Nnaife blames Nnu Ego
for all his problems. Whatever love he once hand for her has turned to bitter
hatred.
With Oshia in America, and Adim (Nnaife and Nnu Ego's third child and second
living son) working and paying for his own schooling, and her two oldest
daughters settled in marriages, Nnu Ego moves back to Ibuza. She is not
welcome on Nnaife's family's compound so she moves into her father's old
household with her youngest children. She lives out the rest of her days there.

When she dies, her children finally come home Oshia from America and Adim
from Canada and throw her an expensive funeral. They build a shrine so that
her descendants can pray to her and ask for children. But Nnu Ego refuses to
answer those prayers.