By Doug Walters
In 2005, Moroccan author Laila Lalami published her first novel, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, in the United States. In the months that followed, she learned that an African writer who publishes a book in English can unintentionally upset readers in their native country. Largely taking place in Morocco, the novel tells the stories of four different groups of people who attempt to reach Spain via lifeboat. What made some readers upset was how the novel detailed, in English, the harsh social conditions that drive each of the main characters to risk their lives escaping their home country. During a reading in Kenitra, Morocco, one audience member asked Lalami if she had used English to write a book that specifically depicted a corrupt African society – an image that would sell in the west. The question, after a bit of a back-and-forth, soon devolved into an accusation: “that [she] had depicted corruption in order to be published.”
The novel was well received, but the episode illustrates one of the problems African writers can encounter when writing in English, namely the possibility of alienation from their own linguistic heritage should they use the language of a former colonial power to tell their stories. However, the focus of this essay will be that when it comes to getting their narratives out there, to making a living by selling books, African writers have no choice but to use English.
There are 237 million English speakers in Africa. Arabic is spoken by 170 million, French by 140 million, and Portuguese by 35.5 million. For this essay, I will be concentrating mainly on English. It is the world’s most widely spoken language, and many African writers who are not part of the diaspora in Europe or the USA find it necessary for the purposes of a successful writing career.
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe introduced the concept of English as a necessary component in postcolonial African literature at a 1962 writers’ conference in Uganda. He referred to “ethnic literatures” in languages found in the minority regions of Nigeria as opposed to a “national literature [that] takes the whole nation for its province”. The former are available only to a single ethnic group, whereas the latter have the possibility of reaching the entire country. Achebe and other writers at the conference said English could be “Africanized” and used to honestly communicate historical and societal truths. This reflects the point of the conference, which was to not only welcome an “imperially enforced” English, but to stimulate its use as the default position among more African writers.
Achebe summarized the conference in his essay “The African Writer and the English Language,” in which he admits colonialism “gave [writers] a language with which to talk to one another.” Linguistic unity only exists in much of Africa due to the same “colonialism [that] divided up a single ethnic group among two or even three powers.” As disparate tribes and cultures were forced together under the common banner of newly formed countries, colonial languages would soon become the de facto expression not just for the building of new societies, but for literature. Were such languages taken away, many regions would have lost the ability for reciprocal speech, and their stories would have been lost to the outside world.
Lalami was accused of writing a book in English that used a negative portrayal of Morocco for the purpose of selling more copies. But according to Achebe, such writing does not display a lack of patriotism. African writers who write in English are “by-products of the same process that made the new nation-states of Africa,” and he contends that English is capable of carrying authentic messages of the African experience. His point, like Lalami’s several years later, is that African writers have no choice but to use colonial languages as a means of narrative storytelling. Publishing in the west allows writers to expose their works to a larger audience, thus allowing them more of an opportunity at commercial success.
This phenomenon is seen elsewhere, too. In Achebe’s essay, he uses the example of Brazilian writers who wrote only in Portuguese. As a result, their work “will be closed to the rest of the world forever.” Another example is that of Indian-born Salman Rushdie, who explains in Imaginary Homelands how the younger generations of India don’t see English as “tainted by its colonial provenance. They use it as an Indian language, as one of the tools they have to hand.” Writing only in a regional dialect therefore confines one’s work to a small and limited audience.
English as an outlet for African literature was thus inevitable, and it is only through English that their writing can attain any legitimacy or recognition outside of their respective countries. However, Dr Lizzy Attree of Richmond American University of London explains how a writer’s use of English may not solely be a result of wanting to sell more books. “Publishing in local languages in many African countries is restricted to school instruction books or work manuals,” Attree stated in a 2022-interview on www.africasacountry.com. Furthermore, publishers often avoid books that are not set to be widely distributed to schools or corporations where several hundred copies are likely to be purchased. Kenyan author Stanley Gazemba agrees with this in his article “African Publishing Minefields and the Woes of the African Writer,” in which he explains how many African governments impose heavy taxes on materials used in book production. This further burdens the individual writer. These two points have the unfortunate result of convincing not only publishers to avoid literary works of fiction written in African languages as they carry no profitable guarantee, but also the writers to avoid most African publishing houses due to the high costs of production. Finally, most literary prizes that specifically promote African literature only do so under the condition that the book is not published in an African language. The writer therefore sees no choice but to rely on non-African publishers while avoiding indigenous languages altogether.
Kenyan writer Mukoma wa Ngugi added in the same interview with Attree that “if we are to grow the African literary tradition…we need more of everything.” If writers want their books to sell, they need to use available world languages. Attree and wa Ngugi would later develop the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature in 2014. Despite their goal of encouraging more writing in African languages, they realize that the use of English in literature continues to dominate.
Another reason that may preclude a writer’s choice in language is the societally enforced prevalence of English in colonized regions. Though several early African cultures had recorded their histories orally, many of them had also developed their own distinct writing systems. Colonizers imposed heavy restrictions on indigenous languages, thus any pre-colonial literary works that existed in a written form would become inaccessible to future generations who couldn’t read that language. Wa Ngugi recalls how he was physically punished at school if overheard speaking his native language. On a visit to his former school in 2017, he saw numerous signs that read “Vernacular Speaking is PROHIBITED.” Fellow Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina recalls similar incidents in his memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place. His mother tongue, Kiswahili, was not compulsory for students. All official state documents were only written in English, and in an effort “to eradicate tribalism,” no other regional dialects are named in Kenya’s constitution. Speaking any mother tongue was forbidden in school, and students who did so were severely punished. With native languages missing from one’s linguistic heritage, it is no surprise that many who grow up to be writers have only English at their disposal.
Nigerian poet Paul Chuks comments on www.trampset.com that his country has a severe shortage of language courses that teach local dialects. This implies that “more people read and write in English than in their native language.” An attempt at literary decolonization by writing in one’s native language may show a respect to local cultures, “but [it] is not financially enterprising.” This has resulted not only in a population that is unable to understand its own native languages, but is largely uninterested in doing so.
It is therefore not only a desire for success that writers feel they have no choice but to use an already internationally recognized language. It is a result of governmental restrictions on linguistic expression as well as unfamiliarity with one’s own culture. In concluding his essay, Achebe writes how the real issue is not “whether Africans could write in English but whether they ought to.” He reasonably ends with a bold admission: “For me there is no other choice. I have been given this language and I intend to use it.”
Not all writers agree with Achebe or Lalami. Nigerian writer Obiajunwa Wali believed African writers must write in the language in which they think and feel. In his essay “The Dead End of African Literature,” he contradicts Achebe when he says English is unable to “carry the African experience.” Due to the linguistic biases of the 1962 conference, Wali was afraid that African literature would lose all legitimacy through what he called the “negritude,” or sterilization, of true and authentic African voices. The only response to this crisis was to give writers the autonomy to publish in their native languages, without which African literature would become no more than what Gazemba refers to as “a minor appendage in the stream of European literature.” Wali would make several attempts to persuade the government to systematically replace English with Hausa, a language spoken throughout several African countries.
Attendees of the 1962 conference agreed that it was better for an African writer to think in their native language and then employ a comparable English translation when writing, a concept Wali described as “naïve” and “misguided.” He denounced the widespread use of English as a “false literary unity,” one that was not being encouraged anywhere other than Africa. He contrasted this with writers such as Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton, who wrote not in “the cosmopolitan languages of their times” such as Latin or Greek, but in their native English. African literature, asserted Wali, written in any language other than an African one, is “a clear contradiction…just as Italian literature in Hausa would be.”
This philosophy was quickly adopted by Kenyan author and playwright James Ngugi, who believed no African writer should write in the language of their oppressors. After presenting his play I will Marry When I Want in 1977, a dramatization both critical of the Kenyan government and in which all the performers spoke in their native language of Gikuyu instead of the predominant English, Ngugi was imprisoned for a year without trial. Upon his release, he ceased writing in English altogether. He would also change his name from the westernized “James Ngugi” to the more traditional Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
After transitioning to Gikuyu, he called for a “recentering” of African identity at schools in Kenya, and he pushed for the abolition of the English Department at the University of Nairobi. This led to the opening of the Department of Literature, which expanded its focus into indigenous writings from East Africa. “Language is culture,” insisted Thiong’o, but culture is “empty without its set of values and truths.” Both Wali and Thiong’o argued that these values and truths are to be found, first and foremost, in language.
Thiong’o did not wish to negate the works of African authors who have become part of the diaspora, but he bemoans the paucity of local authors throughout the continent whose works are known only to those who live there and speak the regional dialects. “Africans can’t express true self through European languages,” Thiong’o said in his 1986-book Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Yet he explained how Africans have been made to feel guilty about their own languages. A loss of native languages can lead to a loss of identity, which Thiong’o maintains is best kept alive through our relationship with our native language. “If you know all the languages of the world but don’t know your mother tongue, that is enslavement,” said Thiong’o in a 2015-interview with CNN International Correspondent Larry Madowo. “But if you know your mother tongue and then add languages of the world, that is empowerment.”
Taking a closer look at linguistic barriers reveals the role they play not just between Africa and the west, but within Africa itself. In his 2020-article “Decolonizing African literature begins with language,” Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop laments how several African writers only “appear in school curricula based on the language they are writing in…young Nigerians know nothing about Cameroonian or Ivorian authors.” Though this lends credence to English being a necessity for a successful career as a writer even within the confines of Africa, Diop regrets how “in their search for literary legitimacy, African authors, writing in French or English, often focus on themes that are likely to appeal to Western readers.” This echoes the accusation against Lalami, namely how writing about the corruption of an African society is an intentional act used to sell more books. Ngũgĩ, as well as Senegalese writer Cheik Aliou Ndao, both challenged the dominance of French and English as ubiquitous languages of instruction. Diop, meanwhile, believes every avenue of linguistic expression and instruction should be explored. He concludes this line of thought, however, with the realization that it is very much the “Western idea of Africa” that is taught to students, rather than any notion of Africa as a collection of autonomous nations with varying cultures, traditions, and linguistic identities.
Namibia’s independence in 1990 marked the end of colonial rule in Africa, yet Diop argues that Africa as a continent remains colonized linguistically. A mental decolonization must now take place via the recognition of indigenous languages as being able to tell their own story with legitimacy. Until this happens, it is hard to dismiss the contentions of Achebe and Lalami. Without English, and all the colonial baggage and academic controversy that come with it, mutual intelligibility would have been, would be, nearly impossible. Furthermore, literary success would be limited to small, possibly unheard of, regions of a continent that, to many in the west, remains inaccessible outside the pages of a book.
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