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 :
There is a sense in which people say that all the
great writers are gone. All the best writing is done. At ,
we are about the canon, about the writers, getting them read
again…
Dawson: Well the Canon, my interest
in that is actually the terminology with which we talk about writers.
And the sticking point has to be the label of postcolonialism and
postcolonial writing. In many ways if you look at the writing that
is emerging now, I feel that it represents something beyond postcolonial
- post-postcolonial, if you like. And if we could make a
shift in the language that we use to describe the writing, not just
from Africa alone but also from India, Singapore and Malaysia, we
can see this writing as new, as a new way or a new step in the journey
that I think it will take. Postcolonial is most certainly a step
or a moment in that journey but I think what is important is that
we go beyond that and the term, that I favour at least, is World
Englishes Literature. Generally, ‘World Englishes’ tends to
be understood within a linguistic remit but what I’m trying to pioneer
myself is to talk about World Englishes in a literary dimension.
Now the problem with that is that the foci - I’m not sure you are
familiar with Braj Kachru’s work and the Inner, Outer, and Expanding
circles - this is what makes the linguistic sense of World Englishes.
The Inner circle is the Anglophone nations: England, America, Australia
for instance, The Outer circle is Kenya, Nigeria, and so on, the
Expanding circle is places like Israel, places where English is
being spoken but where they do not necessarily have the colonial
past.
The problem I find in my own research is that when
you talk about ‘World Englishes in the literary sense’, for me at
least, the Inner circle is not part of that. Now this is quite revolutionary
and it may not go down very well with everybody. I am just preparing
an article for the journal, World Englishes and I’m trying
to put this view forward that although World Englishes in the linguistic
sphere can explain the variety of Englishes spoken around the world,
it doesn’t necessarily capture the sense of the literary production.
Fundamentally, what I advocate is that that World Englishes literature
is only produced from the Outer and Expanding circles.
I believe the advantage of talking about the state
of new writing with this label of ‘World Enlgishes literature’ is
that we hope to capture a sense of newness and we shed the sense
of postcoloniality. Again, I feel, looking at writing emerging from
Nigeria or Kenya or Malaysia or India - not without exception of
course - but there is a sense of newness, which I think is not about
post-colonialism any more, is not about being oppressed
or fighting or struggling with those that have come into the countries,
it is more about the quotidian of the country. In fact, many of
the emerging writers now have not known the moment of independence
of their countries - Chimamanda Adichie for instance. Whereas Chinua
Achebe, Wole Soyinka or Anita Desai all experienced the moment of
independence of their respective countries. But that journey is
changing and we’re moving on. We have writers who have not known
the moment of independence of their country and therefore that does
not figure so much in their writing. The experience of living in
their countries now is what dominates their writing.
:
Why do you say the Inner circle is not involved
in producing World Englishes Literature?
Dawson: Because beyond the Inner
circle it becomes literary in the sense that we start to talk about
voice. Although as I’ve just said, there isn’t this postcolonial
chain that necessarily binds all literature from the Outer and Expanding
Circles, but there is still this concept that binds them into being
literature written in varieties of English, whereas if you come
to look at the Inner circle, taking England as an example, we are
then into varieties of English indeed, written and spoken but the
‘voice’ is different…
:
You are familiar with the sort of English spoken
in the Ireland of a writer like Frank McCourt of Tis, for
instance, in terms of the culture, worldview, experience, and values;
it would be different from that spoken in London for instance…
Dawson: Certainly, but there are
two things I believe that can distinguish this from what I am talking
about. One, is that very often such language variety can be described
as dialects or accents or varieties of an English within England
or even sometimes can be described as Diaspora, like the voice of
Londonstani by Gautaum Malkani for example. This for me,
is an Inner-circle Diaspora variety of English, it is a British-Asian,
and if you want, West-London-Slough variety, so - for me at least,
you can always describe such language variety within the Inner circle
in terms of an accent or dialect or variety of Diaspora translations.
And two, the other thing is the sense of identity,
which I believe, is different from what you find in the Outer and
Expanding circles. And that is to do with proximity to the centre.
There is still this idea of a centre. And so a novel like Londonstani
by Gautaum Malkani is much closer to the centre, which is England
in this case, than say writing from the Outer and Expanding circles.
Now, I’m sure you’re thinking - but hang on a minute, there a
dichotomy: you talk about the Outer and Expanding circles not being
of postcolonialism any more and being something new - yes I
do, but there is still, when it comes down to identifying what is
Inner and what is Outer and Expanding, when it becomes a literary
voice, it’s there somewhere making a difference from the centre.
It is still not Inner circle in an ‘identity’ sense, and this is
inherently rooted in colonialism.
:
Have you read Melvyn Brag’s book, The Adventure
of English, he talked about English’s stint as a colonised language
under French. He talks about an anaemic language picking up registers
of French words, at the time when French was the court language
in England. In the same way that English would be a court - or palatial
- language in colonial territories. Under that period, you find
English picking up a series of registers from the French and growing
thereby but not losing its identity as such. If you look at it with
the breadth of history and see England now in the centre and in
a position to throw its language across borders, would you not think
that what is happening in other communities where English or Englishes
play a very dominant role and interact with local languages and
cultures to create different kinds of things sometimes difficult
to recognise in England, do you not see it as part of the same process?
Dawson: I think that the question
is how did those languages come in to contact with English? Was
it not more about choice? The languages came to England in a certain
way and in a very different way from how English went out to countries
like Nigeria and Kenya and…
:
No, the French at that time colonised England,
I was talking about back …
Dawson: …but it was a very particular
register that was used then wasn’t it, like you say, languages of
legality, palatial register, I just think that it is slightly different
from what has happened as English has gone out to other countries
and then those countries have made it their own, that is why I use
the word Englishes (in its plural) very often.
:
The point I was trying to make really is that
what you have defined as a new construct, which is ‘World Englishes
literature’ as a way of looking at the literary production of these
territories, how new is it, if it still excludes the central or
metropolitan language literature? Is it to prevent that literature
from swamping the ‘tertiary’ production, or is it because they are
intrinsically different, perhaps qualitatively, perhaps simply because
it is the core? Is there any essential difference really? What practical
value would it serve such literatures to redefine them not as postcolonial,
but as World Englishes Literatures?
Dawson: Well, I think in a sense
it does two things: it recognises the certain shift in identity
which I... a very simple way to put it, is that it captures those
generations of writers who have not know independence in their countries.
In that sense, they are ‘beyond’ postcolonial.
Secondly, it does something linguistically, it
recognises English in the plural and I believe that helps to redefine
how we see English in the world. For some years now, we have just
looked as English as a global language, which is pretty different
from a sense of variety of Englishes around the world. These Englishes
are now codified such as Hinglish - Indian English or Singlish -
Singaporean English, or English in the Philippines, and indeed Nigeria
or Kenya… I keep using those as the main examples but there are
others. Is it good enough to talk about a global English anymore?
I’m not saying that World Englishes is the only way to describe
this; I’m just saying that it is a possibility. It is a way of moving
along with the journey. The terminology, I feel, hasn’t up until
now really moved with the journey, and it needs to. The world is
changing - has changed - and so this is one that I offer. I wish
we could have more debate, I mean, the symposium in September is
about that, let’s talk about it. Let’s have a debate, what do you
think, what is happening in your country? I mean, this is a big
objective for the symposium.
We need to know what is happening on the ground
in a literary dimension, and as well as linguistically, they are
intertwined of course. This is the objective of the symposium in
September, to debate such questions as you’ve just put to me. World
Englishes is only, I believe, one way of addressing those two things:
redefining a sense of identity that is not postcolonial and secondly
understanding and defining the linguistic and this sense of Englishes
and codification.
:
Let’s talk about African Literature, our area
of particular interest. What has your engagement with it been like
so far?
Dawson: Interestingly that is
the area I am trying to understand and develop myself the most.
I am doing that through a project that involves anthologies. For
the last 10-12 months, I have been contacting people mainly through
emails in Cameroon, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa. Normally through
personal contacts from writing groups and asking people to send
the emails on. The idea of the project is to have a series of anthologies
for Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa and hopefully more
from other African countries. Short stories written in English.
Not translations and not Diaspora work. This is work from African
countries now, the contemporary, people living there and writing
from there. In my call for short stories, I asked for anything between
five and ten thousand word short stories - although I did say that
anything below 5000 so long as you can convince me that it is a
‘short, short’ story that is worthy too. We’re going to start with
Cameroon, so that is actually the first anthology that we’re working
on.
Now, the rationale behind all this is to pioneer
and get into a rather closed literary world, that’s because of the
canon as you mentioned earlier, to reach new writers and so I would
like really that these anthologies have writers the majority of
which no one has ever heard of. This is what I really wish for.
:
Are you achieving that?
Dawson: So far with the Cameroonian
one, yes. Of a dozen stories I will use, I have one or two writers
who are previously published, Ba'bila Mutia, and John Nkemngong
Nkengasong, but other than that, all my writers have never been
published before as far as I am aware. In my call for short stories,
I actually specified that I would prefer people who had never been
published before, unless perhaps in a journal or something….
:
So your experience with Cameroon has been positive.
Obviously, Cameroon is bilingual in the sense of English/French
use…
Dawson: Actually, this is why
we wanted to start with Cameroon; I am so pleased that my publisher
agreed because most of the literature from Cameroon has actually
been Francophone… I met a writer at a conference in Oxford a few
years back and it was curious because we were switching from French
to English and back again. This was John Nkengasong. He was part
of my inspiration. I had the idea before I met him, but he really
motivated me to get on with it. John has published two novels and
he is contributing to this anthology. I would like to get the Cameroon
book out by the end of the summer. And I would like to visit Cameroon
to research and write the introduction, because I want to do this
sensitively. I had this idea, which is really important; this book
is about the people and the literature not about my introduction,
or because I have a PhD. I just want people to understand the rationale
and the creativity behind it, that’s all; because I struggle with
that, time and time again - African or Indian writers, kind of,
paraded in the Western world. I struggle with that and I think that
this has also been the problem with our canon, or what has become
the canon, because although they are very worthy writers in many
ways, it doesn’t just stop there, there’s more out there, much more
to read. And as an example of that, the English side of Cameroon
often goes unnoticed.
:
You are doing the Cameroonian anthology first;
you do also have the Ugandan anthology in the making?
Dawson: Now, this is interesting
because it seems that feminine writing - whatever feminine writing
is, we call it writing predominantly by female authors but I don’t
really know what we mean by feminine writing - is quite strong in
Uganda…
:
Yes, they have this FEMRITE, it’s this hotbed
of creative talent…
Dawson: Absolutely, so that was
fascinating,
:
So they’re dominating your anthology are they?
Dawson: Yes, female authors are,
although I have some…
:
Token men? Probably have to set up an association
for them…
Dawson: (laughs) MANRITE… so that’s
interesting in itself. Now the problem with that is that a lot of
the writers have published before. But it was a bit of a make-or-break,
I mean it still hangs a little in the balance, in that if I want
that anthology to go forward, I have to work with those who how
have published before, however all the stories are new.
And then, Kenya, I have an equal amount of male
and female authors. Kenya… there’s a little story there because
in my Read Around series, the second book of the series was
the first story that I came across that inspired me to create educational
material for teaching World Englishes in UK schools. And this short
story is called Kamau’s Finish by Muthoni Muchemi (Muthoni
Garland) The last time I saw her was in October 2007. She mailed
me Tracking the Scent of my Mother (collected in Jungfrau
& other Stories) and a copy of Kwani? I am hoping to
see her soon and maybe work with her in Kenya on a workshop. So
her story, Kamau’s Finish in Read Around 2, is the
one I piloted in schools here in the UK. That led me to put out
a call for stories from Kenyan authors, but I haven’t got as many
as I would like from Kenya. But because I have been busy with the
other anthologies, realistically it’s not going to be until next
early year before we get to Kenya on our publishing schedule, by
which time I’d like to think that I would be able to get out to
Kenya and get some more writers on board.
South Africa is the final one. I don’t know what
has happened to South Africa. I was really looking forward to being…
kind of… overwhelmed by stories from South Africa and it hasn’t
happened. So obviously I haven’t tapped into what I believe are
quite strong writers in South Africa. There seems to be quite a
lot going on in South Africa, with different writers and in different
communities. I have tried some Radio stations… again, because it
is later on in the schedule I just trying to concentrate on the
first two anthologies just now.
I’d love to do an anthology for Nigeria, I don’t
know when we can do that, but an anthology for Nigeria would be
great.
:
What is your publishing plan in terms of number
of anthologies and your programme?
Dawson: CCC Press would get the
final shout on that, but in my own little world, I would like to
see how the Cameroon and Ugandan anthologies go and then I’d love
to have a series that matches Africa in other areas of the world….
The voices in the different regions of India are very different
from Punjab to Kerala… Malaysia… Singapore… in my utopia, that’s
what I’d like to see… a World Englishes Literature series that spans
literally the globe.
:
So you consider Africa as basically the start?
Dawson: The start, and that’s
because of contacts mainly.
:
Do you see your series growing beyond the short
story form and looking at other literary forms, like long fiction…?
Dawson: And Drama also, drama
in Cameroon seems to be popular… but essentially, I would like the
country to tell me actually, rather than me telling the country
what I would like to have. I think the short story is generally
quite, from a publishing perspective, easier to manage than say,
the novel, but after that I’d like to learn from the writers rather
than me dictating what should be coming from them - or what forms
or genres to publish. For example, I have a contact in Cameroon
who writes poetry and that could open a door to a new book of poetry
:
What about the area of marketing. What is your
market? Are you selling to the West, are you selling to Africa?
Are you selling to the countries that produce the books? What is
your strategy?
Dawson: I would love to sell to
the countries that produce the literature. Again, this is a little
out of my remit as series editor, but I would hope that you would
have this conversation with my publisher CCC Press, because they
are very much interested in that too. We think in the same way when
it comes to the ethos behind it. We would like to make it accessible
financially, but also in its form. What I mean by that it is that
not necessary to have these things in book form; we could have it
in pamphlet form or journal form or newspaper form or radio form
or whatever works for those countries where the writers have submitted
from.
:
What about the area of actually selling the
stories to the West… because there is something that happens when
writing comes out and it is not effectively marketed … the difference
between some of the most important book that come out and no one
knows about, and the African Writers Series for instance that really
went down the grassroots and it was picked up by schools to inspire
new generations of writers… so do you have a strategy to mainstream
yourself and your anthology. Because a successful book opens the
way, if you had a successful Cameroonian anthology then definitely
you’d have other ones.
Dawson: But how far are you prepared
to bend for a Western audience? Because this is the problem, I feel
that you will end up with. If you are going to take the roots literature
out to the West… do you twist it, and form it, and ask the writers
to write a certain way about certain things? … or do you stick to
what you believe and just wait for the West to get their head around
it? The latter I say - but that’s my own slightly sentimental, utopian,
ideal on what I’d like come up with.
What made the AWS successful? Was it the choice
of the stories, was it luck, was it how it was marketed? My own
experience from the educational context is that people are very
reluctant to teach literature from different countries in the mainstream
because they are too tied up in our PC-consciousness. Nobody knows
what they can say and what they can’t say, they don’t want to do
the accent or read the variety out loud. Read Around goes
some way to dealing with that: the CD versions of the stories are
read out by people reading the Englishes of the stories. A Kenyan
reads the Kenyan story, the story from India is read in Indian English.
And that gets over the problem of this fright, which stops the literature
from being taught in schools. There’s an absolute gap in resources
and materials in secondary schools because nothing’s happened for
years… Nobody knows what to do or dares do it. I’ve tried to work
out what to do and dared to do it. I hope it works.
:
That’s a major step forward. Your strategy
addresses the problem by giving Teachers the tools they can use.
There is probably a lot of expectation on the teachers,
Dawson: Well the other issue here
is that many of the texts in the Read Around series are representative
of the Diaspora here… so you can teach an Indian text… but here
we have British-Indian kids, British-Pakistani kids, British-Jamaican,
British-Nigerian - so you would think that that would be more of
a reason to teach literature from different cultures and traditions…But
on the other hand I would suggest that it is mainly the mono-ethnic
schools that need the Read Around series more than anyone.
I will not get on my soapbox about the National Curriculum stipulation,
but it is poor: all it reads is, literature from different cultures
and traditions - which includes the American literary tradition
you know (!) you could teach Steinbeck and tick the box. It’s not
good enough. If the curriculum were doing things properly, it would
define what it means it means by ‘Literature from different cultures
and traditions’. It would make way for Diaspora literature - and
maybe even work in translation.
:
It would then exclude the Inner circle, right?
Dawson: Well, the Inner circle
is provided for under a different National Curriculum stipulation,
which encourages study of English variations
in written standard English and how it differs from standard and
non-standard spoken language.
What I’m talking about is the stipulation
that applies to literature from other parts of the world.
It is applicable to multi-cultural schools in the
inner cities as much as it is to ‘white’ schools, indeed white schools
need it more - positive representation of other cultures. Actually
that is another thing I have tried to do with the Read Around
series, and in a way with the anthologies: please no more writing
about poverty, corruption, women’s rights issues, please let’s just
move on! Is that all we think about Africa? - Oh and female circumcision!
It needs a complete overhaul, I promised not to get on my soapbox
but I’m there now!
:
What about the fact that people have to write
about what is pressing to them? Do you exercise that editorial judgement
in terms of what you select for your anthologies and for your Read
Around series?
Dawson: It’s a very big question…
I’ll start with the Read Around series, that’s probably simpler
to answer. These stories have to be about twenty minutes long when
they are read out aloud, and they have to be suitable for secondary
school pupils, and they are graded from years 7 to 11; the stories
for years 10 and 11 are a little more challenging thematically and
morally as they deal with more difficult situations. But it is hard
to find young people’s World Englishes literature, and I hope if
I get a chance to go to Kenya, this is one of the things we can
develop through a workshop: short stories for young people as a
niche in World Englishes literature.
:
Are you talking about published work or new
stories? What are you having difficulty finding?
Dawson: Published work, for the
Read Around Series. And that was quite difficult to find
because the themes were either too junior or too adult. There seems
to be a gap at the adolescent level. The thing about the Read
Around is that they had to be World Englishes, I promised myself
that. They couldn’t be Diaspora and they couldn’t be work in translation.
I have three stories actually from Africa, three out of the five
in the Read Around Series. Book 1 is a story from Northern
India, Book 2 is from Kenya, Book 3 is Bessie Head’s South African
story, Read Around 4 is Agnes Sam’s story from the Indian
community in Durban. The fifth one is Malaysian. So I’d already
helped myself to three stories from Africa. But I think there is
scope to do a Read Around just for Africa actually!
With regards to the anthology, you don’t have as
much control over what you put in it. You put out a call and are
lucky to see what you get back. I am a linguist as well by qualification
so the stylistic aspect is quite important to me - I don’t want
to go into the definition of what is good writing, but we all know
when we read something if it talks to you, if you engage with it,
and of course it is not just read by me it is read by others too.
So I did have that in mind - stylistically: what is good, and the
Creative too: how did it talk to me. And yes theme too, new themes,
not poverty, not corruption, not female, human rights... and not
AIDS, although there is an excellent story about going for a HIV
Test in the Cameroon anthology and it will be included. There is
always this idea of positive representation in my mind. If a story
is positively representing a people and culture and going against
what has been the prevailing orthodoxy of the negative kind of African
issues then that talks to me too, so I think that is part of my
editorial commitment.
:
Of course, Things Fall Apart as a novel
is not 100% positive in terms of representation, but tells an engaging
story that includes the reality of the situation.
Dawson: Exactly, it is a mirror
reflection of what was happening. But I do feel that the mirror
reflection of what is happening now, as opposed to what is represented
in Achebe is different and maybe more positive.
:
Now, in terms of your choice of short story
anthologies… that would not be a traditional editor or publisher’s
first choice. In the West, you could say that the short stories
won’t sell and it is not the right commercial decision - why did
you choose to go for short stories as opposed to looking for good
novels.
Dawson: We’ve been approached
by people with novels to be honest, but we’ve gone on short stories
because of the passion and the reason for doing this: to get new
voices out. And if we can publish a book where we can showcase ten
new authors of short stories, let’s do that instead of concentrating
on one. We are just testing the market. This is very new to me,
for the company, and in terms of literary production after the Heinemann
African Writers Series. So we are testing the waters and
seeing, not making too many big decisions, and that I believe allows
you to listen to the people giving you the writing. But if you go
in with such a very fixed plan of what you want, that is kind of
defeating the object.
:
What do you want to achieve with your September
Symposium on World Englishes Literature?
Dawson: I’d like to create a forum
for people to come and have a debate around what I have called World
Englishes Literature - however I am interested to redefine and rename
it as whatever it may be - but essentially to talk about whatever
this ‘new wave’ is, this thing that is not Achebe, that is not Desai,
which is new in terms of people publishing who have not known the
moment of independence of their country, whatever this thing is,
that we have spent an hour talking about, that is what I want people
from different countries to come and tell each other about. This
is a symposium in that sense: let’s assemble and talk to each other.
Let’s see if the writers from Kenya have some kind of trends at
whatever level with the writers from India. Let’s have a debate
about that. That’s really what I’d like to happen, instead of pretending
to know it already.
:
Whom do you expect at the Symposium? Will there
be more linguistic people or more literary people?
Dawson: From the responses to
the call for papers that we’ve received so far, it does seem to
be more literary people. The call does mention literary frameworks
in there, the issue of ‘rethinking the canon’. We encourage people
to bring along non-canonical work.
:
It should be an interesting one, particularly
as we will have that mix with the discussions from the Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart Conference at the same venue, on the same
weekend.
Dawson: Yes, that will be great.
I really do believe in listening to people, instead of just going
in with what you think all the time, because very often without
knowing it you are representing the culture and the education, which
you’ve known and in which you’ve been brought up. Sometimes without
knowing it you are prejudiced against other literatures and peoples.
You don’t mean it, but it happens.
:
Who are the African writers whose works have
most affected you?
Dawson: I have enjoyed Burma
Boy, Measuring Time, and Nervous Conditions, though
not so much The Book of Not. I also really enjoyed read Ngozi
Adichie’s first book, Purple Hibiscus. I know that you’d
say this doesn’t make sense… I’ve just spent an hour talking about
all the things that are new, and in many ways, Adichie’s book is
very old school, she even recognises the parallels with Achebe and
Things Fall Apart herself in interviews, but I like
the style, the linguistic style appeals to me - the blending and
the code switching between languages - but I like the story as a
whole too. So although it was old school in many ways, it was new
in others and above all it was well done. I didn’t enjoy Half
of a Yellow Sun as much though. And keeping with the Nigerian
thing - I very much enjoyed reading 26a by Diana Evans, who
is British-Nigerian. Diaspora to me, not World Englishes. I like
that book because it challenged an awful lot about what is supposed
to be British-Nigerian literature or what is multi-cultural
here in Britain. It was very… British and urban and all those things
in many ways and yet it was also Nigerian. Yet, it wasn’t really
about Nigeria; it was more about twins and the relationship between
these two girls so I liked that mixture, it did something different.
I love short stories as well - there’s a bit of selfishness in the
anthologies because I really do enjoy the short story as a form.
I do really enjoy reading anthologies, such as the Caine prize collection,
The Obituary Tango and African Love Stories. My top
short stories are Bessie Head’s The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses,
Herman Charles Bosman’s Starlight on the Veld, Agnes Sam’s
Jesus Is Indian, and Pravasan Pillay’s Green Apples. And
I enjoyed the novel by the Libyan writer, Hisham Mater’s In the
Country of men.
:
Where does Ben Okri register for you?
Dawson: There’s a lot to read.
I tend to read World Englishes Literature above and beyond Diaspora
and literature in translation. Although I’m not true to that at
the moment, I’m reading the Egyptian, Mahfouz now, the first of
his Cairo Trilogy, Palace Walk. My interest with the Arab
world is always there. I’ve got a wonderful anthology of short stories
from Palestine A Land of Stone and Thyme, but I tend to remain
with World Englishes literature generally. Ben Okri for me really
is Diaspora. It tends to be a name that is bandied around a bit
and that seems to say to me, ‘I’ll come back to you, I’m not in
a rush to read you, let me go and see what is new’.
:
In your reading of Arab and North African literature,
do you have a sense that this is disconnected from the rest of African
literature by culture, subject and other features?
Dawson: The simple answer to that
is yes, but I think that’s been because of my own experience of
the Arab world, as you know I’ve lived in Qatar, I’ve travelled
quite a bit in the Arab world, I was in Iraq last year and two years
previously - in the Kurdish area. I am very interested in what the
Middle East is, its identity - I speak some Arabic; and although
I have been to North Africa - Morocco, Tunisia - I recognise that
these are quite different from the Gulf, or Iraq or Syria in geography,
culture, people, they are still quite different from Iraq… and although
I’ve read stories from East Africa which have an Islamic tradition,
they feel different from what I read from the Arab world. They are
essentially African and of course the cusp of that is any writing
from Nubia, which has this fusion of this Arab North African identity
and this very black African identity. I love the music from Nubia
as well. But I can’t help but feel it when I read, I can see the
difference. What do you think about that?
:
Our debut edition carried an article, The
Arabization of Sudan, by Mohamed J.A. Hashim. It comments on
an aspirational sentiment in Arabized Africa and the tendency to
identify with the Middle East as opposed to the Black Africa - perhaps,
because of the culture, religion or wealth; so there’s that tendency
to deny the African part of the heritage, no matter what the colour,
racial, geographical or national reality is. Tayeb Saleh’s Season
of Migration to the North is a book that balances the twin heritage
of both cultures, not crusading for a religion or a culture. Basically
it tells a good story. A little like The Yacoubian Building.
Dawson: That book didn’t do anything
extraordinary I thought, though, the tradition is different with
Arab literature, it’s very much about characterisation rather than
plot. You see that sometimes when you read World Englishes literature,
for example there is a transfer of the Indian genre and short story
form onto the use of English so you very much get one or two characters,
there will be some sort of climax in the story and it would often
finish ‘flat’ in the eyes of a Western critic; it’s not ‘flat’,
it’s just ‘different’. I am just thinking about the Mahfouz that
I am reading at the moment… it is beautiful, very wordy, I can hear
the Arabic almost, how it would sound, the attention to detail on
person and street. :
Aime Cesaire has just passed on. Any thoughts? Dawson:
His Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal will remain
a seminal text in colonial studies. He is to be remembered for his
drive and motivation when it came to civic matters as well as his
relentless enthusiasm for the portrayal of Martinican identity.
Amongst many memorable moments of his life, Cesaire will be remembered
latterly, in 2005, for his stance against the French government's
law to include in educational material 'positive' representations
of French colonisation in North Africa.
:
Thanks for the time, Emma. |
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