The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature (review)

I assume that Cambridge University Press had good practical reasons for putting the Caribbean together with the entire African continent in these two large and expensive volumes. The press puts a nice spin on this setup in their blurb on the back cover: "The book provides an account of the entire body of productions that can be considered to comprise the field of African literature, defined both by imaginative expression in Africa itself and by the black diaspora." That would work as a justification if the black diaspora were confined to the Caribbean, and if the Caribbean did not have, especially in recent years, a keen interest in its own hemisphere. In the preface, the editors, Abiola Irele and Simon Gikandi, do a far better job of explaining what could (wrongly) seem to be an arbitrary juxtapostion: "We have endeavored in the present work to provide an account of the entire body of productions that can be considered to comprise this broad field as defined both by imaginative expression in Africa itself, and aspects of the continuum as represented by literature in the Caribbean and to some extent in North America." (xiv) The latter is an allusion to Irele's own article on "The Harlem Renaissance and the Négritude Movement," which rightly shows Haiti to be the fulcrum between the former and the latter. Yet Irele's and Maureen Warner-Lewis's "The Oral Tradition in the African Diaspora" are the only articles whose express purpose is to link the hemispheres. The association of the Caribbean with Africa needs no justification: We know where it came from. Yet in a comprehensive project such as this, one might have hoped for more attention to the question of linkages. There is one obvious term that is lacking in their conception: the Atlantic.

That being said, the editors and authors of The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature have created a near marvel out of the structure that was given to them. The overall design, visible in the table of contents, shows creativity, insight, and flexibility. The editors have managed to reflect the various divisions of time and space that cannot be ignored, while at the same time offering ways to think through those boundaries. Thus the traditional divisions of African studies—North African and sub-Saharan African; precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods; Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone zones; orality and literacy—are amply exposed and analyzed here. The majority of the articles are devoted to straightforward time-and-place subjects: "Arab and Berber Oral Traditions in North Africa" by Sabra Webber; "Gikuyu Literature: Development from Early Christian Writings to Ngũgĩ's Later Novels" by Ann Biersteker; "Postcolonial Caribbean Identities" by Michael Dash. Yet in their most creative gestures, the editors assigned (or perhaps their contributors volunteered) topics that cut across these boundaries and meditate on what the editors call "convergences" (xviii): "Africa and the European Renaissance" by Sylvie Kandé; "The Literature of Slavery and Abolition" by Moira Ferguson; "The Formative Journals and Institutions" by Milton Krieger; and Simon Gikandi's comparative study "African Literature and the Colonial Factor." Most authors have found a way, in the space that was given to them, to offer, as Ousseina Alidou puts it, a "critical appraisal" if not a "comprehensive study" (354).

It is not always clear, in the preparation of volumes such as these, where the proper balance lies between literature and scholarship: How much should the authors focus on literature itself and how much on the preoccupations and squabbles of their own profession? With few exceptions, the authors here have struck a happy medium, showing the reader how evolving scholarly debates have shed different kinds of light on the substance of literature. A history such as this one is no place for a settling of accounts or a clarification of one's own previous work; luckily such moments are rare.

One could quibble about the proportions of some entries...