Knowledge Is More Than Mere Words: A Critical Introduction to Sierra Leonean Literature (review)

In Knowledge Is More Than Mere Words: A Critical Introduction to Sierra Leonean Literature, editors Eustace Palmer and Abioseh Michael Porter have put together an impressive introduction to Sierra Leonean literature. Bringing together essays by preeminent critics, the volume breaks new scholarly ground in its standing as the first comprehensive critical introduction to Sierra Leonean literature. Knowledge Is More Than Mere Words is divided into four respective sections: “Poetry,” “Drama,” “The Novel and the Short Story,” and “Folklore and Non-conventional Modes.” While the nine contributing scholars utilize a variety of critical approaches, each approach is nevertheless in keeping with Palmer’s introductory assertion that “Sierra Leonean literature is steeped in the history, culture, economic situation, and even geography of the country” (1).

The poetry section includes a chapter by Palmer that examines the three volumes of poetry by Sierra Leonean poet and novelist Syl Cheney-Coker. Examining selections from Concerto for Exile, The Graveyard Also Has Teeth, and The Blood in the Desert’s Eyes, Palmer is able to establish Cheney-Coker as not only a significant African poet, but a world citizen and global poet as well. Ernest Cole’s contribution to the drama section includes an examination of Lemuel Johnson’s Highlife for Caliban. Cole astutely characterizes Johnson’s work as “a brilliant attempt by a poet to unravel . . . the state of dilapidation in his homeland and to put forward the need for reform” (83).

Palmer also makes two chapter contributions to the drama section where he offers a critical analysis of Sarif Easmon’s plays Dear Parent and Ogre and The New Patriot. Palmer asserts that Easmon’s plays reflect an “honest exploration of complex issues” that have impacted the history and development of Sierra Leone: “Corruption, mismanagement, class-consciousness, and tribalism are severely denounced” (106). Palmer, in his second contribution to the drama section, highlights the rise of vernacular drama produced in the Krio lingua franca of Sierra Leone after independence in 1961. He concludes that postindependence dramatists transformed the colonial elitist form of pre-independence drama into a form that could “reach the people in general and sensitize them to the need for change in African society” (135). The drama section also includes Mohamed Kamara’s analysis of Amadu Maddy’s socially and culturally important plays, and a chapter by Iyunolu Osagie that includes an intriguing interview with the late dramatist Tonie French—an important female African writer who offers a vitally important and essential female voice in a patriarchal African culture that often overlooks women.

The section on the novel consists of analyses by Patrick Bernard of Cheney-Coker’s The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, Patrick Muana of Yulisa Amaddy’s No Past, No Present, No Future, as well as Palmer of Easmon’s The Burnt-out Marriage and The Feud and Other Stories. Significantly included in the volume are Sheikh Umarr Kamarah’s analyses of five new writers whose works were produced abroad from 1995 to 2001. Kamarah notes, “These new voices tell not so new stories in different and new tones, as well as new stories that deserve attention” (201). These new writers of the Sierra Leone Diaspora are: Alasan Mansaray (A Haunting Heritage: An African Saga in America) and Osman Sankoh (Hybrid Eyes: An African in Europe), both of whom focus upon the respective immigrant experiences in the United States and Germany, and the hopes, dreams, and struggles it entails; while Tibbie Kposowa (The Forests are No Longer Green) and J. Sorie Conteh (The Diamonds) respectively concentrate upon subjects of environmentalism and the diamond boom period; and finally, Sheikh Gibril Kamara (The Spirit of Bedenia) deals with the coexistence of Christianity and Islam in Sierra Leonean culture.

A chapter by Newtona Johnson, within the section on the novel, also explores the question of Diaspora literature of Sierra Leone in the West. Through Hannah Khoury...