Meditations on African Literature (review)

Dubem Okafor's recent anthology, comprised of thirteen essays, might well be subtitled "Revisiting Critical Debates" or "Continued Interrogations," as this volume extends an engagement with various themes central to African literary scholarship broached over the last several decades. This collection not only makes the case for the continued canonization of this literature but, even more, interrogates the issues that (continue to) plague the institutionalization of African literary production: questions of language, audience, classification, genre, and interpretation emerge as thematic strands running through clusters of essays. Reading over these essays, we are assured of the liveliness that still accompanies the defining disciplinary debates.

The majority of contributors reaffirm the social and political role of the writer, and many of the essays touch upon the relationship between literary or scholarly production and recent patterns in migration. But it is their variety of approaches and conclusions that defines much of Meditations' character. For example, Okafor's argument against "nativist surges of linguistic subnationalisms" (4) sits alongside Wole Ogundele's skepticism of Europhonic affinities. And whereas both these preceding essays examine culture in the service of politics, Isidore Okpewho intriguingly underscores the cultural repercussions of political turmoil in many Commonwealth countries that motivates an exodus of indigenous literary talent. Also included is an updated reprise of Bernth Lindfors's initial 1985 quantitative analysis of canonical African literature. The collection additionally features three essays on Chinua Achebe, two discussions about performance/theater, and several pieces that take up gender and morality. Meditations closes with a remarkable essay by Biodun Jeyifo, which at once graciously honors Emanuel Obiechina—to whom this volume is dedicated—and challenges his phobia of postmodernism. In short, the judicious placement of eclectic and occasionally incommensurable essays generates a charged hum of productive tension that, to my mind, constitutes the collection's greatest strength. To use the terms of the language debate, this book offers us a "cacophonous polyglossia" (9) that ultimately reflects "a creative and enabling heterogeny" (x).

This multiplicity of perspectives, it is worth mentioning, may leave some readers desiring even more diversity. In particular, despite the implied inclusivity of the title, this anthology remains, for the most part, regionally specific. With the exception of Peter Nazareth's treatment of Kenyan writer Grace Ogot and an essay on Caribbean theatrical representations of Africa by Osita Okagbue, Meditations' scope is largely restricted to West African literature. Additionally, the three essays that take up the role of women in African societies and literatures are male-authored (as indeed are all the essays) and offer significant contributions in their own right; but collectively, they function more as a guarded response to feminist/womanist criticism (or an adaptation thereof) than as an endorsement. Ultimately, the editor's acknowledgment of the all-male cast does not negate the absence of an unmitigated feminist/womanist perspective that would establish, in this realm, the kind of productive tension this volume otherwise admirably accomplishes.