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[88] Chapter Four Anglophone Cameroon Literature: A Brief Overview In this chapter I attempt to present an overview of Anglophone Cameroon literature from 1959 to the present by briefly analyzing selected texts. These texts have been selected because of their historical importance to Anglophone Cameroon/African literature, their thematic/stylistic concerns which signify a literary trend and/or their intrinsic worth as examples of engaging literature worthy of wider dissemination. I have utilized postcolonial theory as a frame for these analyses since it allows the reader to experience the texts and their writers within their proper contexts. The hallmark of African literature lies in the social role of the African writer. This critical stance has been espoused by several African critics including, Achebe (1975), Soyinka (1976) and Amuta (1986). As the authors of the Empire Writes Back explain, “this insistence on the social role of the African artist and the denial of the European preoccupation with individual experience has been one of the most distinctive features in the assertion of a unique African aesthetic” (125). Consequently there is a vital link between African literature and the society that produced it. As a result, a proper understanding of Anglophone Cameroon literature must be predicated on an analysis of its specific socio-historical determinants. A careful analysis of the corpus of Anglophone Cameroon literature today reveals three broad phases. In suggesting these demarcations, I am of course conscious of the limitations of an automatic “stagist” theory for a cultural product as polemical, complicated and diffuse as literature. Nonetheless, it is necessary even if only as an organiazational tool. The First Phase: A clash of Cultures The first phase covers the period from 1959 to about 1984. In the Republic of Cameroon, this period begins shortly before “the end” of colonialism to the rise of Paul Biya as the second president of Cameroon. The writers during this period like their counter parts elsewhere in Africa, critique the othering of formerly colonized people in texts written by the colonizers. To counteract this marginalization, and as a vital part of the process of decolonization, these texts seek to give voice to the "subaltern' in [89] order to expose the misrepresentation and negativization so rampant in colonial writings. Consequently one of the major preoccupation with texts of this period is a representation of the conflicts and tensions resulting from changes introduced by colonial rule and a new Christian world view. During this period the master genre was poetry, followed by the short story, yet most of these were published randomly in magazines and newspapers, as seen in the last chapter. Thus, the major texts of this period are Maimo’s Sov-Mbang the Soothsayer, Jedida Asheri’s Promise, Kenjo Jumbam’s The White Man of God, Ngonwikuo’s Taboo Love, and Nsanda Eba’s The Good Foot. Asong’s novels, such as A Stranger in his Homeland, Crown of Thorns, and No Way to Die, fall in this first phase because they were actually written in the 1970s although they were published twenty years later. Crown of Thorns is set in the late sixties and early seventies in the Anglophone part of Cameroon, which was a British trust and mandate territory. The British believed in a system of indirect rule; hence they ruled the local population through the Native Administration (N.A.) and a House of Chiefs. As the narrator explains: The coming of the missionaries was not the people’s worry; nevertheless, they found that fact alone unbearable. The Government too had arrived. Small Monje needed a District Officer to replace the defunct N. A. Office, the administrative body that had governed the tribes for generations. It was merely a more elevated title for the Council of Elders (65). However, after Anglophone Cameroon gained independence by joining French Cameroon, the new nation-state dominated by Francophone Cameroon adopted a system of direct control and the Native Administration was not only replaced by a D.O., but the House of Chiefs was dissolved. The territory was divided into administrative units with a government-appointed official responsible for each unit. The chiefdoms now came under government control. Consequently communities found themselves answering not only to government officials that knew nothing about their customs and traditions, but to remnants of French colonialism practiced by francophone officials who were often arrogant in dealing with the local population, leading to a breakdown in communication between the administration and the [3.141.31.209] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 12:05...

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