Into the Bush of Ghosts: Specters of the Slave Trade in West African Fiction

Despite critical assertions that West Africa has experienced an "amnesia" regarding the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its effects, this reading of the West African literary canon provides previously unconsidered insight into the way African authors explore the traumatic history of the slave trade on Africa's shores. The central argument is that even when texts ostensibly depict some later period or concern, West African writers can hardly avoid the pervasive presence of the slave trade in the memory of the region. This article traces the way in which Amos Tutuola, in particular, imbues the landscape of his novel with the memory of the trade, representing the way in which the memory of the trade continues to haunt the collective psyche of West Africa. As a figure of that memory, the protagonist in the novel is both physically captured and enslaved within the bush. For Tutuola, the bush becomes a space of Freudian traumatic repetition from which the protagonist can hardly escape.