In this ground-breaking work on folkloric forms in narratives by writers of African descent, Chiji Akoma notes the diverse racial identities, the histories, and the experiences that have helped shape Black identities over space and time. Right from the outset he hints at the danger of using an American yardstick to assess what constitutes good literary art.
The introduction observes that diasporic Black writers have been romantically involved with continental Africa largely through oral verbal arts, a trend that evolved out of their historical past where the oral tradition was kept alive in memory and passed on via the oral medium. Those traditions of old have been preserved through a constant imitation and re-creation, a dynamic process through which the ways of the group are kept alive but adapted to meet its sensibilities and current needs; and so African writing traditions should be viewed from both sides of the Atlantic.
Akoma examines the works of four Black novelists from the Diaspora, and asserts that their works do not just contain folklore materials; they are African narrative folklore that utilizes both oral and written stylistic elements. Roy Heath’s novels move along both vertical and horizontal axes, blending Guyanese and African heritages over space and time, and questioning how factual their mythic elements are. Guyanese mythic characters are cited to illustrate folk beliefs similar to those in most African traditions. Wilson Harris traces the dilemma of the artist in using language to effectively capture reality, that sometimes intangible state of existence. The Caribbean is a melting pot of Amerindian, Asian, European, and African cultures, and as such should be viewed in this multicultural perspective. Wilson’s narratives span across space and time, bringing his readers face to face with the Greek seer Tiresias, Ulysses, Odysseus, and Haitian voodoo (a practice that has its roots in Yoruba mythology). Enchantment, to him, presents a useful device via which old archetypes can be interpreted. The cosmology of the dead, the living, and the yet-to-be-born are intricately related.
Also cited is 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Toni Morrison, whose writings have broadly focused on the life of a minority Black in a dominant White American society, and on the affairs of exploited women. Akoma observes that Toni Morrison depicts memory as the folkloric sign through which Black experience is presented. The fourth writer, Jean Toomer, wrote during a period when White ethnography tended to look for the exotic other, and though he decries labels based on skin color or race, many of his writings celebrate Black cultural consciousness. His artistic style invokes a multidisciplinary approach to literature where the African American oral aesthetic blends with the written tradition.
This book exemplifies how texts--verbal, electronic, and oral--complement each other in their attempt at depicting the ways of humankind. Folklore may refashion the community’s experiences, but it does not resist tradition. Even so, tradition is not a static, anti-change phenomenon. I agree with Akoma that a performative approach to criticism of Black texts is vital to achieving a viable Black aesthetic, an approach that brings both written and oral forms together. This book is a must-read.
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[Review length: 517 words • Review posted on May 22, 2008]