WHAT ARE POSTIVE LITERARY LESSONS FOR AN AFRICAN WRITER FROM ALICE MUNRO? Alexander K Opicho (Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo) In his Consiencism, Kwame Nkrumah argued for both the positive lessons and negative lessons. Every situation has both the positive and negative lesson. Africa both in Diaspora and at home did not win any category of Nobel Prize for the year 2013. This was a fateful experience at continental level. Event the much anticipated literature prize was not won. It went to Canada in the North America. But like Nkrumah; what are the positive lessons of this experience? At most, the positive literary lessons. Of course they cannot miss. Let us have a look. Just like Achebe, Ngugi, Ba, Arma,Nwapa ,La Guma, J M Coatze , Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos alias Pepetela and very many other African writers, Alice Munro the 2013 Nobel literature laureate was also born in the mid of the last century .She was born humbly on the 10th of July, 1931 in Wingham. Her birth place the Wingham is redolent of European imperialism as it is found in the French Canadian province of Ontario. This is the same manner most of the African writers were born under diverse European colonial heritage .In a similar tune her mother was a teacher, a social position that imply economic humility both in capitalist and colonized societies .Her father was a fox farmer not different from Achebe’s father who was a church leader and palm wine farmer. After finishing high school, she went the same way Ngugi, Soyinka, Achebe, Mphalele and Meja Mwangi went. She similarly began studying journalism and English at the University of Western Ontario. This is also the same University course Nonviolet Bulawayo of Zimbabwe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche of Nigeria have done in the Americas. But peculiar enough Munro broke off her university studies when she got married mid way in 1951. Thus she is a writer without a formal university degree. Her literary excellence is an outcome of curiosity, passion and informal discipline. But not out of an obvious dint of commercial industriousness in the name of working hard for a university degree. This is a confirmation to the fallacy in the conventional burgeosie assumptions around the world that one cannot write scholarly enough without having had a university degree. Writing is an art and a passion which cannot be achieved through selfish and capitalistic appetites. It has to be taken first as a selfless service to humanity. Out of such internal dispositions both graduates and not graduates can write as long as linguistic Darwinism is not part of the game. Any contrary to this may be burgeosie wisdom which Karl Marx branded as being geniuses in Burgeosie stupidity. Sembene Ousmane, Amos Tutuola and Richard Wright regardless of their informal education which left them without a university degree went against this overtures of Burgeosie conventionality to carry their heads above the tumultuous ocean of literary and cultural discrimination to write God’s Bits of Wood, Palm Wine Drinkard and White Man Listen respectively. Money and poverty are the usual threats to an African writer. They were also a threat to Munro. This is why she collaborated with her husband to settle in Victoria, British Columbia, where they both as a couple opened a bookstore. The same approach to life which Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye exactly took with her Husband to settle in Nairobi. Ngugi was not alone in his youthful dream as a student at Makerere Univeristy to approach Achebe with a rough copy of Weep not Child, by that time entitled as Jomo Kenyatta the Black Messiah During the African International conference on literature.Munro was also concurrently writing as a teen and destroying the manuscripts because of self-doubt. She started writing stories in her teens. But she managed to publish her first book-length work in 1968. Ngugi had published Weep not Child a year, earlier but this is the same year in which Achebe Published Anti-Hills of the Savannah and Soyinka the Interpreters. Munro published Dance of the Happy Shades this same year. The book was received with considerable attention in Canada. However earlier on she had begun publishing in various magazines from the beginning of the 1950s. This brand of literature in which a writer is published in the newspapers is known as Literary Journalism. The likes of Evans Mwangi, Peter Oduor and Phillip Ochieng in Kenya are in the literary realm of journalistic literature. This is where Both Achebe, Ngugi and Munro began. In 1971 she published a collection of stories entitled Lives of Girls and Women, which critics have described as a Bildungsroman. The same time or thereabouts that Achebe published Girls at War and Be Aware Soul Brother the two books which were both criticized as pro Biafra. Many African writers have been forced into a creative mindset to believe that writing is about a novel. That unless you write a novel like Things fall Apart and Efuru then you are not a writer. However the truth is in opposition to such notions. When we use Munro as our literary bench-mark you will notice that she is primarily known for her short stories that she has published as many collections over the years. Her works of short stories include: Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), Runaway (2004), The View from Castle Rock (2006) and Too Much Happiness (2009). The collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) which became the basis of the film Away from Her from 2006, directed by Sarah Polley. Her most recent collection is Dear Life (2012).This style of writing has made Munro to be admired in America and Canada the same way Anton Chekhov is admired in Europe. But in contrast, where is an African short story writer part from Achebe and Ngugi in their Morning Yet of Creation Day and Home Coming respectively? A slightly controversial fact is that an African writer, artist, environmentalist, peacemaker or politician must aspire beyond the Nobel Prize. Africans in their capacity must look for higher source of actualization other than the Nobel reward. Just like Le Duc Tho who had a higher pegging for his inner consciousness chose to reject the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 because of the western hypocrisy in relation to the then-current situation in Vietnam. Similarly Jean-Paul Sartre the French communist, intellectual and active revolutionary who was awarded the Nobel literary accolade in 1964 had to simply reject it and all the public honors because of his socialist self awareness. But this is purely a guestion of personal and individualized motivation. There are those African writers whose motivation is like that of Sartre and Duc, they can reject the reward depending on their given nature of personal conscience. But there are also those who have a similar state of motivation like Munro, they will feel intellectually glorified if awarded the Nobel Prize. Something unique about general lessons from other the Nobelites in history apart from Munro is that; most of them are born between May 21 and February 28 .Most of them win the Prize at the average age of 59 across all the categories. However the age of the Nobelites in the disciplines of sciences is slightly lower at an average at the age of 57. The youngest Nobel Prize winner was in physics by the name Lawrence Bragg. He was very young at the age of 25 years old when he won the prize in 1915.Whereas in the scientific field the oldest winner was the physicist by the name ;Raymond Davis Jr. He won the prize in 2002 at the age of 88. Two oldest winners of the Nobel Prize in the economic sciences were Leonid Hurwicz and Lloyd; they won the prizes at ages of 90 and 89 years respectively. References; Karl Marx; selected Works Kwame Nkrumah; Consciecism Alexander K Opicho is a social researcher at Sanctuary Research Agencies in Eldoret, Kenya.He is also a lecturer of Research Methods in Governance and Leadership.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 07:20:16 +0000
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