Seminar 2000

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A Cause for Redefining Coming of Age Stories in African Literature: Problems between Educational Aims and Social, Political, and Economic Values in African Societies

Sonja R. Darlington (darling@beloit.edu)
Dept. of Education, Beloit College

African stories that might be described as "Adolescent or Young Adult Literature" by Western readers are far more accurately grouped as "Coming of Age" stories for other readers, like myself, who have read African works of fiction between 1954 and 1999. After examining more than thirty texts from this period, it seems inappropriate to use the term "Adolescent Literature" for any of these. First, the term "adolescence" has been, and continues to be, an ambiguous term which tries to identify an age-specific group according to its physical, psychological, social, economic, and political attributes. Second, as a category, Adolescent Literature is rejected by many literary theorists and librarians, and in its stead, they recommend calling the genre "Young Adult Literature." Or, some even lobby for more categorization to describe this elongated development period. In general, what distinguishes these stories from others is not the age of their characters or their narrator, but that they follow the lives of individuals who are in the process of becoming adults.

Third, and most importantly, Adolescent Literature does not describe the African experience told by authors writing between the 1950s to the 1990s, when numerous English speaking readers were first able to read literature from Africa. A poignant incident in Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born hints at the gaping difference between Western views of adolescence and the complexity of coming of age in Africa. The narrator explains that his boyhood friend in Standard Five, whom he calls Aboliga the Frog for his large eyes, brought a book of "freaks and oddities" to school to show his friends his favorite among them. Curiously, what the boys saw was a picture of an old manchild. As Armah writes,

The picture Aboliga the Frog showed us was of the manchild in its gray old age, completely old in everything save the smallness of its size, a thing that deepened the element of the grotesque. The manchild looked more irretrievably old, far more thoroughly decayed, than any ordinary old man could ever have looked. . . It had been born with all the features of a human baby, but within seven years it had completed the cycle from babyhood to infancy to youth, to maturity and old age, and in its seventh year it had died a natural death. (63)

Here in this passage, according to Armah's sensibilities, childhood advances almost immediately into events associated with adulthood: loveless marriage, war, broken dreams, corrupt government, disease, and multiple deaths. While the "manchild" may be descriptive, it is also symbolic of the difference in perception for those who do not see this time as a separate stage with unique events; but rather, as a short, undifferentiated life cycle. On another symbolic level, the manchild, who begins and ends life in a brief seven years, represents countries like Ghana, which come of age in too short a time and destabilize.

Among the novels about coming of age a variety of tales emerge, but all of them to some degree present experiences of initiation, socialization, and education into adulthood. While they vary widely in how these experiences are presented, they vary little in the overall project of explaining the complex process of moving from child to adult. A short list of these African literary texts might look as follows:

Abrahams, Peter	Mine Boy and Tell Freedom
Aidoo, Beverley	Our Sister Killjoy and Changes
Alkali, Zahnab	The Stillborn
Armah, Ayi Kwei	The Beautiful Ones Not Yet Born
Ba, Miriama Ba	Scarlet Song
Beti, Mongo	The Poor Christ of Bomba Mission to Kala
Brink, Andre	Instant in the Wind
Dangarembga, Tsitsi	Nervous Conditions
Djebar, Assia	A sister to Scheherezade Fantasia: Algerian Cavalcade
El Saadawi, Nawal	Woman at Point Zero
Emecheta, Buchi	Slave Girl Bride Price Double Yoke
Gordimer, Nadine	My Son's Story
Jordon, A.C.	Wrath of the Ancestors
Farah, Nuruddin	Maps
Head, Bessie Head	When Rain Clouds Gather Maru
Kane, Hamidou	Ambiguous Adventures
Karodia, Farida	A Shattering of Silence
Mathabane, Mark	Kafir Boy
Bloke Modisane's	Blame Me On History
Mofolo, Mark	Chaka
Mphahlele, Ezekiel	Down Second Avenue
Okri, Ben	Famished Road Stars of the New Curfew
Oyono, Mongo	Houseboy
Salih, Tayeb	Season of Migration to the North
Ngugi wa Thiongo	A Grain of Wheat Matagari The River Between Weep, Not, Child
Saro-Wiwa, Ken	Sozaboy
Soyinka, Wole	Ake
Warner-Vieryra, M.	Juletane
Yacine, Kateb	Nedjema
Zeleza, Tiyambe	Smouldering Charcoal

Whether the young protagonist is the central character in these texts, whether the narrator speaks from a young person's point of view, or whether the process from childhood to adulthood is embedded into an adult's perspective does, indeed, challenge the extent to which these novels can be considered coming of age stories. But, this discussion is better left to another paper. The purpose here is to argue that these stories describe a prominent set of experiences, which can be explored through the conflicts between educational aims and the social, cultural, political, and economic values of African societies. Book after book, story upon story, evokes the tensions felt within and among young people who come of age through deeply conflicting educational experiences. Kenyan born writer, Atsango Chesoni, identifies these tensions in a poem entitled "A Coming of Age Poem, a Story Untold" about Sophia a girlchild whose dreams for an education are dashed by a schoolmaster. Her grave error, he claims, is that she wants to become a butterfly before a cocoon (202).

Davies' Transnational Paradigm

Taken as a whole, these experiences can be examined through what Carole Boyce Davies calls a transnational paradigm, which "pursue[s] and account[s] for a range of relations of African peoples internationally as they interact with a variety of cultural spaces" (106). Davies supports looking at literature using a polycentric perspective that does not emanate from a single center nor function to privilege some experience and marginalize others. She opposes unicentricity, for its essentializing characteristics as in Eurocentrism and Afrocentrism, and also in buzz words such as multiculturalism, diversity and pluralism. The strength of her paradigm lies in its assertion of "transcultural black presences" that are located in multiple locations and can be attached to a variety of other cultural identities and not fixed with any single center (105). By using her construct with coming of age novels, she helps readers identify the same arguments in fiction as those presented by social, cultural, political, and economic theorists who challenge particular essentializing positions that undercut the ability for African peoples to define themselves and their society.

In this paper, attention will be given to how African literary texts about and for young people can be read to decenter unicentricity. And can, as Davies demands, "speak to. . . the consistent reproduction of different modes of being in the world. Rather than a giant, monolithic, traditional African culture, then we can assert multiple, transcultural presences within and without Africa. Thus, crosscultural, transnational discourses are also 'transformational' . . . [and] central to Diaspora" (106). Specifically, then, the discourse among the social scientists, such as Catherine Odora; literary critics, such as Pauline Ada Uwakwek; physicists such as Vandana Shiva; and, grassroots activists, such as Gustava Esteva, strengthen the possibility for multiple modes of being and becoming. And, their discourse becomes the means by which to challenge the dominant, unicentric view that western educational goals are synonymous with the goals of various transnational black presences. That the place of conflict should be focused on African coming of age stories seems particularly appropriate, given that so many African writers struggle with the so-called benefits of western education.

A Critique of Education: Dangarembga and Emecheta

At issue for the theorists and activists Davies, Uwakwek, Odora, Shiva, and Esteva, as well as the coming of age novelists Armah, Dangarembga, Emechta, Laye, and Nwapa is the conflict between western theories and practices in education and various African traditions and cultures. For example, in examining the Bildungsroman, Pauline Ada Uwakwek, in "Carving a Niche: Visions of Gendered Childhood", makes the point that central to the Bildungsroman is the quest for education which for African females has emerged only since the 70s, due to an influx of women's writing. Until then, she maintains, men wrote about explorations from their perspective and females were relegated to tangential roles in the private and domestic sphere. Her article focuses on gender-identity issues in novels such as Emechta's The Bride Price and Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and suggests that the ultimate goal of both novels is to describe the onset of womanhood first through menstruation and then socialization into marriage. However, in addition to her gender analysis, Uwakwek's critique of women's rites of passage, underscores how African women learn to believe that education helps them challenge patriarchy, improves their status (but not necessarily locally), and releases them from certain traditional restrictions.

From 1954 to 1999, many African women novelists describe the inability for women to become educated and develop their potential (social/cultural) beyond the primary grades. One of the main reasons these writers give for this predicament, is the tradition within families to promote education for males and to discourage equivalent educational opportunities for females. The 1988 text by the Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, examines the difficulties Tambudzai, the female protagonist, has in comparison to her older brother, Nhamo, who revels in his privileged position over the rest of his family. The novel opens with the very starling sentiment by Tambuzai, who says, "I was not sorry when my brother died." In the second and third sentences of the book, she notes that she will not apologize for her callousness or for her lack of feeling. This inequity in education, over which she is very angry and, therefore, refuses to grieve when her brother dies, is as her father tells her, "the same everywhere." The depths of Tambuzai's resentment for her brother is difficult to understand, given the prominence relationships assume within the structure of many African societies. Yet, the author, Dangarembga, begins her novel with this unusually venomous tone from a young thirteen year-old girl.

Other main characters in Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions do not develop their potential (social/cultural capital), despite the fact that they have become educated. One, is Nyasha, Tambuzai's best friend, who has been educated in England and clashes with her father over the freedoms she has experienced while abroad. Her struggle to convince her father of the right to her own choices eventually leads her to feeling suffocated and trapped between European and African worldviews. As she wrestles with conflicting perspectives, Nyasha becomes physically and spiritually ill. She is on the brink of death at the conclusion of the story. The other educated, yet, disempowered female is Maiguru who acquiesces to her husband on every occasion. She appears as a powerless victim when she interacts with her husband, Babamukuru, and his family. Seen through Nyasha's eyes, her mother lives in a kind of servitude, which is unbecoming to a women of her status and education. As a text which deals explicitly with women's potential (social/cultural capital), Nervous Conditions represents the complex struggle between the aims of education, as seen through the dominant western perspective, and power derived-including that of the patriarchy--from indigenous knowledge and cultural traditions in the "communal lands that surround Umtali" (2).

Emechta's The Bride Price, written eleven years earlier, in 1976, deals even more critically with women's issues of potentiality. Akunna the thirteen year-old protagonist learns very early about the struggle between education and her life in Lagos and Ibuza. For example, she realizes that questions are unbecoming for a young girl (27), girls are supposed to demonstrate more emotions than men (30), rich traders keep mistresses (61), educated girls fetch more of a bride price (75), a girl who has had sexual adventures is never respected in the home (84), a woman who menstruates cannot go to the stream nor go to the house of a man with the title of "Eze" or "Alo" (93), young women are often married off to men who could be their fathers (97), and a girl from a good family cannot marry the descendant of a slave or she will die in childbirth (110). As Akunna's story unfolds, she decides that in addition to all the indignities that girls endure, one also has to speak one's mind. Following her near rape by Okoboshi, Akunna stands up for herself and fights for her honor. "This [is] going to be the deciding moment of her existence" (136). By lying and arguing that she is not a virgin, Akunna tricks her would-be rapist and is returned to her future husband, Chike. However, even this well-intentioned youth assumes, after several unsuccessful attempts at lovemaking, that he is not Akunna's first sexual encounter. Poignantly, the belief that if a woman's bride price is not paid, she will die at childbirth, is reinforced by Akunna's death when baby "Joy" is born.

Even though Akunna has some very harsh lessons to learn in her transition to womanhood, she also learns to appreciate aspects of her cultural heritage. For example, some of Akunna's earliest childhood memories include her parents telling stories with philosophy lessons and call-and-response songs about Ibuza. She is captivated by the life of her ancestors and learns about them eagerly. In her husband, Chike, she uncovers a teacher who, like her is an outcast. His ancestors are slaves and despite the prosperity of his family, according to the Ibuza tradition, he cannot become a chief. Chike teaches Akunna that this culture seem[s] to be gaining ground, so if you do not want trouble for yourself or your family, you abided by the laws of the white man." (87). Yet, despite the white man's seemingly tight rule over Nigeria, as a fatherless girl from a good family within the Ibuza tradition, marrying "a descendant of a slave [is] an abomination, ife, alu" (111). All these intricate cultural beliefs and stories, some of which absolutely delight her, are foregrounded by the writer, Emechta.

The trap within which the lovers, Chike and Akunna, find themselves is strewn with many significant paradoxes. First, they are able to marry, because the law in Ibuza is based on English justice and the Ofulues who represent their adversaries, and a would-be husband, loose their case. However, traditional Ibuza tradition ultimately prevails when, as forecast, Akunna dies in childbirth. Second, another paradox lies in the Chieke's accepting a position with an oil company in Ughelli which draws him further away from his sense of place and tradition. Third, the greatest paradox is revealed to readers when they finally know all of the injustices against women, such as the frequent beatings of Ibuza women by their husbands, and they realize that that Chike, who seems beyond these kinds of actions, still wrestles with his belief that Akunna is not a virgin. And, Akunna still sees the purpose of sexuality as a means resides in these various paradoxes, because they bring together what Davies calls "a range of relations in a variety of cultural spaces." Through a reliable narrator, who is also omniscient, Emechta tells the story of Akunna's bride price from a variety of perspectives without being drawn into the essentializing position, which tries to control everything. Rather, power, as seen through the characters' social exchanges, economic positions, political roles, and cultural experiences is dispersed into many different places.

At the conclusion of the story, readers may agree with Uwakwek that Akkuna's tragic dilemma is her socialization into marriage, but they also have to contend with the Ibuza prophecy, which has come true. And, although Akkuna suffers a great deal through her uncle's refusal to pay her bride price, she is also indebted to the richness of her birthright within the Ibuza tradition. As such, readers are confronted with a beautifully textured story, which teaches about Ibuza traditions: marriage, funerals, political roles, eating habits, menstrual rites, and storytelling, etc. This local knowledge presents a powerful contrast to English culture, which often relegates this local knowledge to the level of superstition, primitivism, and barbarism. On the one hand, even Emechta adds to this perspective by presenting Akunna's position so artfully that many readers are caught bemoaning Akunna's death at the expense of valuing the traditions and various knowledges that her people, the Ibuza are not able to maintain. On the other hand, these same readers do not realize that Emechta has destroyed a myth about western education that as Uwakwek argues, encourages African women to believe in education as a cure for the cruelties of patriarchy, low social status, and unfair traditions.

A critique of African women and education, parallel to the coming of age stories by Dangarembga and Emecheta can be found in Catherine Odora's Master Paper, "Educating African Girls in a Context of Patriarchy and Transformation." According to Odora, social and cultural issues related to education pose a danger for non-western cultural and knowledge constructs. Her study suggests five areas of concern:

1). the extension of western domination over others; 2). the institutionalization of the malaise of xenophilia; 3). the distortion of the socializing role of mother; 4). the perversion of the social control of reality for non-westerners; and 5). the subjugation of indigenous knowledge, indigenous learning styles, and indigenous environmental knowledge. In her study, Odora suggests that the starting point for disentangling these issues in education begins with "the centrality of human agency, intellectual and moral reform, as well as reconstitution and insurrection of subjugated knowledges" (ii).

Her concerns, regarding education from a social science perspective, can be easily upheld as significant areas of inquiry for literature in as much as the five areas of concern are deeply embedded into the coming of age stories in the five decades being examined in this paper.

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