Abstract
How have postcolonial theorists and critics explained the relation between European publishers and editors and the African literature that they published? Several formulations have been attempted, but the subject has generated little sustained empirical research. One line of argument, expounded mainly by African Marxists, and articulated here by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, describes European publishing of African literature as ‘a reflection of the neo-colonial situation’:
We take from our languages, and the material is processed in European language and resold in Africa as African literature. … It borrows from African life and orature, the material of imagination is processed through European languages, and the packaged material in between hard covers becomes African literature. . Once again Africa produces, the West disposes.1
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Notes
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literatures (Oxford: James Currey, EAEP, Heinemann, 1986), pp. 69–71.
Becky Clarke, ‘The African Writers Series — Celebrating Forty Years of Publishing Distinction’, Research in African Literatures, 34 (2003), pp. 163–74.
Gail Low, ‘The Natural Artist: Publishing Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard’, Research in African Literatures, 37 (2006), pp. 15–33.
Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin, Oda-Oak Oracle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 3.
Barbara Kimenye, Kalasanda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 7.
Peter Nazareth, Literature and Society in Modern Africa: Essays on Literature (Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1972), p. 171.
Edgar Wright, ‘East and Central Africa’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2 (1967), pp. 10–14.
Hebe Welbourn, ‘Village Gossip: Kalasanda by Barbara Kimenye’, Transition, 24 (1966), p. 56.
Obi B. Egbuna, Daughters of the Sun and Other Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 92.
Charles H. Rowell, ‘“With Bloodstains to Testify”: An Interview with Keorapetse Kgositsile’, Callaloo, 2 (1978), pp. 23–42.
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© 2013 Caroline Davis
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Davis, C. (2013). Editing Three Crowns. In: Creating Postcolonial Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137328380_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137328380_9
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