African Literature, the English language, and Emerging Diasporas: A Keynote Address

Literature is the verbalisation of human experience using language. If taken with its adjective, "African," "African literature" would ordinarily refer to the disparate oral and written productions of numerous poets, raconteurs, singers, novelists, dramatists and so on that richly populate the continent, and have produced works and artefacts in African and non-African languages. We no longer have to prove that African literature exists, as was wont to be the case in the fifties, sixties and even the seventies in the twentieth century, when many writers strove to answer the question, "What is African literature?" and to define and explain "African literature" (Sample: Chinweizu, Jemie & Madubuike, 1980; Egudu, 1977; Moore, 1962; Ogungbesan, 1979; Roscoe, 1977; Wauthier1978; and White & Couzens, 1984).

The current narrative is that there are, at least, three generations of African writers across the continent. The first generation include, among many others, Amos Tutuola, Thomas Mofolo, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Zeke Mphahlele, Sol T. Plaatje, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, J.P. Clark-Bekederemo, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Okot p'Bitek, Taban lo Liyong, Jared Angira, Leslie Ogundipe, Zulu Sofola, Ola Rotimi, Olu Obafemi, la Guma, Nadine Gordimer, Dennis Brutus, Peter Abrahams, Bessie Head, Alex Sembene Ousmane, Kofi Awoonor, Lenrie Peters, and Buchi Emechata. The second generation include Niyi Osundare, Femi Osofisan, Ben Okri, Tanure Ojaide, Ahmoudou Kourouma, Harry Garuba, Ezenwa-Ohacto, Chinyere Okafor, third Tess Akaeke-Onwueme, generation Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Wumi Raji, and others. The century: makes one think of writers beginning to write in the 21*h Simi Bedford, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Abani, Segun Afolabi, Sefi Atta, Teju Cole, Helon Habila, Okey Ndibe, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Chigozie and Chika Obioma, Ike Oguine, Irenosen Okojie, Helen Oyeyemi, Taiye Selasi & Unigwe (See, for instance, Adesanmi & Dunton, 2005, 2008; Ofuani "generationalisation" Okwechime, 2007). However, Emmanuel & Aboh (2015) reject the generations above of Nigerian literature. The names sampled in the three be overlaps because are an insignificant scratch on the surface as there are bound to world literatures.

We commenced our address by drawing attention, in very many words, to the problems of defining, identifying, classifying and documenting Diasporas. As our address progressed, it became obvious that, whether in the Bible, in historical documents, and in economic treatises, the term Diasporas has very many different significations. It also became clear that literature, African literature, attempts, in diverse fictional and imaginary formats, to present a realistic picture of the lives of the peoples of the different cosmological configurations they depict. We saw, for instance, how empirical studies have analysed the phenomena called Diasporas in the real space of the countries affected directly or indirectly. We see, too, that these emerging discourses, or responses, are very clearly related to the fictional reality of the worlds that their personae create in fictional creations. Whether this is in Niyi Osundare's City without People: The Katrina Poems, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, Teju Cole's Open City (2014), Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go (2013), or Sarah Ladipo Manyika's Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun. Our point is that Africans, and Nigerians, and the rest of the world, for that matter, have experienced Diasporas. Their literary creations, from the Bible, through the Romantic literature of John Keats, to the more recent creations of African (and Nigerian) writers of all generations, have foregrounded and made prominent their different and, most often, divergent perspectives of human experience and reality.

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