World Literature: African Post-Colonial Literature
Standards:
Students will:
1. read with understanding and respond thoughtfully to a variety of texts; 2. Create
works using the language arts in visual, oral and written texts; 3. Understand and
appreciate texts from many historical periods and cultures.
Understandings:
There is no uniform African history or culture, but great diversity even within so-called
nations. Even national boundaries tend to be arbitrary, European constructions.
Post-colonial literature uses the language and literary forms of the colonizers to write
about the history and mythology of the colonized.
Post-colonial literature is by nature transformative, and often subversive. It presents a
hybrid culture, history and literature.
Essential Questions:
How do African writers use literature to reclaim their personal, ethnic or national
identity?
How do African writers educated in European-style schools create a new, hybrid culture?
What are the responsibilities of the African writer to historical objectivity?
What role does the novel have in countries which may have no tradition of written
literature?
Who is the target audience of African post-colonial authors?
Why does post-colonial literature risk hegemonizing the diverse cultures of Africa?
Knowledge and Skill:
Students will know:
1. The definitions of all relevant terms, such as post-colonial, hybridity, Orientalism; 2.
How to distinguish accurately between race, ethnicity, nationality, and other like terms; 3.
Basic historical facts concerning the colonization of Africa by Europe and of the
subsequent independence movements of those African countries, specific to each literary
work studied.
Students will be able to:
1. Apply their newly acquired knowledge and their analytical skills to the task of
interpreting a variety of texts; 2. Compose essays which develop theses specific to the
cultural, historical and literary contexts of the studied texts.
Performance Tasks and Other Evidence:
1. Compose an essay which develops a relevant thesis.
2. Compose a research paper which explores the history and/or culture of a country,
region, ethnic group or tribe, or of a specific historical period or event.
3. Compose a comparative essay which compares and contrasts African post-colonialism
with the post-colonial period of another region, such as India or the Americas.
4. Compose an essay which explores some of the controversial aspects of the benefits of
colonization, such as expanded rights for women.
5. Reading quizzes.
6. Unit tests.
7. Reading journals.
8. Group or individual presentations.
Learning Activities:
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Read novels, short stories, plays and/or poetry.
Maintain a reading journal.
Participate in small and large group discussions.
Study for and complete a variety of quizzes and/or tests.
Perform any necessary or required research.
Compose drafts of essays or other assigned products, such as those listed above.
Participate in peer response groups and teacher conferences.
Complete final drafts of writing assignments.
Present creative or researched projects to classmates.
Required and/or Suggested Texts:
Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), Things Fall Apart (1959), No Longer At Ease (1960) and
Arrow of God (1964) (all novels)
Sembene Ousmane (Senegal) God’s Bits of Wood (1960) (a novel)
Frantz Fanon (Martinique/Algeria) The Wretched of the Earth (1963) (nonfiction)
Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) Kongi’s Harvest (1967) (a play)
Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya) A Grain of Wheat (1967) and Devil On the Cross (1980)
(novels)
Luis Bernardo Honwana (Mozambique) We Killed the Mangy Dog (1969) (short
stories)
Ferdinand Oyono (Cameroon) The Old Man and the Medal (1969) (a novel)
Okeo P’Bitek (Uganda) Song of Lawino (1969) (poetry)
Christopher Okigbo (Nigeria) Labyrinths (1971) (poetry)
Mongo Beti (Cameroon) The Poor Christ of Bomba (1971) (a novel)
Bessie Head (South Africa) A Question of Power (1973) (a novel) and Collector of
Treasures (1977) (short stories)
Alex La Guma (South Africa) Time of the Butcherbird (1979) (a novel)
Dambudzo Marechera (Rhodesia) House of Hunger (1979) (short stories)
Charlotte Bruner, ed. (Pan-African) Unwinding Threads: Writing by Women in Africa
(1983) (short stories)
Isidore Okpewho, ed. (Pan-African) The Heritage of African Poetry (1985) (poetry)
Steve Biko (South Africa) I Write What I Like (1987) (nonfiction)
Mariama Ba (Senegal) So Long A Letter (1989) (a novel)
Ayi Kwei Armah (Ghana) The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1989) (a novel)
Syl Cheney-Coker (Sierra Leone) The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar (1990) (a
novel)
Tayeb Salih (Sudan) Season of Migration to the North (1991) (a novel)
Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria) The Joys of Motherhood (1994) (a novel)
Helpful Critical Works:
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back:
Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989)
Edward Said Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1993)