“...you
also have the story teller who recounts the event - and this is one who
survives, who outlives all the others. It is the storyteller, in fact,
who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates
the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving
would have no meaning.”
Achebe, interview with Bill Moyers (Gikandi,125)
Introduction
Storytelling has held and still holds quite a significant position in African culture. It serves to translate historical facts, to transfer moral issues, to explain the mystic world surrounding us and particularly to share past experiences. The storyteller, like the griot, has a lot to preserve. Oral literature has been very helpful, not only in helping discover our human selves, but equally in creating amusement as we are transported in the narration and we feel involved in an adventure we would not want to exit from. At the end of each story, we are sad it ended. We are unhappy even after the “and they live happily ever after” or the end of the wicked and the triumph of the good. Written literature has become the inadequate replacement to those glorifying nights around burning firewood under a full moon when grandma or grandpa, with deliberate slowness full of suspense, narrates captivating stories.
Written literature started in the Gambia as early as the late 20s. History has proven that the emergence of literature is closely related to colonialism and the British penetration along the river Gambia. The first traces of British contact with the Gambia came at the dawn of the British invasion of James Island in 1662. A hundred and eighty one years later, in 1843, The Gambia became a colony of Her Majesty the Queen. The first newspapers published by Gambians will start as early as 1929 with the advent of The Gambia Outlook by Sir Edward Francis Small. Some years later, another newspaper will see the day: Gambia Echo. Until in the sixties, there would be no trace of any Gambian literary work produced by Gambians as such. There is however, an excellent literary work traced in the 18th century, that has with ample evidence proven to be written by someone of senegambian origin. That someone is an African slave, caught and sold in New England at the age of seven or eight, in 1761. that someone is Phillis Wheatley.
The emergence of Gambian literature
Until Gambia became independent, there was no existing literary work produced by Gambians. Its African counterparts were already exploring the literary domain in different forms. For Anglophone Africa, poets and prose writers have started denouncing colonialism and fighting it through the pen. Themes on religion, race and social castigation were the priority. When Africa started seeing its states attaining independence, the wave of change equally affected the African writers. Negritude was a strong weapon used by francophone Africa to denounce colonialism and call for independence. The coming of independence, however, turn out to bring a different form of colonialism which basically disappointed those writers who struggled to attain it. This is where Gambia came in with the denunciation of the existing African regimes that have brought corruption and political and social ills. In 1965, the year Gambia got its independence, Dr Lenrie Peters published his first, and Gambia’s first, novel, The Second Round.
Achebe, interview with Bill Moyers (Gikandi,125)
Introduction
Storytelling has held and still holds quite a significant position in African culture. It serves to translate historical facts, to transfer moral issues, to explain the mystic world surrounding us and particularly to share past experiences. The storyteller, like the griot, has a lot to preserve. Oral literature has been very helpful, not only in helping discover our human selves, but equally in creating amusement as we are transported in the narration and we feel involved in an adventure we would not want to exit from. At the end of each story, we are sad it ended. We are unhappy even after the “and they live happily ever after” or the end of the wicked and the triumph of the good. Written literature has become the inadequate replacement to those glorifying nights around burning firewood under a full moon when grandma or grandpa, with deliberate slowness full of suspense, narrates captivating stories.
Written literature started in the Gambia as early as the late 20s. History has proven that the emergence of literature is closely related to colonialism and the British penetration along the river Gambia. The first traces of British contact with the Gambia came at the dawn of the British invasion of James Island in 1662. A hundred and eighty one years later, in 1843, The Gambia became a colony of Her Majesty the Queen. The first newspapers published by Gambians will start as early as 1929 with the advent of The Gambia Outlook by Sir Edward Francis Small. Some years later, another newspaper will see the day: Gambia Echo. Until in the sixties, there would be no trace of any Gambian literary work produced by Gambians as such. There is however, an excellent literary work traced in the 18th century, that has with ample evidence proven to be written by someone of senegambian origin. That someone is an African slave, caught and sold in New England at the age of seven or eight, in 1761. that someone is Phillis Wheatley.
The emergence of Gambian literature
Until Gambia became independent, there was no existing literary work produced by Gambians. Its African counterparts were already exploring the literary domain in different forms. For Anglophone Africa, poets and prose writers have started denouncing colonialism and fighting it through the pen. Themes on religion, race and social castigation were the priority. When Africa started seeing its states attaining independence, the wave of change equally affected the African writers. Negritude was a strong weapon used by francophone Africa to denounce colonialism and call for independence. The coming of independence, however, turn out to bring a different form of colonialism which basically disappointed those writers who struggled to attain it. This is where Gambia came in with the denunciation of the existing African regimes that have brought corruption and political and social ills. In 1965, the year Gambia got its independence, Dr Lenrie Peters published his first, and Gambia’s first, novel, The Second Round.