In each of my English classes, I teach one major work by an African writer. The 10th graders read Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, the 11th graders read Things Fall Apart, and the seniors (AP Literature) read Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka. While I am working on expanding the selection of African literature by introducing short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie next year and I have students read Congolese poetry in French, I struggle with the fact that "Africa" still seems stuck at the periphery of my curriculum. Of course, other parts of the world are even more peripheral. Quite a number of my students are Indian, and I just can't find a book by an Indian author that I really want them to read. Salman Rushdie would upset the parents (not too mention his novels are long); V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River may take place in Congo, but the racism is a challenge. I loved The God of Small Things, but that book only seems appropriate for the seniors, and I just don't have a book I want to remove from my AP syllabus. So if Africa takes a back seat, India is somewhere on the curb running but unable to catch up with the speeding bus of English class.
When I begin teaching a book for the first time, I always scour the internet for good unit plans and resources to help get me started. For Death and the King's Horseman, there's really nothing out there, for Nervous Conditions I've found a few resources, and of course for Things Fall Apart there is a glut of unit plans, discussion questions, even an online simulated village of Umuofia. In reading these documents, I realize how lucky I am that I do not have to teach my students what "Africa" is like. Sure, I may be shocked when they don't know what a kola nut is, but I try to remember that many of them have never walked down the street and seen what those vendors were carrying up close. In some ways, I teach students who are sheltered from the life of the city they live in, but they still do not have the image (or lack of image) that some kid in the Mid West would have of an African village. Many of their parents and grandparents grew up in villages, whether those villages were in the DRC or Kenya or even India. Those students who do have context are always willing to share their knowledge with the ones who don't, and so we quickly build a shared understanding.
I am amazed by the fact that my students know not just what patriarchal means, but also have heard the word patrilineal and are quickly able to grasp the difference between the two when I explain it. At the same time, they seem even more aghast at traditional patriarchal societies than kids do in the US. Probably because they know people who have experienced these kinds of societal organizations firsthand. I feel like I am forced to play the devil's advocate, encouraging my students to search out the sometimes subversive ways in which women exert power in the narratives we study but still allowing them adequate time to process the injustice they find in the texts.
But the most powerful thing about teaching African literature in Africa is that we are able to get beyond the context to focus on studying these novels as pieces of literature. While the context remains important, we read closely and look at how the individual parts of the text form a coherent whole. I recently asked my students to examine the first part of Things Fall Apart in search of evidence foreshadowing that this novel is the story of the dissolution of a society. I am was floored by their ability to pick out evidence from the metaphors of Achebe's language, the folk tales as more extended metaphors, and the significant events. They saw that every single element had a purpose, a purpose that was much greater than giving the reader background on the Igbo way of life. At the same time, they appreciate the beauty of the descriptions that bring this world to life.
Though my students are certainly not insiders to the Yoruba, Igbo, and Shona worlds of these novels, they do seem uniquely able to read these works on a level that has surpassed my expectations. So many factors have come together - their experiences, their families, their community-building abilities - to create a unique facility for deep textual analysis.
When I begin teaching a book for the first time, I always scour the internet for good unit plans and resources to help get me started. For Death and the King's Horseman, there's really nothing out there, for Nervous Conditions I've found a few resources, and of course for Things Fall Apart there is a glut of unit plans, discussion questions, even an online simulated village of Umuofia. In reading these documents, I realize how lucky I am that I do not have to teach my students what "Africa" is like. Sure, I may be shocked when they don't know what a kola nut is, but I try to remember that many of them have never walked down the street and seen what those vendors were carrying up close. In some ways, I teach students who are sheltered from the life of the city they live in, but they still do not have the image (or lack of image) that some kid in the Mid West would have of an African village. Many of their parents and grandparents grew up in villages, whether those villages were in the DRC or Kenya or even India. Those students who do have context are always willing to share their knowledge with the ones who don't, and so we quickly build a shared understanding.
I am amazed by the fact that my students know not just what patriarchal means, but also have heard the word patrilineal and are quickly able to grasp the difference between the two when I explain it. At the same time, they seem even more aghast at traditional patriarchal societies than kids do in the US. Probably because they know people who have experienced these kinds of societal organizations firsthand. I feel like I am forced to play the devil's advocate, encouraging my students to search out the sometimes subversive ways in which women exert power in the narratives we study but still allowing them adequate time to process the injustice they find in the texts.
But the most powerful thing about teaching African literature in Africa is that we are able to get beyond the context to focus on studying these novels as pieces of literature. While the context remains important, we read closely and look at how the individual parts of the text form a coherent whole. I recently asked my students to examine the first part of Things Fall Apart in search of evidence foreshadowing that this novel is the story of the dissolution of a society. I am was floored by their ability to pick out evidence from the metaphors of Achebe's language, the folk tales as more extended metaphors, and the significant events. They saw that every single element had a purpose, a purpose that was much greater than giving the reader background on the Igbo way of life. At the same time, they appreciate the beauty of the descriptions that bring this world to life.
Though my students are certainly not insiders to the Yoruba, Igbo, and Shona worlds of these novels, they do seem uniquely able to read these works on a level that has surpassed my expectations. So many factors have come together - their experiences, their families, their community-building abilities - to create a unique facility for deep textual analysis.
