Above: Yvonne Vera, Above right: Steve Chimombo, Right: Chejerai Hove, Far right: Bode Sowande Right: Ifeoma Okoye, Far right: Syl Cheney-Coker, Below: Manama Ba. Standards, Niyi Osundare N the past one year I have visited several Nigerian Universities as Special Guest, Guest Lecturer, or re- cipient of creative writers' club awards. I have also taken part in literary and cre- ative outreach visits to a number of sec- ondary schools. Ev- erywhere I have encountered a feeling of frightening anxiety, exasperation, even frustration among young talents who daily nurse the hope of becoming writers in the near future. Their main source of worry is the virtual collapse of the literary culture in Nigeria: the non- availability of well-stocked public li- braries, the scarcity of books coupled with the prohibitive prices of the avail- able few, the miserable state of pub- lishing in the country with the conse- quent shortage of outlets for new books, the drastic deterioration in the educa- tional system itself. Beyond this general picture are the harrowing individual pains. Take the case of a young, prodigiously talented university graduate who walked out of a well-paid job in order to devote his whole time and life to the writing of a new novel. After countless foodless days and sleep- less nights, the manuscript is ready - an ambitious hand-written 600-pager which shakes whatever table it is put on like an earthquake. Right now this would-be novelist's dream is blocked by a most rudimentary problem: payment of a 500- naira typing expenses—in a country where a university professor's basic monthly salary is about 4000 naira! For several months now this 'big book' has been lingering, long-hand, yellowing each day, in the corner of a high-risk tenement room in one of Nigeria's cities. affecting every cell of the continent's cre- ative organ. Just last week there was a passionate discussion in the Arts Theatre of the University of Ibadan (Nigeria's oldest University theatre) on the alarming reduction of theatre practices in the coun- try: the literal death of the repertoire tradition, the paucity of stage activities and the resultant decline in the theatre- going habit of members of the university community, even the physical deteriora- tion of the theatre itself — its leaking roof and decaying wooden louvres. This is the theatre where the great Axworthy made— and left — a mark; where the redoubtable Martin Banham moulded an impressive array of talents; indeed the theatre in which many of the plays which shot the mercurial Soyinka into global repute pre- Our literary culture boasts more yellowing tales. At the Asso- ciation of Nige- rian Authors' con- ference in Benin City last year, another young writer stoked my wonder with three impressive poetry m a n u s c r i p ts which, if all things were not so un- equal, should have been books from toasted bookshop to bookshop. But thumb-stained, Dambudzo Marechera dog-eared, these manuscripts still remain brittle tenants of a cockroach-infested box. Some young writers are so innundated by rejection slips that their nibs have started stumbling on the writ- ing sheet. Others parade acceptance letters written ten years ago by publishers who have since shifted their concern to the production of primary school text- books where the bread is not far from the butter. Thus whether it is in Lagos, Accra, Nairobi or Lusaka, many dreams lie locked in the coffin of the editor's draw- Arts Theatre Seminar This tragedy is not in any way restricted to the book business. It is a virus miered to the astounded admiration of local audiences. This is the theatre which nurtured the prolific output of Femi Osofisan, Bode Sowande, Wale Ogunyemi and many others. Nostalgia took centre-stage at that gathering. Nostalgia compounded by a passionate mix of angst and anger Memory took us back to that golden era of the Seventies and early Eighties when the gigantic Dexter Underlay mastered every bit of that theatre and Demas Nwoko's astonishing skill transformed virtually every stage set into artistic mas- terpieces. We pondered the parlous state of the present even as the matchless acting and directorial voices of Dapo African Quarterly on the Arts Vol. II NO 4 Adelugba, Segun Olusola, Femi Johnson, Paul Worika, Mat Imerion, Betty Okotie, Funmilayo Ajose Ajayi, etc came back to us with archival vigour We counted among our losses the disappearance of the Yoruba Travelling Theafres which combed every village in Western Nige- ria in the Sixties, and whose dramaturgic and managerial styies enriched formai academic theatre studies and provided the subject for many scholarly works. The Arts Theatre seminar took me forcibly back to the anxieties of the creative writing students mentioned above. Like them the seminar partici- pants raised questions about the suffo- cating political situation in the country, especially the curtailment of human rights which has placed freedom ol expres- sion in dire jeop- ardy, the proscrip- tion of truth and the cultivation of silence by a ruling junta so scared of the power of the word. Many of my u nderg raduate and high school hosts actually wanted to know why the writing vocation is so per- ilously close to danger and star- vation in Nigeria, in Africa. Many wondered if it was viable, even desirable to nurse the hope of becoming full-time writers when they grew up. A smallish, sharp-faced young man asked me pointedly: 'Tell me sir, can the present situation in Nigeria, in Africa, produce another Soyinka or Achebe?' Maybe at the end of this conference an answer will emerge to this question. I am fully aware that the contesta- tion of the image of Africa as 'victim' is one of the laudable projects of this confer- ence. In other words, the world would like to see a representation different from that which projects Africa as the misery-re- gion of the globe, a place where all the people do is wait helplessly for the next famine or plague, then the missionary generosity of aid-givers, a hell-hole still Conradianly dark. This, for sure, is the Western media image of Africa. We all know it is not wholly true; that, in fact, in some cases, it is meant to serve ulterior motives, some of which are sinister in design and execution. But in contesting this pernicious image we must not over- look the profound, almost apocalyptic problems besetting the African continent today. Africa writers have not; which is why their works bristle with disturbing images of Africa in a manner and matter that is excoriative and redemptive. Ac- cording to a popular Yoruba proverb, 'tina o ba tan laso, eje o le tan leekan' (as long as there are lice in the seams of the garment there must be bloodstains on the fingernails). For isn't Africa more 'victim' today than it was ten, twenty years ago? Con- sider the carnage in Rwanda, Somali, Liberia; the rebellion-strained peace of Sierra Leone, the Stone-Age despotism in Zaire, Kenya, — and Nigeria where the peace and progress of a potentially mag- nificent country has been annulled with the freest and fairest election in her his- tory. Or Algeria where an almost similar electoral annulment has resulted in con- tinual insecurity and bloodshed. We are talking of a continent currently going through a second slavery, whose best brains are in one form of exile or another, some of whose doctors and engineers are forced to eke out a miserable existence as street-sweepers, morgue-attendants, or jamtors in Europe and America. Can we really ignore, even for one oblivious mo- ment, the'victimhood'of a continent whose economy is under complete control of foreign financiers, whose currencies have been so cruelly devalued that all they can purchase now are chronic poverty and untameable inflation? To take a test case: the imported hard-cover edition of Ibadan, Soyinka's new book, costs over 2,000 naira (about the monthly salary of a universitygraduote worker) in someofthe few Nigerian bookstores, viable enough to have it on their shelves. Home-made books fare only a little better . The cost of publishing materials has jumped so astro- nomically that even the big-league pub- lishers are finding it difficult to produce elementary textbooks and other 'bread- and-butter' titles. Any wonder then that the only book fair of any regularity and significance in the entire continent today is the one which takes place in Zimba- bwe? In contemporary Africa those who want to write are denied the necessary space and means; those willing to read cannot find the book. This is why in a recent article poignantly titled literature and the Nation', Odia Ofeimun, poet, journalist, and current president of the Association of Nigerian Authors, raised the alarm that our literature is being 'threatened with extinction by social regression.'? The above, then, constitute the con- text which produces our texts. But rather than allow these debacles to cow us into sterility and immobilism, many African writers have allowed them to 'hurt them into creativity'.3 Because they occupy (or are forced to occupy) a social and histori- cal space considerably different from that of the early Soyinka, Achebe and their contemporaries, the 'post Achebe/ Soyinka' generation have devised liter- ary methods which differ in some signifi- cant aspects from those of the earlier generation. There are historical and bio- graphical reasons for this difference. Born shortly before or after the rash of independence (from hindsight'epidemic' would now be a better word!) which swept across Africa in the early Sixties, they arrived with the exuberant optimism of freedom and matured into the immea- surable decay of the post-independence era. They witnessed the dream of the 'just and egalitarian' society enshrined in the independence constitution transmogrify into nightmares of visionless leadership, the most bestial form of corruption, glar- ing socio-economic injustice, and utter lawlessness — all this husbanded and nurtured by visionless, despotic leaders' who soon decreed themselves into life presidents. After a few years of civilian misrule, in marched the stone-faced sol- dier. Then began what the immortal Chris- topher Okigbo called our 'iron' chapter, and Wole Soyinka later baptised as the divine rule of the gun. Texts and Contexts The 'post-Achebe/Soyinka' gen- eration is thus confronted with frighten- ing realities which challenged their con- science and summoned their art into urgent service. Theirs, to adapt the popu- lar pnrase of G.G. Darah, the Nigerian scholar-journalist, is the literature of social command, extremely sensitive to the so- cial realities around them, but without losing sight of the aesthetic imperatives of their works. Thus this generation shocked African literature with a combativeness and radicalism never experienced be- fore. The thematic preoccupation remains the desperate situation of Africa, the stylis- tic hallmarks are clarity and directness of expression, formal experimentation, and a deliberate incorporation of African oral literary modes. Frank Chipasula says it all in 'Mani- festo on Ars Poetica': And I will distil life into horrible adjec tives I will notclean the poem to impress the tyrant; I will not bend my verses into the bow of a praise song And I will point the light of my poems into the dark Nooks where our people are pounded to pulp Today my poetry has exacted a con fession from me. [Whispers in the Wing, p. 108) Indeed poetry has exacted equally bold confessions from many other poets of Chipasula's generation. Odia Ofeimun declares: I cannot blind myself to putrefying carcases in the market place pulling giant vultures from the sky and rounds off the poem on a deliberate, instructive note: A garland of subversive litanies should answer these morbid land scapes my land, my woman [The Poet Lied, p. 3) Examining the matter and manner of contemporary African writing in the vein of the excerpts above, the present writer reflects: the simple word is the shortest distance between two minds African Quarterly on the Arts VoLlI NO 4 There is no petname for injustice poverty has no bank for nicknames [A Nib in the Pond, p.9) before going on to a somewhat aphoristic coda: Art shorn of the human touch is art for ass sake (A Nib, p.6) Syl Cheney-Coker who indicts 'the Creole ugliness' of Sierra Leone and highlights the brutality of her 'Portuguese Conquistadors', practise(s) the art of poetry because all my country's misery rises up from my belly [The Graveyard Also Has Teeth, p.65) while Keorapetse Kgositsile, even in the dark days of apartheid that made a visionary proclamation 'change is gonna come!', because in the lyrical words of Kofi Anyidoho, ... those who took away our Voice Are now surprised They couldn't take away our Song (Ancestrallogic, p.23) Still 'troubador' in the Dennis Brutus sense of the word, the new generation poets also admonish and warn. In the prodigal days of Nigeria's 'oil boom', when her military ruler declared to the world at large that money was not Nigeria's problem but how to spend it, Tanure Ojaide foresaw the doom behind the boom: Oil boasts: 'For ever and ever Shall I remain on top of the water' It shall come, rock salt shall come To beat oil into profound loss [Children of Iroko, p.36) amphitude of vision — these are some of the common attributes of the poets highlighted above. To them must be added the pensive, colloquial energy of the poetry of Jack Mapanje, Funso AiyejinaJaredAngira, and Harry Garuba; the nostalgic afflatus of Lupenga Mphande, Edison Mpina, Steve Chimombo, and Molara Ogundipe-Leslie whose fluent verse 'sew(s) the old days' into new seasons. As we have seen above, most of the poets of the 'new generation' articulate a clear consciousness of the place of the poet and the gravity of the functions of poetry in a tone and with a vehemence hardly experienced in the earlier generation. This is why a good number of them preface their collections with poetic manifestoes which enunciate a new poetics that is aesthetically and socially answerable. But the image and function of the writer as griot and raconteur are by no means the sole char- acteristics of practitioners of the poetry genre. Indeed many of the dramatists of the 'new generation' tell Africa's story in costume, sound, mime and movement in a manner whose physical representation forcibly engage the consciousness. There is a radical, even revolutionary project here too, a robust belief that the theatre is not just a house of speeches and props, but also a battleground for contending images and ideas. Wole Soyinka remains an enor- mousand highly seminal influence. But for the generation after him he has been both a venerable model and fertile point of departure. Thus is many ways the relation- ship of the 'new' generation to Soyinka's dramaturgy has been somewhat problem- atic. Of supreme importance to this re- definition of relationship is the 1977 workshop on 'Radical Perspectives in Af- rican Literature and Society' organised by brilliant left-wing lecturers, writers, and critics of the Universities of Ife and Ibadan. In a manner reminiscent of such radical efforts in East Africa in the Seventies — efforts which resulted in a substantial decolonialisation of African literature and the establishment of oral literature as a legitimate area of study — the Ibadan conference de-mystified old gods, challenged sacrosanct can- ons, and laid out new parameters for the re-appraisal of African literatures, history, and cultures. In a clearly anti-Aristotelean, anti-'Great Tradition' fervour, the workshop proposed a shift of emphasis from obscurantist, Negritudinist myths to the biting urgency ofcontemporary social issues as fitting subject of literary discourse. A change in the writer's conception of the hero was also examined: the gods, goddesses, kings and nobles who populated the African stage were asked to yield place to the common woman and man - the real makers of history. Mongane Wally Serote Because of 'the quantum physics of exis- tential inequality' (Atukwei Okai p. 1 3) in the world we live in, we find in the poets a threnodic mix of pain, passion, and patriotism In a stubbornly declarative poem ' I am Bound to This Land by Blood', Olu Oguibe, a 'newer' member of the 'new generation' of African writers tells us And if I sing not of roses and rivers It's because I see rivers of blood [A Gathering Fear, p. 1 2) then goes on to make a chilling confession: My verse spreads ungathered In this spill of purple Mine is the cry of a ram tethered To the slaughterslab libid,) p. 13) Anger, angst, lulls of despair, bursts of hope, a frequent African Quarterly on the Arts Vol. 11 NO 4 The ripples generated by this work- shop have been far-reaching. This is evident in the dramatic output of Ola Rotimi who moved from the royal heights of Kurunmi and The .Gods Are Not to Blame (itself his adaptation of Oedipus Rex to the pungent satirical indictment of If and Hopes of the Living Dead. Perhaps the most prolific dramatist of the 'post-Soyinka' era ( in Nigeria, at least] is Femi Osofisan (who like Biodun Jeyifo, the brilliant literary theorist and critic, was one of the moving forces of the Radical Perspectives workshop). In play after play, Osofisan confronts the Nige- rian society with the social and cultural horrors of its existence: social injustice in Once Upon Four Robbers and Morountodun, the question of power in Yungba Yungba, the need for compas- sion in Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, and of recent, the pan-Africanist issue in Nkrumah Ni, Africa Ni. Two of his plays are even direct responses or counter-texts to those of the earlier tradition: No More the Wasted Breed counters the cyclical pessimism of Soyinka's The Strong Breed, while Another Raft is a rejoinder to The Raft by J. P. Clark-Bekederemo. In the 'new generation' drama, his- tory re-connects with mythology and a re- interpretation of both yields a reality which provides a handle on the present — and the future. Ibrahim Hussein's Kinjeketile hints on the tenuousness of social struggle premised on mythic ontology, while in the Tornadoes Full of Dreams, BodeSowande provides a diasporic canvas of origins, migrations, and troubled habitations. In a somewhat existentialist flash-back of memory and consciousness, Tess Onwueme tells us in Legacies that the past may not really be as rosy as it has been made to be. Whether it is the myth-inspired The Lake God by Bole Butake, or the subtle parabolic criticism of Tanzanian social- ism by Penina Muhando Mlama, or the indictment of political blindness by Sam Ukala's The Log in Your Eye, contempo- rary African theatre engages in a vibrant debate on the social, cultural and political issues of the day. The argument takes place most times in the formal theatre with seated ladies and gentlemen, and some- times in the hit-and-run guerrilla platform in the streets of Samaru or He Ife (in Nigeria), or the community-based the- atres in Zimbabwe, Cameroon, South African and the state-destroyed experi- ment in KamiririithubyNgugi waThiong'o. Continuities Prominent in all the dramas in this section are new theatrical forms and modes. For example, the Brechtian epic theatre and its alienation technique are vital aspects of Osofisan's theatre. The traditional story-teller technique features frequently in the drama of Penina Mlama, Zulu Sofola, and Olu Obafemi, while at times ideas compete with plot and charac- terization in Yulisa Amadu Maddy. In Biyi Bandele-Thomasneo-Absurdist echoes are energised by post-modernist trends. Like Soyinka's, Achebe's succes- sors are many and varied. Without failing to acknowledge the urbane wisdom and quiet craftsmanship of the author of Things 'Fall Apart, they have taken African prose fiction beyond the village square to the turbulent streets of the city where things are truly no longer at ease. Almost invari- ably the subject matter is the political chaos in post-independence Africa, but the styles range from the formal, poetic mode of Nuruddin Farah, Cheney-Coker, Chenjera Hove and Yvonne Vera, to the colloquial tenor of Dambuzo Marechera and Ken Saro Wiwa who strains no nerve in telling an exhilarating story in 'rotten English'. Significantly, this is also the genre that has produced the largest num- ber of female writers. So, in a way, we also have a right to talk about the 'post- Nwapa/Ba/Gordimer/Saadawi/Head/ Sutherland/Segun/Aidoo generation'! Generally the thematic and stylistic trends in contemporary African prose fic- tion can be put under four broad and interrelated categories: marvellous or magical realism, mythic realism, critical realism, and a new burgeoning prose sub-genre called 'faction'. Time there was when magical real- ism was considered to be indigenous to Latin America, its progenitor being the phenomenal Gabriel Marcial Marquez, who has found worthy heirs and heiresses in prodigies like Isabella Allende and Carlos Fuentes Well, that was before Salman Rushdie gave it an Oriental habi- tation and Toni Morrison demonstrated to the world that 'conjuring' among "African story-tellers came before Columbus. The two most prominent practitioners of that genre in Africa today are Ben Okri (The Famished Road, Songs of Enchantment, and Astonishing the Godsjand Syl Cheney- Coker (The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbarj. Both novelists (especially the former) of course, owe more than they are ready to confess to the fabulist pioneership of D. O Fagunwa and the primitive imagi- nation of Amos Tutuola. It must be said, however, that Okri and Cheney-Coker are not mere imitators of magical realism: the former's magical terrain is populated by ghosts and weird beings (which bring Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests powerfully to mind), while the latter's yarn is stretched by a liberal web of myth and history. And in this regard it shares the same borders with novels of mythic realism. Here Yvonne Vera's Nehanda provides an eloquent example. The heroine Nehanda is not only a widely known historical figure; she is here portrayed as a medium, prophetess, visionary, and lib- eration fighter. In this novel historical truth is constructed through mythic fabulation and literary mediation. The history of Zim- babwe, from white occupation to black liberation struggle is endowed with a new reality justasChenjerai Hove's Bones tells the post-liberation story through his dusk- like characterization and ruptured narra- tive chronology, and Shimmer Chinodya's Harvest of Thorns covers three decades of Zimbabwean family life in the intimate context of the history, politics, and culture of that period. Most of the novelists of the new generation tackle reality head on with as much mediation as their art allows. The issues of social injustice, corruption, unem- ployment, cultural alienation, gender op- pression and other vices which make Af- rica such a hellish continent loom large in narratives of this category. We are pre- sented with familiar places and recognisable faces. In Festus lyayi critical realism is boosted by socialist realism (Violence, Contract, Heroes); and so con- African Quarfrrly on the Arts Vol. II NO 4 sistently, the author presents the aspira- tions and frustration of the 'small person' in a society dominated by cannibalistic 'giants' — in a tone and tenor which bears a slight resemblance to the effort of Meja Nwagi (Down River Road). Like Chinodya, Isidore Okpewho depicts the vital link between domestic and public spheres in times of war or peace. Without doubt, this category is dominated by female writers determined to articulate the realities of the African woman long silenced and 'othered' by a ruthlessly patriarchal system. In the works of Miriam Tlali [Muriel at the Metropoli- tan, etc) Nawal el Saadawi (The Many Faces of Eve) Ifeoma Okoye (Men With- out Ears), Tsitsi Dagarembga {Nervous Condition), Zainab Alkali (The Stillborn), Karen King-Aribisala (Our WifeandOther Stories), Omowunmi Segun (The Third Dimple), Rebeccca Njau (Ripples in the Blood) and many, many others, the woman gains a pride of place that was hardly dreamt of in the narrative universe of the Achebes and Soyinkas (with the significant exception of Sembene Ousmane and Ngugi wa Thiong'o). But this restoration is not an exclusive female affair: the narrative world of Nuruddin Farah, for example hasa place for women who are capable of feeling, thinking, and acting. It can be confidently said' that in contemporary Africa, the dividing line between fact and fiction in perilously thin. Dreams and nightmares swap places with such amazing ease that one is tempted to think that the entire continent is one surrealist text with a few interludes of actuality. This situation has given rise to a prose sub-genre that can be de- scribed as 'faction' (fact + fiction). As far as I know, the most intriguing instance of this sub-genre is Kole Omotoso's Just Before Dawn, a book which provides an encyclopaedic excursion through Nigeria's history in a style which takes liberty with historical factuality. Historical events often transform into fiction-like episodes, historical figures take on the garb or novelistic characters, old, long- forgotten speeches are re-cast as fresh dialogues, and, of course, the plot shifts and shunts to the dictates of the author/ narrator's imagination. In some places African Quarterly on the Arts Vol. II NO 4 the setting looks so palpably real, in others it assumes the mystic suggestiveness of a tale told before the world began. It is interesting to note that the fac- tion genre is no respecter of generational divides. There are striking stylistic and narrative similarities between Omotoso's Just Before Dawn and Soyinka'a Ake, Isara, and Ibadan. The major difference is that the organising principle of Soyinka's narratives is auto-biographical, that of Omotoso is somewhat more impersonal. In the end both authors are engaged in an experimental representation of the biog- raphy of a country. In a way, faction may do to African writing what it has done to Nurudeen Farah the 'new journalism'. One only hopes that it would succeed is pushing forward the frontiers of African fictive mode with- out allowing the liberty gained in the process to degenerate into narrative li- cence. It will be noticed that throughout this essay, I have included the phrase 'post-Achebe/Soyinka' in cautious quo- tation marks. This is because I am utterly sceptical about the 'post' which has now become so fashiortable a tag in contem- porary discourse (as i have said eise- where, the post' in 'post-coionial' is a vicious lie). Both Achebe and Soyinka are still very much around — and creating. Even in the literary republic, it is still a crimirfal sin to bury the living! So whatthis essay has done is to highlight some of the thematic and stylistic developments which have taken place in African literature because of, in spite of, or beyond these two profound trail-blazers. Mine, there- fore, is an account of continuities and ruptures. But one thing is sure: the period in which Achebe and Soyinka launched them- selves on to the literary scene is saner and kinder than the one in which their succes- sors are presently trapped. Whereas their works re- ceived enthusiastic attention from publishers and were distributed all over the world, overseas publishers now see African literature as a bad risk, while local ones only manage to bring out a few titles over a long period. African literature today is thus in a painfully illiterate bind: books published by Africans abroad are not available even in their home countries to unfavourable currency ex- change rates, while the few published in Africa are not available beyond their im- mediate locality. To make matters worse, those jour- nals and magazines which provided vibrant literary out- lets in the Sixties and Seven- ties are either now extinct or going through protracted dormancy. The bookshops are empty. This is why in a recent article frighteninglytitled 'When Ugandan Pens Could Write No More', Ayeta Anne Wangusa declared: due Walk into the Makerere University Bookshop - it's a joke. One can ride a motor cycle into it and ride out without casualties Wangusa's statement holds true for bookshops in other countries south of the Sahara except, perhaps, Zimbabwe and South Africa. These, then are the states of African literature today. But people are still writ- ing, creative writing classes, literary asso- ciations, newspaper and magazine col- umns and many others are bent on giving credence to Wally Serote's credo that we 'are not the lost generation'. And as Ogechi Iromantu has prophesied in her newcollection, we may one day reach the state where there will be No more screaming. No more crying no more lies to cover the wounds of sadness and grief, no more unforgettable pain this is the world intended from the beginning I see peace in the land for all [Outpouring of Innocence, p.3) Ms. Ogechi Iromantu is 14 years old. GR • Text was presented at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, during the Royal African Society conference late last year. Notes 2AM News (Sunday Edition), July 30, 1995, p. 9 3. Ofeimun, p.9 4. 'Path of Thunder', in Labyrinth, Heinemann 1971 pp. 63-72 5. Niyi Osundare (1993), African Literature and the Crisis of Post-Structuralist Theorising, Ibadan: Options Book & Information Services See also by the same author (1995) ' A Wondrous Healing Vision: an Essay Around Kenzaburo Oe's 'Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself, Seminar paper, Dept. of English, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. 6. In African Literature Association Bulletin, vol. 20, No. 2, Spring 1994, p.69 (Primary sources: Only those from which direct quotes have been taken) — 7. Anyidoho, K., (1993) Ancestrallogic & Caribbeanblues, Trenton New Jersey: Africa World Press. 8. Cheney-Coker, S. (1980), The Graveyard Also Has Teeth, Heinemman 9. Chipasula, F. (1991), Whispers in the Wings, Heinemann 10.Iromantu, O. (1995) Outpouring of Innocence, Lagos: Pulse Marketing Communications Ltd. 1 1. Kgositsile, K. (1971) Seven South African Poets ed. Cosmo Pieterse, Heinemann. 12. Ofeimun, O. (1989), The Poet Lied, Lagos: Update Communications 13. Oguibe, O. (1992), A Gathering Fear, Ibadan: Kraft Book Ltd 14. Ojaide, T. (1973), Children oflroko, New York: The Greenfield Review press 15. Okai, a (1974), Lorgorligi Logarithms, Accra: Ghana Publishing Corporation 16. Osundare, N. (1986), A Nib in the Pond, lle-lfe: University oflfe Monography Series. 17. Serote, W. (1992), Third World Express. Cape Town: David philip Publishers Ltd. AN AFRICAN JOURNAL OF NEW WRITING Published THREE times a year .h, il SUBSCRIBE NOW H i M H i] • The influential African literary journal is back. The most recent numbers are: 31 (1995); 32 (1996); 33 (1996). • Silver Jubilee Issue - No. 34 (October 1996) will focus on Nigerian Literature in the Last Decade (1986 • 1996) • Other forthcoming numbers will focus on Post-Apartheid South African Literature, African Women Writers, African-American Literature, The Greying Generation, The Laureates. • Manuscripts are welcome - Poems, short stories, one-act plays, essays, interviews, reviews. • RATES - One Year Individual Institution African Institution Post Nigerian resident Nigerian institution Post $30.00 $50.00 $40.00 $6.00 extra N900.00 N1.200.00 N150.00 extra • Back-issue rates available on request • Allow about 8 weeks for delivery • PREPAYMENT REQUIRED IN US DOLLARS (or NAIRA - for Nigerian Residents only) • Drafts, cheques or enquiries to: OKIKE MAGAZINE, P.O. BOX 53, NSUKKA Enugu State, Nigeria. Tel/Fax: 0234-42-770981 DF: Enugu aapn 0087