Cry Sorrow, Cry Joy

Selections from Contemporary African Writers

Edited by Jane Ann Moore

Introduction

Today non-Africans have an unparalleled opportunity to see Africa through African eyes. Fifteen years ago [1956] there were few writings by Africans in Western languages. Since then we have had placed before us hundreds of literary expressions by black Africans.

This literature fills a yawning void for African also—helping them construct new self-images, positions in society and meanings of life.

Great artists convey the universal condition of man in particular situations. The universal element is readily apparent: whether it is a ten-year-old boy discovering that books hold stories, a teenager being chased by the police, a woman finding out her husband wants another wife or an aged pastor trying to talk theology with a young man.

All these human predicaments are complicated by what the white world has done to the black world, by what the rich nations have done to the poor nations, by what the Christian societies have done to societies with other religious beliefs.

In James Ngugi’s novel, A Grain of Wheat, during the war that white settlers in Kenya called “Mau Mau,” a Kikuyu husband was “detained” without trial by whites in a concentration camp for seven years and forbidden any communication with his wife. When they finally have the opportunity to speak to each other, the wife says, “Too much has happened to be passed over in a sentence.” Immediate reunion is not possible yet. Reconciliation can take place only when a shared understanding of what has passed is accepted; when there is the will to forge a new, equal relationship, when a plan for the future is in sight.

This impasse between husband and wife is symbolic of the relationship between Africa and the West. There is increasing separation black and white. Immediate reconciliation is not possible. One has injured the other. One has misruled the other. One has libeled the other. Now is the time to share in the cry of what has happened to Africa.

These stories contain many kinds of cries. The Dutch philosopher, William Zuurdeeg urges us to pay special attention to a cry. “A man may become genuinely human when he cries out in anguish, triumph, in furious rebellion and in joyful reverence.” Such crying, he says, is an act almost unavailable to Western man because, for us, a cry is not a respectable mode of behavior. He asks “Who can live by a cry?” Who can stand it to hear such disturbing noise?” The creative artist can live by crying out in his writing. The creative reader can stand it to listen. As Africans cry aloud in their literature, one can hear them give new personal, social and cultural definition to themselves and to those with ears to listen.

Personal Definition

In a racist society the black child sees others looking at him; he sees them making judgments: he believes them. The short story by James Matthews, “The Park,” tells how a little African boy’s looking-glass image of himself is formed. In the eyes of those who count, he is worthless. Colonialism, discrimination, apartheid—all these forces in African have inflicted grave wounds upon the black self. Can literature undo in any these detrimental images of the self?

Lewis Nkosi, a South African writer who grew up in that little boy’s world, believes that literature does have the power to mold life. But until the last dozen years there were no literary heroes with whom young African could identify. Novels by white men, by Graham Greene and Joyce Cary, skilled though they were in portraying white colonial society, used Africa only as an exotic backdrop and stuck in a few caricatures of black Africans. These novels provided only negative stereotypes for black Africans—but no sense of identity.

For decades our African heroes have been white, one, Albert Schweitzer, seems to have been more concerned about the universal human struggle of the soul than about the particularity of the African soul. Another, Alan Paton, seems in his first novel, Cry the Beloved Country, to be more concerned to reach the conscience of “white liberals” with the injustice of South Africa than to reach the psyche of African youths. Useful as their contributions to Africans have, these white heroes did not provide the new generation of Africans with positive models of identity. They did bring the continent to our attention; but today there are black writers who can take us into its heartland!

Recalling his own youth, Lewis Nkosi says that

The stories herein contain many models for youth. . . .

Cultural Definition

“Africa has suffered more than any other continent,” states novelist Ayi Kwei Armah. From 1442 to 1880, 69,000,000 Africans were captured by European slavers, put on ships, chained, closed in under the deck, sporadically fed and left to defecate and urinate on themselves. One-third of them survived the trip. The Western world knows very little about African suffering. Jews past and present have suffered greatly too; but in contrast their suffering is well-known through Europe and North America. Why do we know the suffering of the Jewish people, but not the suffering of Africa?"

One reason is that the Jews wrote down their own history, a history that stressed political defeat and dispersion as much as it stressed victory and empire, in the Old Testament where it was available to everyone in the West to read. Today Africans are writing down their history, containing such epics as the building of Mali, Ghana, and Songhay empires. Information comes from oral tradition, archaeology and archives of Islamic and other scholars.

African historians are retelling their war stories, such as the placing in battle of 200,000 warriors of Ghana in 1066 A.D., the same year in which the Normans could muster only 15,000 soldiers to invade England. And also they are chronicling their defeats at the hands of all the colonial powers. It was the genius of the Jewish people that they took their experiences of suffering and made them the cohesive core that strengthened their common bonds for centuries.

In this collection of African stories, there are many interpretations of African suffering: knowledge of evil, reality of injustice, loneliness away from parents, destroyed love, self-awareness, bitterness, ethnocentrism, tyranny, corruption, brokenness. In Soyinka’s The Interpreters the response of college friends to the suicide of a brilliant colleague is one of despair: “Sekoni’s death had left them all wet, bedraggled, the paint running down their acceptance of life where they thought the image was set. . . .”  But there is also hop. The extent of Africans’ suffering and the uniqueness of their situation gives a unique shape to their hopes.

In Africa many religious, intellectual and political movements have attracted followers with the promise of hope. Spiritualist groups have promised release from suffering. Renascent indigenous religions have purified themselves of what they consider Western taint. Islam has promised acceptance of the black race as equal. Secularism has rejected the white man’s Trinity. Independent Christian churches have sought release from a white hierarchy.

“Negritude” has asserted that black is most beautiful and Africa the source of goodness. “African personality” has claimed that the whole man is superior to the overly intellectualized people of the West. Right now the word on many lips is Pan-Africanism. Once, this term referred to the political unification of the dozens of African states. Today it incorporates a creed including concern for deprived African everywhere, unity of all black peoples, responsibility of one African for another and the need to organize black people beyond the limitations of tribalism.

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Books on African Film

African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent / Symbolic Narratives: African Cinema / African Cinema: Politics and Culture /

Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives In Sub-Saharan Francophone African Films  / Black African Cinema  /

African Cinemas: Decolonizing the Gaze / Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers

African Film on DVD

Black Girl / Borom Sarret /  Sugar Cane Alley /  Kirikou and the Sorceress /  Lumumba

Amandla: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony / Cry, The Beloved Country   /  The Power of One 

Bopha / Mandela and deKlerk / Cry Freedom  / Hotel Rwanda / Sarafina / Yesterday

Tsotsi  / Hyenas /  Mandabi  / Xala /  Madame Brouette  / Yeelen / Life on Earth

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