African Writers of Today (William Abraham)

For all of the information that comes to the United States from the African continent, so little is known about their writers. Who are they? What are their backgrounds? What are their reactions to the cultural revolution which surrounds them? For whom are they writing? Are they turning to the forms of the tribal oral traditions or are they rejecting them? How do the individual writers react to the philosophy of "Negritude?" What is the influence of current European literature and of the literature of the American Negro on their works? And what is the reciprocal influence of African novels, stories, plays and poems on the literature of these other cultures.


This program takes place in the library at the University of Ghana near Accra; host Lewis Nkosi is joined by Wole Soyinka, this time to talk with William Abraham, associate professor of philosophy at the university and author of one of the most significant books on modern Africa: The Mind of Africa. This discussion is devoted almost entirely to the function of the writer in Africa. The tone of the conversation is markedly different from that of the other interviews - more tense, more formal, and at times, more heated. Professor Abraham devoted considerable time to characterizing the "ideal" African writer. If a writer is to be called "African" he believes, he will not be defined ultimately in terms of skin color but in terms of his expression of a living African heritage, a tradition which should determine the style, idiom, and the content of his work. To be writing as part of a living heritage, Abraham maintains, means to see clearly and to absorb the many facets of modern African society (including the old, but still very much alive, oral tradition, and the foreign influences, Moslem and Euro-Christian), and to be able to present, as a result of this perspective, a comprehensive literary "critique of society."