Books, Bars and Literary Genius

The average American that has a crammed full Borders Books, a Barnes & Noble booksellers and the public library at their disposal scarcely realizes the pleasures of the printed page and leisurely reading. That is until they have been incarcerated in a Super Max prison or the local county pokey without the benefit of choice reading material.

According to literary lore, when transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson paid a visit to his friend and fellow writer Henry David Thoreau, who was in a New England jail for tax evasion, Emerson was said to have said: “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau was said to have said: “Waldo, the question is, what are you doing out there?” Thoreau’s act of civil disobedience and time in the slammer was short lived because someone (maybe his mother or aunt) subsequently paid his tax bill.

What true reader and would be author has probably not subconsciously longed for a week or so in jail—of course one probably with the creature comforts of home minus the real life attitudes, treatment and mores of Pelican Bay State Penitentiary—as a means to have some uninterrupted reading time. As the world becomes a busier and hectic place some enterprising entrepreneur may just develop a short-term book hotel or Bed, Bread and Books a take on the popular vacation oriented Bed and Breakfast accommodations.

In modern day America Jailbirds are looked at with much scorn and derision; however, many of the authors that have brought us great reading joy and intellectual stimulation were in fact criminals, crooks, sundry petty thieves and prison inmates. The novelist and short story writer Chester Himes served 7 ½ years in an Ohio prison for armed robbery. However, with much time on his hands and little else to do, Himes picked up a pen and started to compose short stories and later novels. Books such as If He Hollers Let Him Go, Cotton Comes to Harlem, A Rage in Harlem and The Real Cool Killers are classic Himes and no doubt owe their origin to his incarceration.

Another writer that honed his craft while in the joint and was beloved by legions of readers was William Sydney Porter. Porter who was later known by his pen name O Henry was a master of the short story genre. He was imprisoned for three years in an Ohio prison in 1898 after being convicted of embezzling money from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas where he worked as a teller. By the time he died in 1910 Porter had written over 300 short stories. Many stories such as the Gift of the Magi, The Furnished Room and The Ransom of Red Chief have been much anthologized over the years.

However, probably the greatest influencer of reading, literature and learning despite the odds and socio-economic condition is Malcolm X. Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X after becoming a minister in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, details in his autobiography (The Autobiography of Malcolm X) his love of reading. Little became an eyeglass wearing Malcolm X as a result of his long hours of reading with poor lighting late at night in jail. According to Malcolm “from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of a book with a wedge”. Many a former jailhouse scholar and jailhouse lawyer owes his or her love of reading to Malcolm X’s literary tenacity. Of course the person whose name dons many a public school and/or street sign or recreation center Martin Luther King, Jr. spent many nights in jail as a result of his fight for African American civil rights. Many people are imprisoned for one reason or another but how many follow King’s example and write a letter that becomes popular reading? King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail written in Birmingham, Alabama is classic reading.

Other popular books inspired by stints in jail or written by a jailed person are: The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli, Don Quixote by Cervantes, The Writings of Saint Paul by Saint Paul, In the Belly of the Beast by Jack Henry Abbott, Monster by Kody Scott and Blue Rage, Black Redemption by Stanley “Tookie” Williams.

But short of going to jail for that longed for literary experience why not just go to your local public library or independent book store.

African Writers in the Popular American Conscience

The grand man of African literature, the genteel and erudite Chinua Achebe was the first exposure of many Americans to the rich legacy of African literature. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was requisite reading and often the lone title by an African writer on the syllabus of college World Literature 101 courses. After Things Fall a Part the serious and attentive reader’s appetite was sufficiently whetted; making it perfectly okay for future birthday and Christmas gifts to consist exclusively of other Achebe works, e.g. Arrow of God, Man of the People, No Longer at Ease and Anthills of the Savannah.

 

The writing and literary output by African writers received some intellectual credibility as a result Aime Cesaire’s 1930s praxis of Negritude; the Marxist polemics of Franz Fanon and later viability via Black Arts patriarchs Amiri Baraka and Haki Madhubuti. Although there were no definite organized actions, to bring African literature to the forefront of the Western literary canon, intermittent mentions in books and essays by Madhubuti (formerly Don S. Lee) directed young would be revolutionaries to the writings of African writers such as Ayi Kwei Armah, Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiongo.

 

Following my undergraduate studies, during a stint organizing youth activities in Zimbabwe, under the auspices of the United Method Church’s General Board of Global Ministries, I came face to face with Ghanaian literary giant Ama Ata Aidoo strolling down the streets of Harare. I had seen her face often enough on the outside back cover of her books to recognize her, but, I had no idea as to why she would be residing in Southern Africa—away from the cuisine, sights, sounds and smells that make Ghana…well Ghana. During that time Zimbabwe was a progressive place full of open-minded, socially progressive people.

 

After following her closely down Harare’s wide boulevards, I finally gathered the nerve and resolve to approach her and to say: “Hi Ms. Aidoo. I’m a big fan of your writing, what brings you to Harare?” Her countenance and welcoming smile spoke volumes as she countered my query with: “Oh, thank you. I am here with my daughter to focus on my writing.” Ms. Aidoo was a well-traveled woman by this time; her daughter was more American than the average American, and she had a better understanding of the American educational system than me—someone who had been thoroughly indoctrinated and influenced by its tenets.

 

Being next door neighbors to friends that frequently hosted African National Congress comrades in exile, as well as being a voracious reader and true believer of Somara Machel and Robert Mugabe’s polemical “Chimurenga” rhetoric, I proudly proclaimed to Ms. Aidoo the shortcomings of America’s capitalistic pedagogy. “Yes, yes…I see.” Then she reminded me that one of the American system benefits were freedom of expression, ideas and opinion in the non-science areas. These points were well taken and stored in the regions of my memory, that I vowed to reconstitute, when numerous Zimbabwean acquaintances were intent on dogmatically evoking ZANU-PF Mugabe-ism over bottles of Castle beer.

 

The other writer that further heightened my senses and awareness of African literature was the outspoken and eloquent Nigerian Wole Soyinka. I had read Soyinka’s satirical plays and essays that taunted, prodded and questioned everything from corrupt governance on the African continent to the “brain drain” that exported African professional know how and intelligence to Europe and the United States.

 

A colleague and good friend of Soyinka’s, linguist Olasope Oyelaran knew Soyinka from their days on the faculty at the University of Ife in Nigeria. Oyelaran was on the faculty at Winston-Salem State University and somehow managed to convince cross-town Wake Forest University (the school responsible for Soyinka’s visit to Winston-Salem in 1999) and Soyinka of the need to pay a visit to WSSU. I was not very hopeful that many of the students had heard or read Soyinka’s work. Needless to say, I was shocked when I heard one of Oyelaran’s English department peers admit that he had never heard of Soyinka: “Who is that?” This fellow was not the least embarrassed. Never mind that Soyinka was awarded the prestigious Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1986. For the sake of preserving his credibility as an academic, I told him not to mention this aforementioned daftness out of doors or in any remote, quiet setting for that matter.

 

When Soyinka settled into the heart of his message—amidst a backdrop of talkative, nodding, dozing students—I and other faculty/staff members that had been inspired by his genius, became almost giddy with a particular sort of intellectual delight. When he peered over his glasses and began speaking in his sonorous tenor, the controversy making the rounds in barbershops, churches, street corners and in the popular press centered on a word—niggardly. A D.C. city government official David Howard (who happens to be white) resigned from his post after he was said to have offended two colleagues (who happened to be black) by saying he would have to be niggardly with his agency’s budget. Of course the word, though not popularly used in everyday American English, has no racial connotation but means miserly or stingy. Soyinka said that the very fact that a public official resigned due to the use of the word niggardly was “terrorism by the ignorant, intellectual abdication by the knowledgeable”. He later reminded the gathered audience that Chaucer uses the term in his Canterbury Tales. Bravo Wole! Bravo Soyinko!

 

The Vanity Fair July 2007 special issue on Africa contains a wonderful article on African writers, and more specifically a new breed of young African writers, entitled The Continental Shelf. A few of the older writers mentioned by authors Elissa Schapel and Rob Spillman are Achebe, Nurrudin Farah, wa Thiongo, Nadine Gordimer and Soyinka. Some of the young lions on the African literary scene these days are Nigerian, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Ugandan, Dorren Baingana; Sierra Leonean, Aminata Forna and Nigerian, Helon Habila. Adichie has taken the book industry by storm and is very popular in the American and European markets. Adichie’s moving Purple Hibiscus won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for First Book in 2003. Her most recent tome Half of a Yellow Sun takes the reader back to Nigeria’s Biafran War and may very well entrance younger, hip hop generation, non reading youth to consider reading and buying books by African writers. Maybe…hopefully that will occur.