KENTE - Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts
Kente: Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts is an international peer-reviewed, open access journal of the Department of English, University of Cape Coast, Ghana.
Myth, Migrancy and the Metropole: Akan-African Folktales as a Mythocolonial Syntax of Survival
The quest for food has long been documented as a key structural paradigm in the African folktale tradition. The Akan AnansesꜪm, a subset of the tradition, does not deviate from this structural pattern. Many distinguished grammarians of the Akan folktale—Lee Haring (1972), Roger D. Abrahams (1983: 3), Ruth Minott Egglestone (2001), Lewis Hyde (1998: 20), Amissah-Arthur (2019)—maintain that the food trope represents the focal point around which the Ananse tale is organised. In spite of the above, there has been very minimal attempt to link the food quest to postcolonial African economic hardship and the economic migrancy that results from it. The present paper re-reads Ananse tales through the cross-disciplinary lenses of structural, postcolonial and mythopoetic theories to arrive at the conclusion that African folktales essentially provide a formulaic response to the existential hardship at home, or predict it. The tales demonstrate archetypal agency by revealing how the protagonists travel to the dangerous outskirts of the village or, defying all physical and metaphysical odds, venture into the forbidden forest of Sasabonsam, the archetypal Akan monster, to seek for a solution to the hunger at home. It is our argument that, whether they go by aircraft or rickety dinghy, whether by automobile or on foot across the Sahara Desert, whether they stow away, or travel legally, postcolonial Africans who migrate to Europe, America and elsewhere, in search for existential fulfilment are unconsciously re-enacting the quest for food as pertains in the Akan-African folktales. We suggest that the structural pattern of the tales Africans listen to as children provides a syntax for surviving threatening economic situations. The pattern furnishes a psychological blueprint for African self-preservation which unconsciously influences postcolonial Africans migratory practices.
Copyright (c) 2026 KENTE - Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts
‘Physician, Heal Thyself’: Disability, Aesthetic Nervousness, and Diasporic Authority in Tope Folarin’s Miracle
The paper addresses a critical gap in disability scholarship on African diasporic literature where impairment is often read as a metaphor or as a social stigma without sufficient attention to its structural function within migrant religious spaces. Focusing on Tope Folarin’s short story Miracle, the paper examines how blindness operates within a Nigerian Pentecostal community in Texas. The study draws on Ato Quayson’s (2017) theory of aesthetic nervousness, particularly the typologies of disability as a signifier of ritual insight and disability as epiphany, supplemented by social and materialist disability models (Oliver, 1990; Brown, 2008). Through close textual analysis of the narrative, the analysis yields three central findings. First, the blind prophet’s impairment functions as ritual capital that authorises his charismatic legitimacy within the diasporic congregation. Second, his inability to heal himself produces aesthetic nervousness that destabilises his authority and exposes the commodification of disability within migrant religious economies. Third, the narrator’s failed healing generates epistemic reorientation through which faith, performance, and community survival are critically re-evaluated. The paper concludes that in Miracle, disability operates as a contested site where embodiment, belief and diasporic identity are negotiated. The paper contributes to disability and diaspora studies by suggesting how literary representations of impairment can function as a structural critique of charismatic authority within transnational contexts.
Cultural Poetics of Loss: Repetition and Parallelism in Dagbamba Dirge Performance
This paper addresses parallelism and repetition in the Dagbamba dirge. The study aims to investigate parallelism and repetition as core elements of oral art, focusing on synonymous, antithetic, synthetic, or constructive parallelism (or sameness), which are prominent in the Dagbamba dirge. Dirge serves not only as a farewell to the deceased but also as a vehicle for cultural transmission and the expression of communal values. The paper analyses selected dirges and uncovers how parallelism and repetition function to enhance the aesthetic quality, emotional intensity, and mnemonic aid of these lamentations. The paper uses Richard Bauman’s Performance Theory as its analytical tool since dirge is a mode of communication that involves the performer (addresser), the audience (addressees) and the event's setting. A qualitative research approach is adopted using both primary and secondary data. The findings reveal that parallelism and repetition serve multiple purposes: they enhance the mnemonic quality of the dirges, emphasize key thematic elements, and provide a rhythmic and emotional cadence that resonates with both performers and listeners.
“WELCOME HOME”: THE UNHOMELY IN YAA GYASI’S HOMEGOING
This paper critically examines the contested and ambiguous notion of the home in postcolonial and diasporic contexts, utilizing Yaa Gyasi’s transformative neo-slave narrative, Homegoing (2016), as a focal point. By intricately tracing the story of seven familial generations over three centuries across Ghana and America, Gyasi portrays Atlantic deracination, diaspora, and transnationalism as both individual and collective experiences. In this way, as the novel’s title suggests, the home, as both a physical and psychological space, is desired but also elusive. The perpetuation of homegoing, thus, connects characters despite physical, temporal, and generational separation—meaning that the emergence of the home and the return to the home are interconnected. This paper draws on Homi Bhabha’s concept of the unhomely—a condition in which the boundaries between the private and the public blur, creating a postcolonial space that is both familiar and estranged. In this regard, Bhabha provides a framework for how characters within Homegoing engage with things left unsaid, unresolved histories, and unspoken truths that suddenly re-emerge within the political and social existence. This paper analyzes the establishment of an anchored yet ambiguous “non-place”—characterized by de-rootedness—which produces cyclical hauntings and a fractured sense of the home for subsequent generations. Ultimately, this paper concludes that despite the sense of unhomeliness, the contemporary generation finds a sense of reconciliation with the home by returning to and tentatively reconnecting with their origins.
Copyright (c) 2025 KENTE - Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts
“Oh, Friends, Do Look at Kweku Ananse’s Amazing Ways”: The Song as a Subtext in Efua Sutherland’s Edufa (1967) and The Marriage of Anansewa (1975)
A rich body of scholarship exists on Efua Sutherland's Edufa and The Marriage of Anansewa; however, previous studies have largely concentrated on the thematic and ideological dimensions of these texts, leaving the function of songs as subtextual devices considerably underexplored. This is a notable gap, given the prominence of songs within the narrative architecture of both plays. The present paper addresses this lacuna by examining how songs in the selected plays operate as subtexts in the construction of meaning and narrative. The central argument advanced here is that songs in these texts function not merely as ornamental embellishments but as integral components of the dramatic structure, carrying significant narrative, thematic, and ideological weight in their own right.
‘Sex Is A Journey’: An Examination of Disability, Sex and Character Development in Isidore Okpewho’s The Last Duty
This paper examines the intersections between disability, sex and character development in Isidore Okpewho’s The Last Duty. Specifically, the paper focuses on Odibo’s sexual journey in order to show how the transformation the disabled character goes through in the area of his sexual life is critical to plot and character development in Okpewho’s novel. The study reveals that Odibo grows from being a seemingly asexual character to an individual who asserts his sexuality even in the face of challenges. Odibo’s sexual growth reaches its climax when he finally engages in sexual intercourse with Aku, an experience that helps him to embrace his masculinity. This study adds to the discussions on the intersections between sex and disability in the African literary texts by revealing how sex plays a key role in the development of the disabled character. The stages of sexual development presented in the paper also offer a way of understanding how the sexual life of Odibo contributes to the plot development of Okpewho’s novel.
REPRESENTATION OF TRAUMA IN TSITSI DANGAREMBGA’S THIS MOURNABLE BODY
This article examines the representation of African women in their gender relations in postcolonial Zimbabwe, focusing on their experiences, struggles, and challenges. It examines the oppressive and traumatic experiences of female characters in the Zimbabwean setting of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body (2018). I choose Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body because it is a narrative text that somewhat captures the reality of trauma at the psychological and physical levels in women's lives during the colonial and postcolonial eras. This article, therefore, is rooted in how traumatic encounters have permeated the narrative texture of the novel. It is this traumatic encounter in gender relations that constitutes women’s experiences in Zimbabwe. The argument is that trauma constitutes Dangarembga’s particular mode of self-apprehension and the representation of women's lived realities in the novel. In evidence of this, the lives of female characters in This Mournable Body are often depicted as profoundly affected by trauma, which, however, leads them to make choices that enable them to thrive and lead meaningful lives both personally and socially. As such, this article examines how the primary text operates in accordance with the poetics of trauma theory, particularly drawing on Cathy Caruth’s framework. A key intention of the paper is to explain the traumatic contextualisation of the novel and to portray how the victims in gender relations constantly manage to negotiate their survival and existence through agency.
REPRESENTATION OF INDIGENEITY IN THE POSTCOLONIAL DETECTIVE NOVEL: A LITERARY ANALYSIS OF NII AYIKWEI PARKES' TAIL OF THE BLUE BIRD
Nii Ayikwei Parkes’ Tail of the Blue Bird has gained critical attention as a significant literary achievement and an exemplum of the postcolonial detective novel. Nonetheless, how the novel constructs locational identity as a way of contesting western ideals, epistemologies of knowing, and globalization of the English language is less discussed. Using the postcolonial concept of indigeneity, the paper explores elements of indigeneity in Tail of the Blue Bird and how these assert the Ghanaian cultural identity. The paper demonstrates that language, naming and traditional storytelling are three cogent ways indigeneity manifest in the novel. Despite the onslaught of globalization, Parkes uses these aforementioned elements as an art form that offers incremental advance in preserving Ghanaian history and records, resisting the othering of Ghanaian languages and culture, and unapologetically projecting the unique belief systems and values of the Akan culture. Overall, the paper contributes to ongoing scholarship on the reclamation of African identities in postcolonial literature and highlights Tail of the Blue Bird as a vital text for understanding identity formation and cultural resistance in African narratives. Keywords: Ghanaian, Indigeneity, naming, Tail of the Blue Bird, traditional storytelling
EXPLORING NARRATIVE DISTANCE IN CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE’S HALF OF A YELLOW SUN
Despite the growing attention given to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s works, especially Half of a Yellow Sun, criticisms about the structure and narrative techniques she adopts in this text are still marginal to the amount of critical review and assessment she has received over the years. For a number of reasons, the bulk of criticism on her works has focused on thematic and ideological issues to the neglect of other equally significant concerns like narrative technique. This study, therefore, explores her adroit use of narrative mood in her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun to highlight and intensify the diegesis of this narrative. By employing one of Genette’s (1980) narrative categories, mood (perspective and distance) as the analytical framework, the study explores the narrative’s particular use of distance and how this distance aids in realising a cohesive and coherent narrative. By examining the characteristics and other particulars of narrative distance, the authors clarify the mechanisms used in the narrative act and identify the methodological choices the author makes in order to present her story. The study contributes to theory by demonstrating the extent to which Genette’s theory of narratology is useful to the analysis of the African novel. The study is also significant in that it has pedagogical implications, as it will, among other things, serve as a material to facilitate the teaching of narrative analysis, especially narrative technique.
AN EVALUATION OF SELECTED AFRICAN CULTURAL VALUES IN EFO KↃDJO MAWUGBE’S IN THE CHEST OF A WOMAN AND MARIAMA BÂ’S SO LONG A LETTER
Literature serves as a vital platform for expressing the concerns and values of society. As such, culture plays a central role in literary works, since authors are often influenced, both directly and indirectly, by the societal contexts in which they are nurtured. At the same time, literature can shape culture by critiquing social practices or suggesting new directions for societal development. This paper examines selected cultural issues presented in Efo Kɔdjo Mawugbe’s In the Chest of a Woman (2008) and Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter (2004), using frame analysis as a theoretical lens. The central argument is that, because culture is inherently dynamic, outdated or harmful cultural norms must be critically reassessed to promote a more equitable and functional society. The study concludes that literature should not be viewed merely as entertainment or academic material, but as a powerful tool for social transformation.
AN EXPLORATION OF CULTURE SHIFT IN THE PORTRAYAL OF LADIES IN YORUBA NOLLYWOOD FILMS
The paper examines Yoruba Nollywood’s construction of moral decadence among Yoruba ladies in Nigeria as represented in Yoruba film-texts. Such decadence is borne out of the concept of culture shift through globalization. This is because these two concepts mean Western hyper-civilization to most modern Yoruba women. This reads post-feminist consciousness in some of the productions of Yoruba film industry. The study is qualitative in nature. Film-texts were selected based on gender and grossing consideration. It is motivated by the principle of Molara Ogundipe-Leslie’s Stiwanist Theory which advocates the inclusion of women in the social scheme of things. The study emphasizes Yoruba Nollywood for depth. In the selected film-texts, Agbere Olosa Meta, Alakada Part 1, and Iyawo Digboluja, women, in the bid to exercise their freedom, exhibit such ills as bickering, deceit, avarice, prostitution, fake life, women rising against women, and commercialization of the marital process. All these moral excesses suggest that modern Yoruba ladies need to undertake intra-gender introspection in order to attain the goal of feminist agitation currently undertaken by concerned gender freedom advocates in the Southwestern part of the country. This is necessary so as to discourage men from continuing to find faults in women’s quest to be heard in society. It is noted in the study that the ladies featured in these films exhibit non-traditional traits such as smart life and independence in their dealings with men. These are non-conformist conceptions which have been more pronounced among many Yoruba ladies in the age of globalization, but which the films lampoon. Such condemnation is targeted towards the revamping of traditional Yoruba ethical values and peaceful gender coexistence, especially in the Yoruba society as a Nigerian (African) society.
A RHETORIC OF CHINA’S EXPLOITATION OF RELIGION IN WEST AFRICA
This paper attempts to deconstruct Chinese business agents’ exploitation of religion as an economic resource in West Africa. Focusing on three cases from Ghana sampled on YouTube, the paper argues that China’s religion project in Africa involves three rhetorical strategies. These are reverse proselytization, repackaging of African/Ghanaian Christian gospel songs, and enstoolment of Chinese as African chiefs. The analysis reveals that Chinese foreign workers employ this capitalist model based on the working hypothesis that the average African of the postcolonial/neocolonial epoch is economically vulnerable and yet passionately religious, and, thus, would look to religion for solutions. Implications of the findings are reported in the paper.
Copyright (c) 2023 KENTE - Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts
EXPLORING HYBRID MASCULINITIES OF THE MALE CHARACTERS IN OKPEWHO’S THE LAST DUTY
Abstract This paper explores the concept of failed hegemonic masculinity to exact its full benefit from the assumed patriarchal privileges that African men ascribe to with intent of subjugating femininity. The failure of both patriarchy and masculinity to accentuate their hold unto these privileges results in a cataclysmic disfigured form of subordinated masculinities that manifest in a hybridism of masculinities. Utilizing Okpewho’s novel, The Last Duty, this paper examines how the novelist’s portraiture of the male characters in the novel reveals a bastardized patriarchy strangled to the point of suffocation; its relevance to society is seen in the infirmary of hopelessness and nothingness. The salvaging element, the paper argues, is to view the male characters through the lenses of hybrid masculinities which interpret the diverse identity projects of patriarchy in gender studies as ephemeral.
BETWEEN MOTHER FIXATION AND COLONIAL ATTRACTION: DERACINATION, ILL-FATED MIGRATION, AND REDEMPTION IN KEN BUGUL’S THE ABANDONED BAOBAB
The Abandoned Baobab, Ken Bugul’s brutally sincere autofiction, is the prototypal model of African postcolonial, feminist, and psychological narrative built around the post-traumatic stress disorder, self-flagellation, and “excesses” of a speaking female/colonial subject in desperate need of love. The paper analyzes the protagonist’s alienation, identity crises, and ill-starred sojourn in Europe against the backdrop of maternal attachment and absorption of colonial codes. The study is eclectically anchored on Hendrika C. Freud’s reconstruction of the Electra complex and postcolonial theory. Its major finding is that notwithstanding the protagonist’s anguish at maternal abandonment and her subsequent colonial assimilation, she still employs repressed norms and values associated with the mother/the land/Africa to berate (neo-)colonialists, Westerners, and herself. The paper concludes that the protagonist-narrator redeems herself somehow through the willful adoption of the appellation Ken Bugul, the admission of her errors, and the return to the motherland.
The Early Poetry of Kwesi Brew: An Evaluation
Kwesi Brew (1928-2007) had an illustrious career as a poet, diplomat, and businessman that spanned key periods of Ghana’s history, from its colonial era as the Gold Coast to its maturity as a successful West African democracy. And yet when he died, none of his four published volumes of poetry were in print, and he existed mainly in a few anthologized poems. Though some of those are well-known, the breadth of his work has almost disappeared from sight. This essay examines Brew’s early development and growth as a poet, including the specifically African influences on his themes and metaphors, and situates him in the politics and culture of his time. This essay is drawn from a larger project that is in process, namely, the creation of an edition of the Selected Poems of Kwesi Brew, to bring more of his work before the public.
Copyright (c) 2022 KENTE - Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts
Thinking a Post-coronavirus Africa: Reading Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon in the Era of Covid-19
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed Africa’s precarious position within the global system. Once again, Africa is looking to the West for salvation in the form of vaccines and loans. Beyond the economic crisis, however, perhaps the most telling impact of the pandemic is not death but the shame of being postcolonial — a shame that arises from the painful realization that postcolonial is a condition of dependency. There is therefore a growing a critical voice on a post-coronavirus world. However, much of the discussion is taking place in the sciences and the social sciences, to the neglect of the humanities, especially literature. This paper addresses this lacuna by arguing that Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon (1995) can help us think a post-coronavirus Africa. Focusing specifically on the title of the novel as encapsulating a narrative of crisis that decolonizes the “beyond” and a subtle pedagogy on how to transcend postcolonial conceptual and material dependency on the West, the paper argues that Darko’s exploration of the shame of being postcolonial and postcolonial liberation is relevant to thinking about a post Covid-19 Africa. It concludes that Darko’s ethico-political vision is located in her subtle affirmation of Fanon’s call on Third World countries to strategically delink from Europe and the West in order to realize and inaugurate a genuine postcoloniality.
Of Divination Tray and the Search for Utopia: A Postcolonial Reading of Okinba Launko’s Selected Poems
Primordial oral literary forms have always been very central to the evolution of modern African literature. Arguably, these forms have impacted on modern African poetry, not only on account of their recurrence in the works of poets, but also as important indices in current poetry studies and criticism. Contemporary African poets have since stretched the limits and aesthetics of these forms to emphasize their relevance in the postcolonial space, following after the Negritude poets who set the antecedent in the use of Africa’s primordial forms,. This paper, using selected poems from Okinba Launko’s Dream-Seeker on Divining Chain (1993), Commemorations (2007) Seven Stations Up the Trays Way (2013), discusses the different tropes and manifestations of oral forms in modern African poetry. The writers isolate the poet’s use of Ifa, the Yoruba divinity muse, to comment on the dilemmas of the postcolonial space. The paper concludes that the dialectic prism of Okinba Launko’s poetry exteriorizes a neo-negritude template that sustains the relevance of primordial forms in African poetry.
Speak Like You Were Dead: Episteme of the Ghosted in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The White Tiger has been hailed as a paradigmatic narrative of postcolonial wealth-formation in the 21st century, and as a novel that speaks to the “shining” India of globalization in its transformative moment of an emergent centrality on the global stage. I argue that The White Tiger, by using counter-intuitive epistemes, is also a transnational novel whose primary motive is to offer a trenchant critique of global neoliberalism, and its underlying epistemes of violence and inequality. Through the voice of its protagonist Balram Halwai, the novel, I claim, projects the 21st century postcolonial nation of India as Capital’s colony—a thriving and free “market”, if you will—whose well-being, in turn, is predicated on the phagocytizing of the human capital of the other India that is hidden from the gazes of those who admiringly gawk at “shining” India of Capital.
Copyright (c) 2021 KENTE - Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts
Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons: A Case Study Of The Epic Plot
This work examines the plot of Two Thousand Seasons as an epic plot. The work contends that contrary to the popular belief that an epic narrative is a new form in Africa, epic narratives have long been known in African literary cycles. There are many models on the Epic analysis, but in this work, Albert Sackey’s eight-part division of the epic plot as identified by Aristotle is used in this analysis. In the Poetics, Aristotle identified five elements of an epic: plot, character, setting, diction and thought. Two Thousand Seasons is subjected to an epic plot analysis. In analysing the epic plot, Albert Sackey’s eight-point parts of the epic plot, which he refers to as “structural devices” of the Epic: the unity of time and action, Deux ex Machina, in medias res, opening invocation, extensive geographical travelling, catalogues of troops, digressions and division of texts, are used in this analysis.
Futuring Africa: Immature Men and the Utility of Hope in Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
The purpose of this paper is to provide a re-reading of Armah as a writer of decadence and frustration. I argue that such readings remain prejudiced since scholars rarely identify the philosophy of Kant as a particularly useful resource which will aid one to understand the full complexity of Armah’s vision for postcolonial Ghana. Drawing on Kant’s age of enlightenment, this paper redeems Armah’s debut of pejorism by locating the novel’s diagnostic function within the complex paradigms of maturity and immaturity. Thus, this paper examines the ambiguities of Armah’s characterization and how it strengthens the utopian sensibilities embedded in the text. The paper concludes that Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born remains therapeutic for the advent of the new nation.
Corpus Assisted Approach To Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born is a novel known for its extensive portrayal of the ills and anomalies in the Ghanaian society right after independence. The majority of studies on the novel have overwhelmingly concluded that corruption is the preoccupation of the text. This view appears skewed in many respects. This paper argues that the corpus assisted approach can contribute methodologies to support objective investigation of the subject matters of the text. This study, adopting the corpus-assisted approach in a mix of numerical data and qualitative description of Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born, used frequencies of the occurrence of pejorative terms in the text to determine the dominant subject matters in the novel. The approach reveals that “rot” and “decay” are the most dominant motifs used, followed by “filth”, “corruption”, and “bribery”. It suggests that clusters, i.e., recurrence of words, characters’ association with the words, and context of use serve as textual cues in thematic exploration. The approach aids in revealing that the real intent of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is that the total breakdown of the society rests on seemingly insignificant characters. The paper has implications for methodological approaches to thematic analysis of literary texts, particularly, the novel.
Recovering the Uneventful: Trauma and Survival in Sade Adeniran's Imagine This
This article discusses Sade Adeniran’s novel Imagine This and its portrayal of the protagonist’s pain and the efforts she makes to recapture the stable life that preceded her traumatic suffering by telling her story in form of diary entries. It follows theoretical models of trauma as explicated by Cathy Caruth and in particular, Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s idea that the subject’s testimony as a necessary catalyst to healing. The article argues that rather than a linear movement from trauma, through testimony, to healing, Imagine This re-conceptualizes traumatic experience and healing as a complex journey that is shaped by multiple trauma events rather than a single one. Thus, the subject’s testimony is constantly interrupted successive sufferings, thereby postponing closure and healing. This relation between the subject and pain implies the individual produces many testimonies rather than one, a crucial strategy for re-imagining the self and to begin the complex journey towards healing.
Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born in the History of African Literature: A Critical Analysis of a Landmark Novel
This study shows the central position held by Ayi Kwei Aramh’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born in the African literary world. It tries to prove that the publishing of this work was a landmark in the early post-colonial context of African literature. Through a series of breaks from still prevailing colonial and neocolonial literary discourses, it has initiated an innovative aesthetics which has left a tremendous legacy which is being continued by subsequent generations.
Representation of The Other in Ghanaian Literary Texts: A Reading of Some Selected Works
Ghanaian literary texts have been greatly influenced by post-colonial theory which tends to depict and (expose) the inaccuracy of the duality embedded in western imperialism manifested in the concepts of the self and the other. With post-colonial theory as background and specifically the theoretical formulations from Said’s Orientalism (1978), Bhabha’s The location of Culture (1994), and Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (2001), this paper examines how Ghanaian written literature re-inscribes the concept of the Other with intent of justifying the existence of the advantageous self which apparently denigrates the other. Using textual analysis of some representative texts, I argue that Ghanaian literary artists portray the concepts of the self and the other with different connotations and permutations which reflect the ideals of the society within the geo-political space of world Literatures.
Permanence of the Negative in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
The present essay identifies the defining feature of Armah’s first novel as changelessness in the negative carried by language steeped in scatology. It pitches this reading against Armah’s later efforts at signaling missed optimism. The later reading raises also technical considerations that should make the novel’s scatology less irritating to readers’ senses. This essay argues that the changelessness derives from the perspective that frames the novel. That perspective, cast in the metaphysical method of reflection, conceives the world as made up of things ‘ready-made’, ‘rigid’. This, the essay argues, forbids the possibility of change and regeneration that Armah reads, post facto, into the novel.
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