Long Test in Afro Asian Literature

African Literature
MR. CEDRIC M. RAYLA
ENGLISH INSTRUCTOR

Name:

Date:

Score:

Fill in the blank: Supply each blank with the correct terminology/ies and name/s.
Strictly no erasures.
African Poetry
a. Paris in the Snow swings between assimilation of French, European culture or negritude, intensified by
the poets catholic piety.
b. Totem
by Leopold Senghor shows the eternal linkage of the living with the dead.
c. Letters to Martha by Dennis Brutus is the poets most famous collection that speaks of the humiliation,
the despondency, the indignity of prison life.
d. Train Journey by Dennis Brutus reflects the poets social commitment, as he reacts to the poverty around
him amidst material progress especially and acutely felt by the innocent victims, the children.
e. Africa
by David Diop
is a poem that achieves its impact by a series of climactic sentences and
rhetorical questions.
Novels
1. The Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono points out the disillusionment of Toundi, a boy who leaves his
parents maltreatment to enlist his services as an acolyte to a foreign missionary.
2. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe depicts a vivid picture of Africa before the colonization by
the British. The title is an epigraph from Yeats The Second Coming: things fall apart/the center
cannot hold/ mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
3. No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe is a sequel to Things Fall Apart and the title of which is
alluded to Elliots The Journey of the Magi: We returned to our places, these kingdoms,/ But no
longer at ease here, in the old dispensation.
4. The Poor Christ of Bombay by Mongo Beti begins en medias res and exposes the inhumanity of
colonialism. The novel tells of Fr. Drumonts disillusionment after the discovery of the degradation of
the native women betrothed, but forced to work like slaves in the sixa.
5. The River Between
by James Ngugi
shows the clash of traditional values and contemporary
ethics and mores.
6. Heirs to the Past by Driss Chraili is an allegorical, parable-like novel. After 16 years of absence,
the anti-hero Driss Ferdi returns to Morocco for his fathers funeral. The Signeur leaves his legacy via
a tape recorder in which he tells the family members his last will and testament.
7. A Few Days and Few Nights by Mbella Sonne Dipoko deals with racial prejudice. In the novel
originally written in French, a Cameroonian scholar studying in France is torn between the love of a
Swedish girl and a Parisienne show father owns a business establishment in Africa.
8. The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka is about a group of young intellectuals who function as artists
in their talks with one another as they try to place themselves in the context of the world about them.
Major Writers
1. Leopold Sedar Senghor (1960) is a poet and statesman who was confounder of the Negritude
movement in African art and literature. His works include: Songs of Shadow, Black Offerings, Major
Elegies, Poetical Work. He became president of Senegal in 1960.
2. Okot PBitek (1930-1982) was born in Uganda during the British domination and was embodied in a
contrast of cultures. Among his works are: Song of Lawino, Song of Ocol, African Religions and
Western Scholarship, Religion of the Central Luo, Horn of My Love.
3. Wole Soyinka (1934) is a Nigerian Playwright, poet, novelist, and critic who was the first black
African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Among his works: plays- A Dance of
the Forests, The Lion and the Jewel, The Trials of Brother Jero; novels The Interpreters, Season of
Anomy; poems Idanre andOther Poems, Poems from Prison, A Shuttle in the Crypt, Mandelas
Earth and Other Poems.
4. Chinua Achebe (1930) is a prominent Igbo novelist acclaimed for his unsentimental depictions of the
social and psychological disorientation accompanying the imposition of Western customs and values
upon traditional African society. His particular concern was with emergent Africa at its moments of
crisis. His works include, Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer at ease, A Man of the People,
Anthills of Savanah.
5. Nadine Gordimer (1923) is a South African novelist and short story writer whose major theme was
exile and alienation. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Her works include, The Soft
Voice of the Serpent, Burgers Daughter, Julys People, A Sport of Nature, My Sons Story.

6. Bessie Head (1937-1986) described the contradictions and shortcomings of pre- and postcolonial
African society in morally didactic novels and stories. She suffered rejection and alienation from an
early age being born of an illegal union between her white mother and black father. Her works
include, When Rain Clouds Gather, Question of Power, The Collector of treasures, Serowe.
7. Barbara Kimenye (1940) wrote twelve books on childrens stories known as the
Moses series which are now standard reading fare for African school children. Among her works are:
Kalasandra Revisited, The Smugglers, The money game.
1. Negritude,
which means literally blackness, is the literary movement of the 1030s-1950s that
began among French-speaking African and Caribbean writers living in Paris as a protest against
French colonial rule and the policy of assimilation. Its leading figure was 2. Leopold Sedar Senghor
(1st president of the republic of Senegal in 1960), who along with Aime Cesaire from Martinique and
Leo Damas from French Guina, began to examine Western values critically and to reassess African
culture. The movement largely faded in the early 1960s when its political and cultural objectives had
been achieved in most African countries. The basic ideas behind Negritude include:
TRUE OR FALSE: Write true if the statement is false and write false if the statement is true.
1. f____________ Africans must look to their own cultural heritage to determine the values and
traditions that are most useful in the modern world.
2. f____________Committed writers should use African subject matter and poetic traditions and should
excite a desire for political freedom.
3. f____________Negritude itself encompasses the whole of African cultural, economic, social, and
political values.
4. f____________The value and dignity of African traditions and peoples must be asserted
Essay
1. Distinguish the African literature from Indian, Japanese, and Chinese literatures.
2. Choose Four African writers and list down their 3 major literary contributions in African Literature.