Drawing on the Past, Regenerating the Present: A Comparison of the Works of Ayi Kwei Armah and Nicolás Guillén

<p>Novelist Ayi Kwei Armah and poet Nicolás Guillén are, respectively, Ghanaian and Cuban writers who embody the efforts of mid-twentieth-century artists to depict the day-to-day socio-political conditions and struggles of societies seeking to move beyond histories of racial and economic oppression. Both engage powerfully and controversially with ongoing debates around damaging colonial histories and disappointing contemporary realities. The achievement of independence did not usher in the new, improved nations sought by way of struggle and suffering in either country. Uncompromisingly, Armah’s and Guillén’s works portray both the irredeemable parts of colonial histories and those that can be put to the benefit of the present, together with the tension that this disparity between expectation and achievement engenders. Granted the varied nature of the subject matter of the works of the two authors and the seeming lack of relation between them, this study makes use of a selection of theoretical frameworks to find common ground for analysing their work. The analysis of Nicolás Guillén’s poetry is based on concepts fundamental to Latin American social and cultural criticism, notably, the ideology of whitening or blanqueamiento, cultural mixing or mestizaje, and feminist criticism. The study of Ayi Kwei Armah’s first novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968) employs socio-cultural theories including traditional Ghanaian concepts such sankofa and the Akan symbol of adinkra, together with Jean Paul Sartre’s concept of the “engaged writer.” This thesis argues that, in spite of their different national and ethnic backgrounds, both writers draw on traditional aspects of African culture to provide the impetus for social and cultural regeneration in their societies. Critics have read Armah as presenting disillusioned and decadent images of Ghana and promoting limited roles for women in his work. Guillén too has been portrayed by critics as offering an objectified representation of women in his poetry of the 1920s and 1930s and has been accused of ignoring, as a poet of meztizaje or ethnic mixture, the issues of Blacks and Blackness. This thesis contests these limiting critical positions, arguing that the writers’ representations of women, Blacks and Blackness are more positive and progressive than has been allowed. Acknowledging the burden of racist histories, the false promise of postcolonial liberation, the blatant corruption and the unrealised expectations of their times, they nevertheless allow for the possibility of regeneration in the societies they both dissect and, in part, restore.</p>

Drawing on the Past, Regenerating the Present: A Comparison of the Works of Ayi Kwei Armah and Nicolás Guillén

<p>Novelist Ayi Kwei Armah and poet Nicolás Guillén are, respectively, Ghanaian and Cuban writers who embody the efforts of mid-twentieth-century artists to depict the day-to-day socio-political conditions and struggles of societies seeking to move beyond histories of racial and economic oppression. Both engage powerfully and controversially with ongoing debates around damaging colonial histories and disappointing contemporary realities. The achievement of independence did not usher in the new, improved nations sought by way of struggle and suffering in either country. Uncompromisingly, Armah’s and Guillén’s works portray both the irredeemable parts of colonial histories and those that can be put to the benefit of the present, together with the tension that this disparity between expectation and achievement engenders. Granted the varied nature of the subject matter of the works of the two authors and the seeming lack of relation between them, this study makes use of a selection of theoretical frameworks to find common ground for analysing their work. The analysis of Nicolás Guillén’s poetry is based on concepts fundamental to Latin American social and cultural criticism, notably, the ideology of whitening or blanqueamiento, cultural mixing or mestizaje, and feminist criticism. The study of Ayi Kwei Armah’s first novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968) employs socio-cultural theories including traditional Ghanaian concepts such sankofa and the Akan symbol of adinkra, together with Jean Paul Sartre’s concept of the “engaged writer.” This thesis argues that, in spite of their different national and ethnic backgrounds, both writers draw on traditional aspects of African culture to provide the impetus for social and cultural regeneration in their societies. Critics have read Armah as presenting disillusioned and decadent images of Ghana and promoting limited roles for women in his work. Guillén too has been portrayed by critics as offering an objectified representation of women in his poetry of the 1920s and 1930s and has been accused of ignoring, as a poet of meztizaje or ethnic mixture, the issues of Blacks and Blackness. This thesis contests these limiting critical positions, arguing that the writers’ representations of women, Blacks and Blackness are more positive and progressive than has been allowed. Acknowledging the burden of racist histories, the false promise of postcolonial liberation, the blatant corruption and the unrealised expectations of their times, they nevertheless allow for the possibility of regeneration in the societies they both dissect and, in part, restore.</p>

For Popularity, Pleasure, or Other Reasons? The Treatment of Sex in The Novels of Ayi Kwei Armah

Sex or the intimate relationship between or among characters is an act that is explicitly depicted in the novels of Ayi Kwei Armah for various purposes. The purpose of sex should not just be sex for the sake of sex, or for the sake of making a writer ‘popular’. The paper argues that the act of sex plays a number of literary functions in these relationships. The thematic as well as other literary relevance of sex is explored through literary concepts such as ‘linguistic foregrounding’ and ‘paradigmatic associations’. Through these literary concepts of stylistic analysis, it becomes clear that sex plays the following roles in Armah’s novels: serves as an avenue for characterization; establishes a relationship as loving or adrift; is a tool of oppression and also vengeance; creates suspense and retains readers’ interest; obscures the real story plot for a literary effect such as ‘to motivate but also shock his (Armah’s) audience into activity’ (Fubara 72); and cures characters’ negative emotions like loneliness and anguish, among other roles. The paper concludes that Armah’s treatment of sex in largely explicit terms in his novels is not gratuitous, but fundamental for the appreciation of his literary works.