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Panelist Hetty ter Haar |
Nativity and Africans in the New Global World Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, Western Illinois University Once in a presentation in Toulouse,
France, Wole Soyinka, who had escaped from Abatcha's butchering dagger
to exile in America, rejected the claim that he was actually in exile. "My
spirit never left Nigeria," he insisted. “To be in exile,
mind and body must be there. My mind remains in Nigeria.” Chinua
Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'O and Tess Onwueme, all African writers in
America would, like Soyinka, drum the bell of their “in-spirit” rootedness
to Africa while energetically globalizing from the cyber-spots of their
American offices, an act less available to writers and scholars physically
living in Nigeria or Kenya. Exploring from my interviews of Achebe
and Ngugi and drawing widely from these and other author's writings,
this paper will propose why exiled African writers reflecting on a
global mirror from America or Europe still assert a claim to a "native
rootedness" into their postcolonial Africa. Yet, in what language
is the game of African nativity played by these contemporary globalized
Africans? |