Writing in New Tongues: Re-Directions in the Works of Dambudzo Marechera and Ben Okri

Abstract

The growth of African literature in the postcolonial era has at times paralleled and imitated the social, political, cultural and economic processes on the continent. Indeed, most of the literatures written and published in the years after the 1960s reflect both the dynamism of modern free Africa and the continent’s problems too. A number of earlier African writers such as Achebe, Soyinka, Ngugi, Okello Oculi, Ama Ata Aidoo, Grace Ogot, Taban lo Liyong and Okot p’Bitek, to mention a few, enthusiastically introduced African literature to the rest of the world in a language of optimism. However, events in the subsequent years have bedevilled Africa with natural and man-made disasters which have destabilized and unsettled the continent. New voices, such as Nurrudin Farah, Ben Okri, Dambudzo Marechera, and Yvonne Vera among others, continued the tradition of re-telling the African story but in new tongues. This essay argues that the fiction of Ben Okri and Dambudzo Marechera proposes re-directions in the character of African literature. I argue that the two writers are illustrative of a new crop of African authors whose works grapple with African reality in the latter decades of the 20th century Africa, in new and inventive styles and grammars.