Foreword to African Chronicles by Uzoma Esonwanne
Among the most powerful memories of my childhood was being bundled “home” from Ikom in 1967.Before that violent expulsion from the Nigerian border town, I had always known Ikom as home. Thereafter, it ceased to be home, its place subsequently taken by a village in, first, my “region of origin,” and subsequently my “state of origin.” Almost half a century later, I am often filled with dread when confronted by this sinister phrase in passports and other forms. Now, thanks to Burris Devanney’s African Chronicles: a memoir, I know why: when on August 1, 1966, Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon “ordered soldiers across the country to return to their region [sic] of origin,” he not only split the military but also redefined our citizenship. Thereafter, one could no longer just be a Nigerian; one always has to be a kind “of” Nigerian.
Details of this kind which touch on the political history of Nigeria and Zimbabwe, two countries where Burris and Louanne Devanney resided in the mid–1960s, saturate African Chronicles – recounted with the wit, clarity, and brevity that only a true literary craftsman could possess.
Why is it that the “bright prospects” that lit up the African landscape in the 1960s have dimmed, it asks. Why have African peoples been immiserated by poverty just as the Aid Industry has blossomed into one of the most solid pillars of globalization?
By recalling the events in which, as idealist expatriates, they became unwittingly embroiled as witnesses, Burris and Louanne (for her insights and perceptions animate the narrative and deepen its argument) contend that what has happened is the repudiation of “secular development” such as was practiced by missionaries like those they met at Tegwani in Zimbabwe and the substitution of the “sustainable development strategies” of various statal, parastatal, and transnational (agencies that, seeking quick–fix solutions for deep structural problems, mobilized a vast army of “latter day saints” in “their white Range Rovers and white Toyotas” assisted by “celebrity aid” artists in “white hats and . . . white faces.” So, far from waxing lyrical about those lost prospects, African Chronicles offers us a searing indictment of these “Masters of Development” who, by retaining control of “the purse strings in the Great Game of Development,” constrain the efforts of “genuine development experts” whose commitment to their communities and projects is long–term.
Yet African Chronicles is not morbid, nostalgic, or cynical.
Rather, its aim is to inspire a rethinking of the pathology that since the 1970s has structured the relationship between recipient (African) and donor (largely but not exclusively Western) governments and multinational agencies. With its recollections and arguments grounded in extensive and exhaustive research and punctuated with epigraphs from near and far and from Aeschylusto Naipaul, and substantiated with photographs, charts, and endnotes, African Chronicles is a literary memoir of development.
But, predicated as it is on the premise that Africans, like people everywhere, are capable of managing their affairs efficiently if their interlocutors engage them as participants rather than supplicants, it is unlikely to receive a universal welcome. That some of its sources include apologists of colonialism such as Elspeth Huxley might not endear it to others. Still, to those who care about Africa and Africans, African Chronicles is undoubtedly a volume that would eventually earn its place on the shelf beside works by [such writers as Nobel laureate] Wangari Maathai.
_________________________________
Uzoma Esonwanne, Ph.D. (UNB), a Nigerian-Canadian, is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. His research interests include psychoanalysis and African literatures, the poetry of Christopher Okigbo, post-colonial literature and literature of the African diaspora.
Reviewed [Dr. Esonwanne's web link at U of T: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/complit/facultyprofiles.html#eson1]
____________________________________________
Uzoma Esonwanne
"To date, three issues have dominated my scholarship: literary reference, the theory and poetics of repetition, and psychopathologies of colonial and racial subjection (what I’ve called “the crisis of the soul”). Of these, the first has taken up the bulk of my time and, thus, yielded publications on worldly experience and literary epistemology (Bâ, So Long a Letter) and the efficacy of African novels as narratives of testimony (Ngũgĩ, A Grain of Wheat). Underlying the arguments I make in these projects has been a guiding premise: that, in the context of postcolonial African literatures, language has felt, and borne, the burdens of myth, history, and prophecy, and that to do them justice criticism cannot ignore this fact. This premise also underpins my treatment of the theory and poetics of repetition in modern culture, subjective dimensions of human experience in African literature, and literary self–making in African and Diasporic letters. Although over the years I have occasionally undertaken projects indirectly or unrelated to these issues (my Christopher Okigbo is an example), I would like to believe that such digressions deepen my understanding of these complex issues and afford me a unique scholarly vantage point."
Details of this kind which touch on the political history of Nigeria and Zimbabwe, two countries where Burris and Louanne Devanney resided in the mid–1960s, saturate African Chronicles – recounted with the wit, clarity, and brevity that only a true literary craftsman could possess.
Why is it that the “bright prospects” that lit up the African landscape in the 1960s have dimmed, it asks. Why have African peoples been immiserated by poverty just as the Aid Industry has blossomed into one of the most solid pillars of globalization?
By recalling the events in which, as idealist expatriates, they became unwittingly embroiled as witnesses, Burris and Louanne (for her insights and perceptions animate the narrative and deepen its argument) contend that what has happened is the repudiation of “secular development” such as was practiced by missionaries like those they met at Tegwani in Zimbabwe and the substitution of the “sustainable development strategies” of various statal, parastatal, and transnational (agencies that, seeking quick–fix solutions for deep structural problems, mobilized a vast army of “latter day saints” in “their white Range Rovers and white Toyotas” assisted by “celebrity aid” artists in “white hats and . . . white faces.” So, far from waxing lyrical about those lost prospects, African Chronicles offers us a searing indictment of these “Masters of Development” who, by retaining control of “the purse strings in the Great Game of Development,” constrain the efforts of “genuine development experts” whose commitment to their communities and projects is long–term.
Yet African Chronicles is not morbid, nostalgic, or cynical.
Rather, its aim is to inspire a rethinking of the pathology that since the 1970s has structured the relationship between recipient (African) and donor (largely but not exclusively Western) governments and multinational agencies. With its recollections and arguments grounded in extensive and exhaustive research and punctuated with epigraphs from near and far and from Aeschylusto Naipaul, and substantiated with photographs, charts, and endnotes, African Chronicles is a literary memoir of development.
But, predicated as it is on the premise that Africans, like people everywhere, are capable of managing their affairs efficiently if their interlocutors engage them as participants rather than supplicants, it is unlikely to receive a universal welcome. That some of its sources include apologists of colonialism such as Elspeth Huxley might not endear it to others. Still, to those who care about Africa and Africans, African Chronicles is undoubtedly a volume that would eventually earn its place on the shelf beside works by [such writers as Nobel laureate] Wangari Maathai.
_________________________________
Uzoma Esonwanne, Ph.D. (UNB), a Nigerian-Canadian, is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. His research interests include psychoanalysis and African literatures, the poetry of Christopher Okigbo, post-colonial literature and literature of the African diaspora.
Reviewed [Dr. Esonwanne's web link at U of T: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/complit/facultyprofiles.html#eson1]
____________________________________________
Uzoma Esonwanne
"To date, three issues have dominated my scholarship: literary reference, the theory and poetics of repetition, and psychopathologies of colonial and racial subjection (what I’ve called “the crisis of the soul”). Of these, the first has taken up the bulk of my time and, thus, yielded publications on worldly experience and literary epistemology (Bâ, So Long a Letter) and the efficacy of African novels as narratives of testimony (Ngũgĩ, A Grain of Wheat). Underlying the arguments I make in these projects has been a guiding premise: that, in the context of postcolonial African literatures, language has felt, and borne, the burdens of myth, history, and prophecy, and that to do them justice criticism cannot ignore this fact. This premise also underpins my treatment of the theory and poetics of repetition in modern culture, subjective dimensions of human experience in African literature, and literary self–making in African and Diasporic letters. Although over the years I have occasionally undertaken projects indirectly or unrelated to these issues (my Christopher Okigbo is an example), I would like to believe that such digressions deepen my understanding of these complex issues and afford me a unique scholarly vantage point."
African Chronicles is in bookstores throughout Atlantic Canada and in independent bookstores across Canada.
Books may be ordered directly from the publisher at www.newworldpublishing.com.
Or by toll-free telephone # 1-877-211-3334
Or on line at www.chaptersindigo.ca or www.amazon.com
In the new year African Chronicles will be available in most bookstore chains in the USA and the UK through Ingram. A truly international story with strong connections to Canada and Nova Scotia, it will also be available in Australia/NZ in the early spring.
Burris Devanney's email : devanney@eastlink.ca
Books may be ordered directly from the publisher at www.newworldpublishing.com.
Or by toll-free telephone # 1-877-211-3334
Or on line at www.chaptersindigo.ca or www.amazon.com
In the new year African Chronicles will be available in most bookstore chains in the USA and the UK through Ingram. A truly international story with strong connections to Canada and Nova Scotia, it will also be available in Australia/NZ in the early spring.
Burris Devanney's email : devanney@eastlink.ca
