The Beauty of African Literature

When it’s time for a butterfly to fly away, it wiggles out of the cacoon it’s been imprisoned in. Absolutely nothing can keep it encased forever. Storytellers too can’t help themselves. Those stories wiggle their wings within their minds until they fly away. They have to escape into the huge world. I think that is what makes literature beautiful. It springs from hearts that cannot contain themselves. Whose mandate is to share or die for what is a storyteller’s life without telling stories?

For many storytellers, the stories within leave them restless until they share them. They may begin by writing for themselves. Often, they may fear that their musing might not make sense to anyone else. We begin by writing to satisfy our innate creative urge until other people begin to whisper into our ears that our musings mean something to them. Such has been the tale of many of us.

It was May 31, last year when I stumbled upon an announcement that was to change my life. That was the call from Afrobloggers for us to sign up for the 2023 Storytelling Festival. I was intrigued and instantly followed my instincts to signed up before I changed my mind albeit rather scared.

With the Storytelling Festival starting the next day, how was I to craft stories for the entire festival? That’s why I signed up for only 5 blogs, one for every blogging week of that festival. If someone had told me that I was to blog away that entire month and the next one, I would have told them that “it’s a lie.”

One blog entry was all I needed to be set ablaze. I failed to sleep in peace. Stories from bloggers all around this amazing continent kept me awake. The stories in my mind too couldn’t leave me alone. This digital fireplace was flaming hot as creatives reminded me of stories around the fire place, and as they pulled me into this community of story enthusiasts. Never in my life had I ever consumed as much African Literature as I did during WinterABC23.

Not only was it relatable but also interesting and educational. Ladies and gentlemen, I was very high on Africanized stories. I got to appreciate how though separated by  country boundaries, presidents and policies, we as Africans are all the same. I got to be integrated into a community of African Storytellers and I now look forward to every WinterABC.

Ngugi WA Thiongo, Camara Laye and Wole Soyinka had introduced me to African Literature, but I struggled to understand what their characters had gone through as a result of colonialism and the introduction of christianity. That’s why when I finished school, I bid farewell to African tales and replaced them with America and European novels, but the bloggers on these streets made me fall in love with contemporary African tales.

I am now a proud African Blogger as I scatter bits and pieces of my own African haven and watch in amazement as other bloggers who have never been to the Pearl of African sqeal with delight that the same applies to their motherlands. The Beauty of African Literature is it’s power to capture our lived African experiences and transport them both all around the world and into the future for everyone to have a slice of our world, to learn from them and perhaps be changed for good.