What's My Slice of African Genre Fiction?
In July, 2008, I blogged about the importance of genre expansion in African Fiction, branching off into sci-fi/fantasy, romance, horror, and other neglected genres. Around the same time I discovered there were African writers doing this already,from the detective fiction guru Alexander McCall Smith of the now popularised The Number 1 Lady Detective series on HBO, Lauri Kabuitsile of Botswana who is a full-time writer producing multi-genre literature,to my friend Ivor W.Hartmann whose science fiction piece "Mr Goop" won the Baobab Fiction price for young readers. The much-awaited story has just been published for the first time on African Writing, a nod of approval from this very literary African journal.
Even as I have written about the need for such genre expansion, I have continued to stick with the literary fiction in my writing and, to a great extent, in my teaching. Most of the students coming to our fiction workshops in colleges bring many vampire and machine stories, often to be told, immediately, to write about real people doing real things in an imagined world. I have played my part, and I am proud, because those are the established standards in many of our courses. However, I have been thinking about what genre I would excel in if I were to free that part of me for a moment. The word "free" here is serious because as a literature major I was trained heavily in literary fiction which dismissed Stephen King in a second. By learning literature in Africa and in the United States, I joined the group of literary canonizers who would say read Dean Koontz or Danielle Steele but don't bring them closer to the literary pages of your essays. And all that is good, I concluded, as I mulled over Moby Dick and returned to Chaucer (in Middle English, which kinda sounded like Shona to me). All that was beautiful and it prepared me thoroughly for my career (as a teacher).
Now, the writer in me asks: "What genre or popular fiction field would I excel in?"
I have always dreamed (some say "dreamt") about writing horror fiction. Such fiction, informed by the core beliefs of the Shona culture that reared me and sometimes coming out of my dreams, would make great reading, stories of ghosts that would seem "real" and deadly, stories of a kind of witchcraft that would make the wizardry of the Harry Potter world look like a silly joke. Even Stephen King would consider a career change. But.... I am too damn literary to be (is it?)horrifying.
I understand, then, when Lauri, for instance, says the following:
I am one of the people who shouts the most about the heavy burden African writers have had to carry. They are only expected to put pen to paper if the result is literary, political and serious. So African Sue Townsends had to move on and become accountants or garbage collectors. African Barbara Cartlands became doctors or house maids. Popular fiction just wasn't for Africa- they said. Writers here needed to address African conditions and to the international world Africans don't laugh.
Anyway, let me sit and think. About a possible trilogy: The Ghosts of Mototi.
Even as I have written about the need for such genre expansion, I have continued to stick with the literary fiction in my writing and, to a great extent, in my teaching. Most of the students coming to our fiction workshops in colleges bring many vampire and machine stories, often to be told, immediately, to write about real people doing real things in an imagined world. I have played my part, and I am proud, because those are the established standards in many of our courses. However, I have been thinking about what genre I would excel in if I were to free that part of me for a moment. The word "free" here is serious because as a literature major I was trained heavily in literary fiction which dismissed Stephen King in a second. By learning literature in Africa and in the United States, I joined the group of literary canonizers who would say read Dean Koontz or Danielle Steele but don't bring them closer to the literary pages of your essays. And all that is good, I concluded, as I mulled over Moby Dick and returned to Chaucer (in Middle English, which kinda sounded like Shona to me). All that was beautiful and it prepared me thoroughly for my career (as a teacher).
Now, the writer in me asks: "What genre or popular fiction field would I excel in?"
I have always dreamed (some say "dreamt") about writing horror fiction. Such fiction, informed by the core beliefs of the Shona culture that reared me and sometimes coming out of my dreams, would make great reading, stories of ghosts that would seem "real" and deadly, stories of a kind of witchcraft that would make the wizardry of the Harry Potter world look like a silly joke. Even Stephen King would consider a career change. But.... I am too damn literary to be (is it?)horrifying.
I understand, then, when Lauri, for instance, says the following:
I am one of the people who shouts the most about the heavy burden African writers have had to carry. They are only expected to put pen to paper if the result is literary, political and serious. So African Sue Townsends had to move on and become accountants or garbage collectors. African Barbara Cartlands became doctors or house maids. Popular fiction just wasn't for Africa- they said. Writers here needed to address African conditions and to the international world Africans don't laugh.
Anyway, let me sit and think. About a possible trilogy: The Ghosts of Mototi.
Comments
As you say there are elements to African (Shona) mythology that would scare the hell out of an unknowing reader. Masimba Musodza has done just this, and to great effect, in a short story at ST called Framed.
Sometimes people think I am irreverent about great literature or "literary" works (conversationally), but this is not the case. Rather that I am in my situation, all for African writers expanding to fill every existing genre and create a few new ones too. If along the way a work becomes considered a great literary work, well that's icing on the cake.
I enjoyed "Framed"; and of, course the possibility of creating genres is tempting.
Where can I access your horror story? I would love to read it.
That's all I'm saying Emmanuel, we as African writers must give ourselves the freedom to write anything.
And if people aren't reading anything they're certainly not reading literary African fiction.
Then along came Achebe in 1958, and Africa breathed. At last, a serious novel that put the dignity back into Afn civilisation. A novel in which empire struck black. Also emerging were Ngugi, Soyinka, and all those guys for whom writing was an act of righting.
Thus the tradition of serious African fiction is born. When we rejected Tutuola, we rejected plurality in our writing, and publishers responded by setting a template for what is fiction from Africa, and it was a literary fiction template.
And why not?
It is lucrative for its writers. It is prestigious for its publishers. It is brownie points for the liberal middle class conscience.
So the pattern is set. The African writer who wants to make it as a writer in the serious centres of publishing writes literary fiction.
Popular fiction, in the literary meaning of fiction for the people must be "of the people". In other words, it emerges from its base. As long as we have no publishers publishing this fiction in Africa itself, we will get nowhere.
The salvation of popular fiction for Africa is in the hands of African publishers.
And the picture is looking bright.
Storymoja is doing phenomenal things combining popular and literary fiction titles. Farafina is expanding by leaps and bounds. Our sister Zukiswa Warner is the queen of chick lit in South Africa.
And Lion Press is publishing vasts amount of popular fiction.
Things are looking up.
The market is in Africa and it must be developed in Africa.
So then it seems the readership is there waiting; it's the African publishers which need to step up the game in the field of popular fiction. The money isn't only in setbook.
Emmanuel as for read The Christmas Wedding I was told it was published in a pamphlet somewhere in SA and from that has gone to this year's Caine- can genre fiction win the Caine??? I'm not hopeful. Anyway, if you'd like, I could email it to you.
Be it horror, sci-fi, romance, we should get writing stories that have one leg this side and the other leg the other side. Going populists will widen our domestic market so that we aren't read only in the West (ok, and in South Africa; but then we shouldn't totally give up the traditions of the African novel, where it has always been a powerful cultural tool with implications beyond entertainment . If we give these traditions up, then we risk producing very haphazard work as well as losing all relevance to the shaping of our communities. For me striking a balance between the two is my goal as a writer.