Of Dreams Deferred, Dead or Alive: African Perspectives on African-American Writers. - Review - book reviews

African American Review, Fall, 1999 by Adebayo Williams

Femi Ojo-Ade, ed. Westport: Greenwood P, 1996. 192 pp. $59.95.

Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham/Savannah College of Art and Design

The publication of this collection of essays is quite timely. It comes at a critical political conjuncture: the intercession between global capitalism at its most dominant phase and the global cultural logic. But more importantly, it comes at a time of renewed cultural and intellectual ferment between the "Third World" and the United States of America. This ferment could be seen in the considerable visibility currently enjoyed in America by that intellectual hybrid known as post-colonial criticism, the emergence on American campuses of a diasporic intelligentsia of African origins, and the intellectual as well as cultural backlash this has provoked. This book is bound to provoke further debates and disputations about this phenomenon as well as a healthy reassessment of the cultural and ideological provenance of the creative endeavors of leading African American writers.

It is just as well. That many African American writers owe the inspiration and ideological thrust of the majority of their artistic output to the phenomenon of slavery and its African antecedents is not in doubt. Indeed, virtually all of these writers have had to define their political and literary identity in terms of the scars of slavery and of their African heritage. The strategy of containment has varied from writer to writer, ranging from a stark and unambiguous identification with the African continent, to a middle-of-the-road and often precarious accommodation of hostile political reality, to a hostile repudiation of African roots. What has been missing in these weighty and worthy disquisitions is authentic African input. As Femi Ojo-Ade, the editor of this collection of essays, succinctly puts it: "While outsiders have had ample opportunity to assess that complex relationship, Africans, the insiders, have largely been silent."

This book will surely redress this "silence." It is then a satisfying and happy coincidence that majority of the contributors to the book are themselves writer/critics. They bring to their various topics an acuity of imaginative perception and sensitivity to creative nuances. The result is sympathetic readings of individual writers, often informed by remarkable insights. The editor, Femi Ojo-Ade, himself a noted creative artist, is particularly well-placed to execute the task. Having taught foreign languages in universities in Canada, America, and Nigeria, where he was the head of the modern languages department at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, he has also written extensively on the Black culture in Brazil. Ojo-Ade brings these weighty antecedents to bear on the volume.

Divided into thirteen chapters, with an introduction as well as an afterword, the book opens with Ojo-Ade's excellent essay, which provides a thematic overview of the entire volume as well as a cogent summary of the critical issues at stake. In a shrewd survey of leading African American writers and cultural icons, Ojo-Ade does not leave anybody in doubt about his position as well as his ideological commitment to the emancipation of the Black race. His is a militant and uncompromising Afrocentricism which takes umbrage at any attempt to denigrate Black culture as inferior and unworthy. An advocate of continuous rapport and rapprochement between the Black community in America and Africa, Ojo-Ade sees mutual misunderstanding and distrust as factors reinforcing the cleavages, discontinuities, and deferred dreams.

In his own contribution, Ohaegbulam focuses on the pivotal figure of W. E. B. Du Bois. Widely acknowledged and revered as the "intellectual and spiritual father of Pan-Africanism," Du Bois is often seen as emblematic of the heroic struggle of the African American for recognition, and his exemplary career a trope for the political and economic empowerment of the Black race as a whole. Ohaegbulam quotes approvingly Du Bois's declaration of intent and battle-plan: "These are my plans: to make a name in science, to make a name in literature and thus to raise my race." It is a pity and perhaps the signal lacuna of this book is that commensurate space could not be found to dissect the work of Booker T. Washington, Du Bois's arch intellectual antagonist and main rival. This gives the impression of an unhealthy foreclosure, which is regrettable since the debate between the two protagonists continues to have a resonance for contemporary Black cultural politics. Nevertheless, Ohaegbulam is alert to the conflicts and contradictions generated by Du Bois's extraordinary career.

Eddie Omotayo Asgill provides an absorbing chronicle of Langston Hughes's ambiguous pilgrimage to Africa, and the resulting cultural and intellectual fiasco. A man of spontaneous and unsullied exuberance, Hughes could be described as an authentic rebel with a cause. If his encounter with Africa cured him of his romanticization and idealization of his ancestral roots, it also infused his work with a renewed vigor and urgency about the dark fate and unfortunate plight of the Black man both in Africa and the diaspora. Hughes's poetry took on a militant and radical edge which was to cause him considerable personal inconveniences in the claustrophobic milieu of the McCarthy era. It is probably not a coincidence that this collection takes its title from Hughes's poem "A Dream Deferred."