"We, Too, Rise with You": Recovering Langston Hughes's African Turn 1954-1960 in An African Treasury, the Chicago Defender, and Black Orpheus

African American Review, Fall, 2007 by Daniel Won-gu Kim

In his introduction to the 1960 anthology, Hughes describes how he corresponded personally with the many writers he had encountered while judging the Drum contest--a remarkable group including Nigerian novelists Amos Tutuola and Cyprian Ekwensi, Ghanaian woman dramatist Efua Sutherland, and South African writer Es'kia Mphahlele. Moreover, he eventually had a call for contributions circulated widely throughout Africa: "To Prime Minister Azikiwe's chain of newspapers in Nigeria, I sent a letter asking for contributions.... My request was reprinted in numerous other papers in other parts of Africa. Within a few weeks, I began to receive floods of material from all over English-speaking Africa" (African Treasury ix). And what came out of Hughes's six years immersed in these "floods" of African writing? The anti-colonial nationalist and pan-Africanist consciousness suggested in Hughes's sarcastic remarks in his letter to Bontemps about Liberian writers--"inhibited by being part American, I suppose'--is confirmed by examining the texts in the anthology that had originally set Hughes to "dreaming Nigeria in my sleep." The Nigerians "who write most vividly" are writers who will become key figures not only in building a new national Nigerian literature but in modern postcolonial African literature as a whole: Ekwensi, Tutuola, Okara, Soyinka. The South Africans "who write most poetically" are Richard Rive and Peter Abrahams, whose stories illuminate the sparks of resistance among South Africans struggling against apartheid in their daily lives. Indeed, virtually all of the writers in Hughes's African Treasury were militant anti-colonial writers and stood prominently at the cultural frontlines of the struggle to birth a liberated black Africa. No wonder the anthology was promptly banned by the government of the Union of South Africa.

Considering the contemporaneity of many of the anthology's works, then, the title of Hughes's African anthology is somewhat misleading. "An African Treasury" suggests whimsy, nostalgia--it leads one to expect folktales, "golden classics." But the promotion of the fifth paperback edition makes very clear the volume's timely appeal and forward-looking purpose. The back cover to the fifth paperback edition bears the following text:

WHAT IS AFRICA LIKE TODAY?

   Here are some of the answers ... from natives of the once dark
   continent. Their works reflect the massive conflicts stirring the
   people from Senegal to Capetown. Here is the African personality,
   its pride of race, its pride in country, expressed in humor,
   pathos, protest and affirmation. From primitive folk story to
   polished political discussion, from gentle poetry to thunderous
   work song, all elements give voice to the native black African
   cry....

   MAYIBUYE AFRIKA!

   LONG LIVE AFRIKA!

   COME BACK AFRIKA!

The African freedom cry--Mayibuye Afrika!--is a touchstone for the volume's cultural politics, and Hughes also uses it to conclude his own introduction to the anthology. The slogan, however, is difficult to translate into English. The innovative double translation that Hughes uses--"Long live Africa! Come back Africa!- appears in an essay in the anthology by Es'kia Mphahlele. In "Accra Conference Diary," Mphahlele explains that "Mayibuye!" is typically translated as "Long live!" but means literally "Come back!" (41). The vibrant militant spirit of this freedom cry is captured in Mphahele's essay, which offers his personal account of the All-African Peoples Conference held in Ghana in 1958, an historic gathering in the development of organized anti-colonial pan-Africanism in the 1960s. The conference ends with Mphahlele's cry: "SATURDAY 13. Full delegations confirm resolutions as above. Tom Mboya gives closing remarks. Dr. Nkrumah is on the platform. The entertainment chief asks us to sing Nkosi Sikelel'i Afrika and Morena Boloka Sechaba. I explain our thumb-raising, pointing to the large map of Africa drawn on the wall, and ask the audience to respond "Mayibuye!" to "Afrika!" (41). Besides the map of Africa, Mphahlele describes wall banners carrying the famous slogans--Nkrumah's "We prefer independence with danger to servitude in tranquility" and Toure's "We prefer independence in poverty to servitude with plenty." Together with Mayibuye Afrika!, these slogans express the anti-colonial nationalist character of the conference as well as of Hughes's anthology.