Dear Bookbird Reader,
Contemporary African children’s literature is created especially for African children by African writers. It is intended for their entertainment, education, understanding of cultural and religious traditions, formation of moral values, and initiation into acceptable codes of behavior. It serves as a bridge between the precolonial past and postindependence realities, by recovering the rich traditional literature and making it relevant to the experiences of modern youth. It counteracts the impact of the colonial experience, which was so demeaning to African pride. It gives voice to hitherto marginalized groups and corrects the misrepresentations of historical events. (The Njamba Nene stories of Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Meja Mwangi’s Little White Man, for instance, present the Mau Mau guerrillas as freedom fighters instead of the vicious murderers that colonial accounts made them out to be.) Like traditional storytelling, contemporary African children’s literature is a means of socializing the young and preparing them for the task of nation-building in postcolonial times.

The articles in this issue reflect the multidimensional roles of modern storytellers and the daunting task of making traditions meaningful to the young. Genga-Idowu discusses the difficulty of bridging the gap between oral lore and written literature. Ernest Emenyonu analyzes the epigrammatic codes in Chinua Achebe’s How the Leopard Got His Claws, which present a satirical and thought-provoking reading of the Biafra-Nigeria civil war in the guise of an etiological tale. Mary Boye discusses how the Ghanaian author J. O. de Graft Hanson makes the rich Akan legends and history an integral element of his adventure stories. Rose Mezu takes a feminist and political approach to Buchi Emecheta’s fablelike account of the colonization of Africa in The Rape of Shavi.

The majority of articles we received were on South African children’s literature, representing divergent perspectives. Elwyn Jenkins’s survey of English literature and Thomas van der Walt’s survey of Afrikaans literature trace the historical development of children’s literature from its origins in colonial themes and values to a literature that is trying to assume an inclusive South African identity. Both essays provide an “insider’s” view of the political and social changes after the dismantling of apartheid, as described in the “correctional” stories of cross-cultural friendships and experiences. Jay Heale’s article points out that 81 percent of the fiction published in English in 1996 featured Black children as central characters. South African children’s literature is going through a transitional phase. As Denise Newfield comments elsewhere on the complex situation leading up to the 1994 elections: “Writing about the sensitive and crucial issue of racism is particularly difficult in this interregnum as, all about us, rampantly racist behaviour is evident, even though anti-racism has ostensibly become hegemonic.”1

Analyzing the South African children’s literature scene from the “outsider’s” perspective, one can question whether Black children find themselves reflected with pride in social realist books like Lesley Beake’s The Strollers or in romanticized portrayals of primitive life. The article by Yulisa Amadu Maddy and Donnarae MacCann identifies examples of residual racism or a continuation of a pro-apartheid ideology even in the “progressive” novels—in the perpetuation of historical myths, condescending manner, and stereotyping of characters, themes, and plot resolutions.

My research indicates that there are different ideological attitudes toward multiculturalism in South Africa. Should ethnic diversity be celebrated, or will stressing cultural differences perpetuate the apartheid policy of cultural separation? While some would agree with James Banks, the well-known American advocate of multicultural education, that a positive attitude toward one’s ethnic group leads to self-acceptance and, ultimately, to responding positively to others,2 scholars such as Andrée-Jeanne Tötemeyer believe that children’s books should not “put people into racial or ethnic categories,” but should emphasize commonalities in order to promote “interhuman understanding.”3 It seems that both approaches are essential: that is, the recovery of folk literature that celebrates the heritage and traditions of indigenous cultures (as is already happening) and developing an overarching national literature that embraces the divergent voices of all South African peoples (as in Crossing Over: Stories for a New South Africa [1995], compiled by Linda Rode and Jakes Gerwel).

Now that politics and economic factors are more favorable to the publication of the works of Black writers, especially in the indigenous languages, we look forward to hearing more Black voices like those of Es’kia Mphahele, Njabulo Ndebele, or Elinor Batezat Sisulu on their experiences during apartheid, of their struggles, of their hopes, of their achievements. Would such books be considered divisive at this time of social reconstruction? Or are they part of the healing? Can the healing be extended to the White community?

All these issues are relevant to the entire body of contemporary African children’s literature and, indeed, to postcolonial literatures throughout the world. One of the central issues in try ing to be multicultural is how do we reconcile with the past—not just how we can transform the glorious, precolonial past into a modern myth, but also how we can negotiate the anger, bitterness, guilt, and mistakes of the colonial period. Children’s writers are offering an imaginative, creative response to these questions.

1. Quoted in Miki Flockemann, “Stories of Passage, Stories of Crossings: Trends in South African Youth Literature from 1990 to 1995,” Critical Perspectives on Postcolonial African Children’s and Young Adult Literature, ed. Meena Khorana (Westport: Greenwood, 1998), 146.
2. James A. Banks, Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies (4th ed.; Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1987), 65.
3. Andrée-Jeanne Tötemeyer, “Country Survey: Namibia,” Bookbird 35, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 50.

Letters

To the Point: African children’s literature

(Re)inventing the Past for the Present: Symbolism in Chinua Achebe’s How the Leopard Got His Claws
Ernest N. Emenyonu

The Perspective of the Other: Racism and Woman Power in Buchi
Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi
Rose Ure Mezu

Giving New Life to Akan Legends and History: The Adventure Stories of J. O. de Graft Hanson
Mary Boye

The Development of Afrikaans Children’s Literature
Thomas van der Walt

Ambivalent Signals in South African Young Adult Novels
Yulisa Amadu Maddy and Donnarae MacCann

Other Voices
Kenyan Children’s Literature: Transition from Oral to Written Literature • What Publishers Are Publishing and What Children Want to Read

Regular Features

Focus IBBY
17th Mexican Children’s Book Fair • Latin American IBBY Sections • Stories from North to South • Pages Are Sails, Stories Are Ships • Babies Enjoy Books Too! • Welcome Back, Hungary! • IBBY at Fairs in Moscow and Frankfurt

Country Survey: South Africa
Elwyn Jenkins

Author Spotlight: Véronique Tadjo
Cécile Lebon

International Children’s Books of Note

Professional Literature

News and Announcements

Calendar

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