Hello Steemians. Today, I would like to discuss a literary issue; that of writing fantasies. Often times, African writers who have interests in writing fantasies encounter some form of opposition from a lot of readers who dismiss writing fantasies on the basis of it not being an "African" thing.
The reason for this is "identifiability" as we will discuss today. I think it is safe to assume that most fantasy stories you will read from African writers will have a glaring Western tincture. Why? Because there are very few renowned African writers of fantasy, hence, all the fantasy stories you must have read must have come from foreign shores.
I'm a huge fan of fantasy. I love reading Tolkien, Martin, Rowling, and the likes. But it is important to observe that the worlds they built bore high levels of similarity to their actual worlds..in fact, they were just caricatures and exaggerations of them.. So unless you, as an African writer, are capable of creating a world that will bear a significant semblance to your world as an African, you'll find yourself dipping into alien pots and creating worlds even you know nothing about...
Check out most of the fantasies you know. One can easily identify the qualities of ancient Western traditions in them, in all their diversity,,,some of them are but expanded legends, exploded lores, and the likes,,and pay a kind of tribute to the writer's own world... You have to be able to do this; to have your fantasy pay a kind of tribute to your own world. Else, one would pick up your book and conclude that you spent your life reading about another person's world and got so engrossed in it that you forgot you had your own... I remember when I started writing, with all my Western classics behind me, I was merely duplicating worlds I knew nothing about on my page, and for me, there would always, always be this unoriginality about them.. It is important to be original. Not just to "do you".. A lot of times, we do " other people" thinking we're doing us. That's what a lifetime of influences can do.
So if they say "sci-fi" isn't an African thing, understand its because Africa has not had enough "science" in it, academically, to begin with. So while you have to include stories of labs, and researchers, and stuff that would originally create a pristine scientific environment, it would continue to seem less and less credible to one who lives in and knows Africa..
So do we simply abandon fantasy writing? Do we join the established trends in African literature simply because we are scared of being pronounced un-African? No. The truth is, we do not have to prove any Africanness by joining any trend. For crying out loud, Chimamanda Adichie's stories have been criticized as not being "authentically African".. So what's African authenticity? But what makes African literature is not just that it comes from Africans but that it presents a fundamental image of the Africa you know, and see and feel...and that it preserves it,,,and even nourishes it.. Your stories have to come from your end of the world, or they can never be really said to be yours. Else you'll find yourself writing through your favourite fantasy writer's lens... I know,,,let your mind soar... That's beautiful, but do not forget who you are to your people and the burdens and expectations that come with your gift. See, when we say African, sometimes, we refer to the Sub-saharan part of it. And more or less, we all possess something essential and fundamental, that marks us; be it our similar experiences from similar geographic, literary and even political climates or our similar experiences from the fortresses of tales, and stories and traditions and religions and ancestry... This is part of what makes us " African"... The poet Abioseh Nicol, said, in her poem "the meaning of Africa" that:
"You are not a country, O Africa,
You are a concept"..
So being African is in part due to an inherent understanding of the African concept, which the foreigner finds just as difficult as us trying to understand theirs.
Dear writer, DO NOT join any trend. The chances are that the stories you'll write may be branded " not African" anyway even if all the elements of the western world as present in all those fantasy books are not in them. How much more when you decide to create a world no one can identify with. We could learn from Amos Tutuola, who wrote fantasy stories within his identifiable African world and we, and the rest of the world, fell in love with him for it...
The Western authors wrote fantasies with their Western experiences and we identified with them, knowing it was theirs.. I say, write your fantasies, but reach in the vastness of your literary spirit and try to make it too, a unique African experience, then it will be true, and authentic, to you and to Africa, and the rest of the world will identify with it...
Thank you for being a writer...