English Academy Review

Contemporary African Children's Literature and Performance

African children's literature—a body of aesthetic writing or performances embodying the African child’s experiences and targeting children readers or viewers—has come a long way. Before colonialism, it was mainly in the form of folktales and performances enjoyed under moonlit evenings. When colonialism facilitated the introduction of written children’s literature in English which conveyed the culture and worldview of Great Britain, it did so rather as a transfer of a literary product to a reading Other than a transplant of a foreign literature into a local one. Such texts as Snow White, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and many others made the reading list of colonial schools. The next phase, with African writers at its vanguard, challenged Western children’s literature. It took different generic forms—from the incorporation of folktales and other indigenous rhetorical/verbal arts to the depiction of (non-)school youth adventures. Cyprian Ekwensi’s An African Night's Entertainment (Nigeria, 1962); Kola Onadipe’s Sugar Girl (Nigeria, 1964); Onuora Nzekwu and Michael Crowder’s Eze Goes to School (Nigeria, 1966); Muriel Feelings’s Moja Means One: Swahili Counting Book (Kenya, 1971); K.O. Kwyertwie’s Ashanti Heroes (Ghana, 1964); Cyprian Ekwensi’s The Great Elephant (Nigeria, 1970); Anokye Wiredu’s Nii Ayi Bontey (Ghana, 1972), Kwarteng’s My Sword , My Life (Ghana, 1972); Ruth Mwang’i’s Kikuyu Folktales (Kenya, 1976); and B. M. Lusweti’s The Hyena and the Rock (Kenya, 1984) are in this category.