- African Writers Conference
In 1962 a conference of
African literature inEnglish language , the first African Writers Conference, was held atMakerere University inKampala ,Uganda . It was attended by many prominent African writers, includingChinua Achebe (winner of the Commonwealth Prize),Wole Soyinka (laterNobel Laureate in Literature),Ezekiel Mphahlele ,Lewis Nkosi ,Ngugi wa Thiong'o (then known as James Ngugi) andRajat Neogy (founder ofTransition Magazine ).The conference dealt with the issue of how the legacy of
colonialism had left the African writer with a dilemma with regard to the language choice in writing. The questions raised and debated at the conference were:
*What constitutes African literature?
*Is it literature written by Africans, literature that depicts the African experience?
*Does African literature have to be written in African languages?At the conference, several
nationalist writers refused to acknowledge any literature written in non-African languages as being African literature.The conference is often regarded as a major milestone in African literature, and is thought to have defined many African authors' style of writing. For example,
Ngugi wa Thiongo rejected Christianity in 1976, and changed his original name from James Ngugi, which he saw as a sign of colonialism. He also resorted to writing inGikuyu language instead of English.
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