Representing Africa in Children's Literature

Old and New Ways of Seeing

Vivian Yenika-Agbaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781135923662
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Representing Africa in Children's Literature explores how African and Western authors portray youth in contemporary African societies, critically examining the dominant images of Africa and Africans in books published between 1960 and 2005. The book focuses on contemporary children's and young adult literature set in Africa, examining issues regarding colonialism, the politics of representation, and the challenges posed to both "insiders" and "outsiders" writing about Africa for children.

Part I
Image Making and Children’s Books

For people who have been nearly invisible or made the object of ridicule, the image-maker has the vast potential for changing their world by changing both the way they see themselves and the way they are seen by others.

(Rudine Sims, Shadow and Substance, 1982)

Chapter One
Images of West Africa in Children’s Books: Replacing Old Stereotypes with New Ones?

Indeed, Africa for some Americans, is one vast exotic place, perhaps a single gigantic country where wild animals roam and where people cannot resist killing and perhaps eating each other.

(Ungar, Africa: The People and Politics of an Emerging Continent, 1986)

Western interest in non-Western cultures increased as European colonialism declined in Africa and other parts of the world. For many Westerners, movies, television, and stories are the most popular means of obtaining information about these cultures. These different art forms, particularly stories written for children and young adults, enable Western readers to develop certain visions of life in other parts of the world.

Film as a popular medium transmits cultural images that shape viewers’ perceptions of a group of people. These images, whether good or bad, come to define a cultural group and become stereotypes through which outsiders recognize and talk about people from that particular culture. While movies such as King Solomon’s Mines (1937), Congo (1995), and I Dreamed of Africa (2000) represent a stereotypical image of Africa as violent and primitive, Out of Africa (1986) celebrates Africa as a natural and romantic place, thus perpetuating another stereotype. Television news reports often depict Africa as a continent ridden with killer diseases that might someday wipe out every human soul on this earth or as a continent plagued by famine. These art forms invent realities for how Africans are defined in our global community. In this chapter, I discuss the cultural authenticity of the portrayal of West Africa in fiction for children and young adults. Because there is little research on African representation in children’s literature, the precise images that dominate this genre are not known despite the popular belief that these images are largely negative (Khorana, 1994). I decided to focus on images because people tend to believe the images of themselves and others as portrayed in print and mass media (hooks, 1995, 1994). Children can be manipulated by these images to accept their positions in society as communicated by symbolic forms.

My discussion of images and cultural authenticity is framed within a postcolonial theoretical perspective. Postcolonial theory deconstructs colonial ideologies of power that privilege Western cultural practices (Giroux, 1992), challenges the historical representations of colonized groups (Adam & Tiffin, 1990), and gives voice to those at that margin (Spivak, 1990). Postcolonial theory thus provides a framework through which scholars can identify and resist subtle and blatant social injustices. By examining the cultural authenticity of children’s books written by Western and indigenous authors, it becomes easier to uncover signs of domination that perpetuate unequal power distribution among nations (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 1995a).

I have limited myself to West African experiences in this chapter because Africa is a vast continent with varied cultural practices. Also, I am more familiar with some of the cultural practices that exist in that part of the continent because I was born and raised in Cameroon, a country in West Africa. Cameroon, like most West African countries, has villages, towns, and cities, as well as a variety of socio-ethnic cultural practices.

Identifying Children’s Books

Fifty children’s books set in West Africa were identified using Khorana’s (1994) Africa in Literature for Children and Young Adults. I examined books written after 1960 because this is the era when most African nations won their independence and presumably left colonialism. Also, this era is when “the history of literature written and published specifically for African children began” (Khorana, 1994, p. xxix).

I focused on K–12 fiction set in West Africa because fiction captures an author’s version of what really is, what used to be, and what ought to be. I included fiction by African, African-American, and White authors in order to understand what these authors believe are the significant and authentic African cultural experiences worth sharing with their audiences.

When looking at each book, I first examined the settings and the characters. Since West Africa is composed of several countries and ethnic groups whose colonial histories overlap or differ at times, I paid attention to the socioeconomic practices of the characters. For example, I read to find out if the setting was rural, urban, or semi-urban/rural. Such elements as the kinds of houses/huts that dominate the setting, the economic and cultural activities in the community, and the surrounding environment were crucial in my interpretation of setting. I also read texts and pictures to determine the main characters. If the main characters were human beings, I looked at age and gender to understand what or whose experience was important to the different authors. I considered the different themes in a storyline and examined any dialogue between characters. Knowing that the dialogue generally could not be authentic since most of it was rendered in English, a foreign language, I searched for the meaning behind the ideas and messages these characters communicated to each other. In this chapter, I limit my discussion to fifteen books randomly selected from the different analytical categories that emerged out of the data on the fifty books.

I found that children’s books published after 1960 continue to represent West Africa as either primitive/barbaric or natural/romantic. These images have also been used to define other cultures that underwent the colonial experience. Tugend (1997) observed that Africans, Indians, and Chinese are portrayed as “savages” in British children’s literature (p. Al2). Even in the United States, Native Americans are constantly defined through this colonial lens (Slapin & Seale, 1992). With this trend in children’s books, it is necessary to raise issues of cultural authenticity and to identify the colonial markers that negate non-Western cultures.

WEST AFRICA AS PRIMITIVE/BARBARIC

As in popular media, one recurrent image in these books is that of Africa as a primitive/barbaric place, an image that is neocolonial. The stories are set in either the jungle or a village and depict West Africa as barbaric with people whose survival methods seem ridiculous and primitive. The “natives” fight with animals in a capricious jungle for their basic needs, and the “nonnatives” live in constant fear of being attacked by animals and barbaric natives.

Barbaric Images

In Ekwensi’s Juju Rock (1966), fifteen-year-old Rikku goes with European gold seekers in an attempt to win a scholarship to a British university. As they approach their destination, a remote village, he must risk his life for them and so shaves his head to look like a “primitive” villager. Rikku manifests a neocolonial attitude when he describes West Africans as having unusual hairstyles and tribal marks that make them look and act in frightening ways. Rikku remarks, “We were regarded as spies, intruders to be sacrificed” (p. 68). Like a typical loyal servant, he plans to save his White masters from West African savages, even though he is aware that these White men have plans to dispose of him after the gold mine expedition.

Ekwensi, a Nigerian, depicts West Africans as barbaric and dangerous. According to Osa (1995), Ekwensi later revised Juju Rock because of its overt similarity to adventure stories written by European colonialists. Osa (1995) also comments that Juju Rock was “primarily a book of entertainment rather than moral value” (p. 20). To me, the novel oppresses as it entertains.

Pete Watson’s The Heart of the Lion (2005) also depicts West Africa as primitive. This picture book chronicles all that the white narrator may perceive as “weird” about West Africa. After reading the first vignette the reader may be tempted to pass the story off as a romantic image of Africa; however, on further reading one notices that Watson’s view even of one village is extremely limited. This is because in a book that seems more like an album of strange happenings in an African village where the White male narrator lives with his parents, daily occurrences are either exotic or frightening. The only functional African he integrates in the story is Yampabou and we meet him only after the narrator has introduced us to three elephants that “connect in a parade” (unpaged). It is this “local” boy who takes the young White boy along, showing him “a world of mysteries and magic” (unpaged). This West African world includes eccentric people who play with scorpions, make poison, eat strange meats, torture animals and insects, and believe in magic. It also includes characters like Yampabou, whose “filed” pointed teeth make him look like a “jack-o-lantern,” and other characters who suffer from various infirmities (unpaged). Like Watson’s The Market Lady and the Mango Tree (1994) that depicts ridiculous images of West Africa (Benin), the idea for the story stems out of his experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Ekwensi’s and Watson’s books without doubt reinforce the image of Africa as barbaric or primitive. Ironically, both have White characters who are being escorted around by an African guide, and it is these guides who somehow lend credibility to the primitive images.

Ridiculous Survival Methods

Gray’s A Country Far Away (1989) and Olaleye’s Bitter Bananas (1994) explore the hardship of life in West Africa. Gray compares the life of an African boy living in a village to that of a White boy growing up in a town. Although the text explores the universals of working, eating, and playing, it is evident that the White world is much better. Gray constantly compares the hardship of the African boy’s life in a remote village to the comfort of the White boy’s modern urban world. The author’s depiction of the hard life in West Africa makes it an unpleasant alternative to life in the West.

The story opens: “Today was an ordinary day. I stayed at home” (unpaged). This text is flanked by two illustrations—one of a West African village and one of a Western suburban town. The great disparity in the two boys’ lifestyles is immediately evident and continues throughout the book. The West African boy works hard in the fields as a goat herder, whereas the White boy washes a car in their driveway. Washing a car is work, no doubt, but it is trivial compared to herding goats in the wilderness. The West African boy carries items on his shoulders, climbs a coconut tree to tap palm wine, and rides a donkey home from school. The White boy vacuums the carpet, pushes dirt in a wheelbarrow, and rides a bus home from school.

Gray highlights these differences through illustrations that communicate the material deprivation prevalent in the West African boy’s lifestyle (Khorana, 1994). Afolayan, Kuntz, and Naze (1992) support this critique but suggest that “this book means well” (p. 421). Though it may mean well, the author inadvertently equates materialism with superiority. From a postcolonial perspective Gray flaunts the superior ways of Western civilization over African “primitive” ways of survival. A fair comparison would have been to compare urban life and children from similar socioeconomic backgrounds in both regions. Instead, the story perpetuates colonization by depicting Africa as a primitive place.

Olaleye’s picture book Bitter Bananas (1994) goes one step further by perpetuating the stereotype of Africans fighting for space and food with animals. The author, although writing from an insider’s perspective as a Nigerian, depicts a hero who spends too much physical and mental energy chasing baboons off his “palm sap.” Through hard work and ingenuity, Yusuf finally figures out a way to outsmart the baboons. This picture book reminds me of movies like The Gods Must be Crazy (1986) and Congo (1995). Africans are reduced to objects of entertainment—primitive people who must struggle to live and whose survival methods look ridiculous. According to these texts, to labor in West Africa is to work for little material reward.

Africa as a Capricious Jungle

Zimelman’s Treed by a Pride of Irate Lions (1990) captures the image of Africa as a capricious jungle. The father, a White man, goes to Africa to see if wild animals will appreciate him, because he believes that domestic animals are “too refined for a man like me” (unpaged). He is rejected violently by the wild animals in West Africa. Father needs to control something and sees his opportunity in West Africa, a body of land that has a history of colonial domination. Throughout his stay in West Afric...