Equatorial Guinean Literature in its National and Transnational Contexts

Marvin A. Lewis

• Publisher: University of Missouri
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780826273871
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literaturkritik

This is the first book to interpret the African dimension of contemporary Hispanic literature.Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, is the only African country in which Spanish is an official language and which has a tradition of literature in Spanish. This is a study of the literature produced by the nation's writers from 2007 to 2013. Since its independence in 1968, Equatorial Guinea has been ruled by dictators under whom ethnic differences have been exacerbated, poverty and violence have increased, and critical voices have been silenced. The result has been an exodus of intellectuals—including writers who express their national and exile experiences in their poems, plays, short stories, and novels. The writers discussed include Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, and Guillermina Mekuy, among others.

CHAPTER ONE

The Transnational Character of Equatorial Guinean Literature

El metro, El porteador de Marlow, and Autorretrato con un infiel

IN 2007 THREE highly acclaimed works of fiction were published by Equatoguinean writers. They are: El metro/The Metro by Donato Ndongo Bidyogo, El porteador de Marlow: canción negra sin color/Marlow’s Porter: Black Song without Color, by César Mba Abogo, and Autorretrato con un infiel/Self-Portrait with an Infidel, by José Siale Djangany. The Metro has received the majority of attention, due to the reputation of its author and the breadth and depth of his works. It is, in fact, a fictional model for the Equatorial Guinean transnational experiences of dislocation and migration. The Metro, Marlow’s Porter, and Self-Portrait with an Infidel were praised in De Guinea Ecuatorial a las literaturas hispanoafricanas (2010), edited by Landry-Wilfrid Miampika and Patricia Arroyo. In this collection, Lola Aponte Ramos assesses The Metro, María Sofía López Rodríguez and Jorge Berástegui Wood analyze Marlow’s Porter, and Naomi McLeod addresses Self-Portrait with an Infidel. Other contributors also make brief comments about these three works that are representative of recent trends in Equatorial Guinean literary production and criticism.

The Metro, Marlow’s Porter, and Self-Portrait with an Infidel explore some of the tensions involved in the transnational and diasporic experiences in Africa and abroad. These texts are written by a political exile (Ndongo), a migrant/returnee (Mba), and a non-migrant (Siale).

Each writer presents a unique picture of Equatorial Guinea: its indigenous roots, its colonial background, its independence experience, and its confrontation with modernity. While some offer a more critical perspective than others, at the core of their writings is a concern for the nation and its future.

2007 is chosen as a point of departure because that is the year in which Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea was published and a number of works by Equatorial Guinean writers were either unknown, in press, or on the verge of publication. My purpose in this study is to analyze literature published in various genres from 2007 to 2013 in order to trace the development of Equatoguinean literature thematically, stylistically, and ideologically, beginning with The Metro, Marlow’s Porter, and Self-Portrait with an Infidel. The transnational nature of these works is the focus of this chapter because during this period, writers sought to further expand their perspectives beyond Equatorial Guinea and engage more in depth the diasporic experience while continuing to critique the national situation.

Nationalism, migration, transnationalism, and diaspora are implicit and to a degree, explicit, in the thematics and worldviews of these writers. Ndongo Bidyogo has spent most of his adult life in political exile in Spain. Mba Abogo is a returnee to Equatorial Guinea after a number of years as a migrant to Spain. Siale is a homeboy who has remained in Equatorial Guinea. Their country, with its positive and negative qualities, is at the center of their discourse, which is expanded to embrace Equatorial Guinean experiences in Africa, Europe, and the Americas, representing the “tri-dimensional cultural environment” outlined by Mbomio Bacheng at the beginning of this introduction.

The Metro

The Metro has received more critical attention than any other text in this study. That is because the migratory experience treated by Ndongo Bidyogo resonates across nations and is not limited to West Africa. Similar situations encompassing dictatorship, betrayal, hardship, and death resulting in dislocation and migration are acted out daily in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The Metro adds African specificity to the context. The Metro is described as a bildungsroman woven around the trials and tribulations of undocumented African emigrants seeking a better life in Europe and Spain, in particular. The novel’s protagonist is Lambert Obama Ondo, whose trajectory we follow from his birth in a village in the “contornos de Mbalmayo”/“Vicinity of Mbalmayo,”¹ to his death at the hands of racist skinheads on a train in the Madrid metro system. The reader identifies Lambert’s country of origin as Cameroon, due to geography (Mbalmayo/Yaundé/Douala), but he never utters the word “Cameroon,” an imposed manifestation of colonialism. Rather, Lambert identifies as “miembro del clan de los Yendjok”/“member of the Yendjok clan” (13), an Ewondo Fang.

He is a product of the Fang cultural matrix in the “camarca” (region/area) surrounding Mbalmayo. The namings, the setting of geographical boundaries, the laws are all products of colonial imposition that the Yendjok resist covertly and overtly, under the leadership of Ebang Motuú, tribal chief, who is undermined by Ntutumu Mbira, a puppet of the colonialists.

Ebang Motuú’s resistance is religious as well as economic:

. . . prohibió a los lugareños acudir a la capilla donde se practicaban tan extraños ritos y acercarse a esos seres anormales, y censuró con severidad a los cultivadores de café y vainilla, insólitos productos introducidos por los blancos, quienes obligaban a cultivarlos a sus paisanos aunque nadie supo jamás para qué servían. (23–24)

. . . he prohibited the villagers from going to the chapel where such strange rituals were practiced and approached those abnormal beings, and criticized severely the growers of coffee and vanilla, strange products introduced by the whites who ordered their countrymen to grow them although nobody knew what they were worth.

“Ebang Motuú, último guardián de las esencias tradicionales de los fang en la camarca de Mbalmayo”/“Ebang Motuú, last guardian of the traditional essences of the Fang in the Mbalmayo region,” foregrounds the conflict between tradition and modernity in The Metro.

Christianity—which shows no respect for indigenous religious practices, viewing them as barbarous—and the labor system—which seeks a cheap work force—combine to make the proud Ebang Motuú a relic of the past.

Ondo Ebang, eldest son of Motuú, becomes an influential presence in the Church against the wishes of his father, adapts to many of the outside customs, and is subsequently “convertido en símbolo del triunfo de la modernidad sobre la tribu”/“converted into a symbol of the victory of modernity over the tribe” (29). Tradition versus modernity, civilization versus barbarism are the major tensions explored in the initial chapters of The Metro. Resistance to colonialism and affirmation of African values instilled by his grandfather are the guiding principles of Lambert Obama Ondo. These summary paragraphs represent much of the nationalist dimension of The Metro in anticipation of the protagonist’s journey.

There are three major divisions in The Metro: village culture before and during Colonialism, the migratory experience, and Spain. Lambert comes of age in the local culture, reflecting its values in food, clothing, shelter, sex, work, and religion. But he realizes that in order to thrive in the new reality that surrounds him and his people, his economic status has to improve. This cannot be achieved in his present circumstances. But it is not economics alone that cause Lambert to seek his fortune in Yaundé and Douala and subsequently in Spain. Lambert impregnates Anne Mengue and intends to marry her but Jeanne Bikié, Anne’s mother, is sexually involved with Guy Ondo Ebang, Lambert’s father, a situation which theoretically constitutes incest—a cultural taboo. Lambert views this as another reason for him to physically, not spiritually, abandon his home to which his body never returns.

Lambert is in a country caught between tradition and modernity, a national dilemma that exacerbates his personal situation and forces him to face reality: “. . . se habían negado a ver la decadencia inexorable de la aldea, convertida en solar de ancianidad del que huían los jóvenes; o el ocaso de su estirpe, ahogada por la doble opresión de los de dentro y los de afuera”/“. . . he had refused to see the inevitable decadence of the village, converted into a dwelling for old age from which young people fled; or the decline of his lineage, stifled by the double oppression by those from within and those from the outside” (172). The physical deterioration of his village is due to the abandonment of indigenous values, the aspirations for the unknown, and the decline of the gene pool. The best option seems to be to abandon the homeland and seek a better life abroad.

Lambert recognizes that he is part of the world economy but resists this reality as long as he can. The end of colonialism does not mean a better life for all:

Verdad o mentira, se aseguraba que había ministros y directores de empresas estatales o paraestatales que desayunaban en Yaundé, almorzaban en París y cenaban en Nueva York, en unos viajes costosísimos que las autoridades presentaban como necesarios en el esfuerzo de buscar soluciones para los problemas del país, pero cuyos frutos nadie veía. (89)

True or false, it was affirmed that there were ministers and directors of state or related businesses who had breakfast in Yaundé, lunch in Paris, and dinner in New York, in some very expensive trips that the authorities claimed were necessary in order to find solutions for the country’s problems, but whose results nobody saw.

While this exploitation of the country’s resources by the privileged is taking place, the majority suffer from a lack of basic necessities: schools, medicine, transportation, a healthy environment. Even though he sees the unsustainability of rural existence in the migration of his relatives and neighbors to the cities, Lambert clings to the past initially:

Quería que su vida se pareciese lo más posible a la de sus antepasados, que concebía tranquila, sin demasiado sobresaltos, y, en lo más recóndito de su ser, se negaba a comprender a esos hermanos que abandonaban tierra y tradiciones para buscar solo el beneficio material. (90)

He wished that his life would seem as close as possible to his ancestors, that he believed calm, without too many ups and downs, and, in the depths of his being, refused to understand those brothers who abandoned land and traditions to search for only material benefits.

In spite of his longing for a simpler life and his criticism of those who abandon their ancestral home in search of material gain, Lambert soon finds himself in an untenable situation. The fact that he is prohibited by tribal elders from marrying Anne Mengue due to the relationship between her mother and his father is a major factor in Lambert’s decision to leave home. At the same time, he realizes that he is trying to recreate a world that no longer exists: “. . . now it was impossible to live like the old ones, to build his life reproducing the ideas and customs of a bygone era was a deceptive illusion” (172). Lambert reluctantly accepts the fact that on the surface, modernity has triumphed over tradition and that he has been living in a fantasy world.

These initial chapters of The Metro present a retrospective view of the early life of Lambert Obama Ondo: his ethnic group and family and their reaction to the conflict between tradition and modernity occasioned by European colonizers and their imposition of religious, economic, and other cultural values. The Metro has episodes reminiscent of other Equatoguinean literature. For instance, the bridal kidnapping scene in which Rosalie Nzang Ondo, Lambert’s sister, is carried away by her future husband mirrors what happens to the protagonist in Ekomo (1985) by María Nsue. The promiscuous nature of the priest, Martín Essomba, is reminiscent of the sexually exploitative behavior of the protagonist of The Parish Priest of Niefang by Joaquin Mbomio Bacheng. In The Metro, Donato Ndongo employs both literary and cultural intertextuality to interpret the pervasive impact of European colonialism and neocolonialism upon African cultures from the family unit throughout their worldwide dispersion. It is a top down process of imposition of European values and structures on a traditional African society without meaningful reciprocity. In these two instances it is the Catholic Church that deculturizes and exploits the local population. Intertextuality works in two ways in these episodes from The Metro; it ...