This book focuses on a relatively neglected aspect of African
literature. Tijan M. Sallah is a Gambian, and arguably the best
known of the second generation of writers from that country. To
date, he has published ten books: five collections of poetry, a
volume of short stories, two edited anthology of poetry (the second
one with Tanure Ojaide, the Nigerian poet), a literary biography of
Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist (coauthored with Ngozi Okonjo
Iweala, currently Nigeria's Minister of Finance), and an
ethnographic book on Wolof, the dominant ethnic group of the
Senegambian people. Tijan M. Sallah won the Francis Hutchins award
for literature in Berea College. Lenrie Peters, arguably the
best-known Gambian author, and mentor to most members of the
country's second-generation of writers including Sallah himself,
Ebou Dibba, Nana Grey-Johnson, Sheriff Sarr and Gabriel Roberts,
described Sallah as the most prolific, the most consistent, and the
most original Gambian writer of his generation. This opinion is
widely shared; for example, in reviewing Sallah's When Africa was a
Young Woman for World Literature Today, Charles Larson, the
American scholar of African literature, opined that "there is
little question about Sallah's talents." Sallah writes using
simple, accessible language but also demonstrates his adventurous
side in his works (e.g., "Harrow Poems" in which he experiments
with rhymes and quatrains). Gambian literature has suffered some
neglect in African literary criticism. The reason for this lies in
the erroneous belief that the country has produced little that is
worthy of serious scholarly attention. To be sure, there already
exists a fairly substantial body of critical works on the writings
of Tijan Sallah; and many of them, again, are by well-known names
in the field of literary criticism. Some of these scholars are
Charles Larson, Tanure Ojaide, Emmanuel Obiechina, Ezenwa Ohaeto,
Gareth Griffiths, Samuel Garren, Victoria Arana, Stewart Brown,
Odun Balogun, Peter Nazareth, Ali Malhani, and Siga Fatima Jagne.
As insightful as these writings are however, it is not often easy
to access them, scattered as they are in disparate journals, edited
books, and compendiums of essays. This book fills the gap by as the
first book-length critical study both on Tijan M. Sallah and
Gambian literature. The first part of the book delves into the
background of the literature with a discussion of works by leading
Gambian authors, including Lenrie Peters, Ebou Dibba and then Tijan
Sallah. The core of the book then turns the focus on the works of
Tijan Sallah. These chapters explore his growth and development as
a writer and provide critical analyses into his major works. While
some of the chapters take the works together in general thematic
and stylistic discussion, others focus on specifically selected
works, analyzing and studying them closely. At least two of the
chapters adopt a specifically linguistic approach; another two
locate the works within the trend of ecopoetry, an emerging genre
of nature poetry; one explores Sallah's poems of convalescence,
pointing out the therapeutic nature of the writings; and yet
another employs the theory of phenomenology in carrying out an
investigation of Sallah's poetry in comparison with the works of
other major African poets. The final chapter is a detailed
interview conducted with Sallah. It sheds light on his life, his
Gambian background, and how this affects and influences his
writings. Contemporary Literature of Africa: Tijan M. Sallah and
Literary Works of The Gambia is important for all those interested
in Gambian and African literatures, postcolonial writings and world
literatures in general.
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