The 1962 event had in attendance, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, J.P. Clarke, Gabriel Okara, Rajat Neogy, Okot P’bitek, and Ezekiel Mphahlele among several others, authors who would go on to produce publications like the African Writers Series, Transition Magazine, and The Drum Magazine, literary publications that not only helped define “African Literature” but inspired the agitation for self-governance and independence from Colonial masters across the continent and later on called for an end to the Apartheid regime. I often wonder at what those conversations were like in light of their individual and collective contribution to the re-defining of the African identity post-colonialism. How heated, passionate, compelling they must have been. The conviction of their ideas as they debated. Did they consider their words would shape generations of Africans to come, providing us new narratives and in many cases counter-narratives to those of ex-pat writers from before? That by filling the void in our history these words and the worlds created would provide a vision for later generations to imprint on? To have been a fly on those walls!
In this issue of the online magazine, our writers of varied professional backgrounds are unified by their love for African Literature and conviction of its role in shaping their identities and visions of their futures. Whether Engineers, Doctors, Media consultants, Literature teachers, Performers and, yes, even a Social Worker they remind us of the role literature more so African Literature has in our lives.
Deus Kansiime reminds us of the “Lost Novels.” While most literary discussions on African Literature point to Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as one of the earliest works of fiction by an African writer Deus argues there are others that precede this and yet are often ignored. Unlike him, my passion for African Literature is a recent arrival. Raised with easy access to European and American Literature, especially the Teen Lit variety, the books from the African Writers Series (the only options for African Literature at the time) were hard to “enjoy” growing up let alone form strong opinions about. Talk about judging a book, or in this case, books by their cover!
Not so for the original members of the Lantern Meet of Poets. 13 years ago a small group of friends, students at Makerere University at the time, came together to talk about their shared love for Poetry. With time a collective was born. One that was eager to speak to the void they felt the AWS had left in African Literature. As is bound to happen with such collectives, there were ebbs and flows, tags and pulls, highs and lows, but still, they endure and continue on committed to shining light on our stories. Rachel K. Masinde the current Board Chair of the Lantern Meet Foundation shares her story with the Meet and through it traces the path to what is now the Lantern Meet Foundation.
Enjoy your reading!