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AFRICAN WRITERS

Chinua Achebe

Nadine Gordimer

Alon Paton

Bessie Head

Chinua Achebe

Albert Chinalmg Achebe

16 November 1930 in Ogidi, Anambra State, Nigeria

Worked at David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies Brown University

Nationality: Nigerian

Ethnicity : Igbo

Period: 1958present

Notable work(s) "The African Trilogy": Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People and Anthills of the Savannah

As one of the most discussed African writers of his generation, Achebe has inspired a substantial body of criticism and scholarship about his writing and political stances.

Achebe's inventive usage of Igbo proverbs and folklore in his novels is the most studied feature of his art. Achebe's literature also deals with the universal qualities of human nature.

Achebe's writings have relevance beyond the borders of Nigeria and beyond the anthropological, sociological, and political concerns of post-colonial Africa.

Achebe has defined himself as a cultural nationalist with a revolutionary mission "to help my society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-abasement.

Achebe has been active in Nigerian politics since the 1960s. Many of his novels deal with the social and political problems facing his country, including the difficulty of the post-colonial legacy.

CRITICISMHis fiction and criticism display nationalist contestation of colonialist myths and distortions of Africans and Africa

The gender roles of men and women, as well as societies' conceptions of the associated concepts, are frequent themes in Achebe's writing.

Achebe's first central female character in a novel is Beatrice Nwanyibuife in Anthills of the Savannah.

The Igbo society described by Achebe has definitive and complex social systems, values and traditions. Achebe presents customs such as the abandonment of multiple birth babies, and the sacrifice of human beings as conventions and not barbaric, inhumane rituals.

Nadine Gordimer

Born in Springs, South Africa, 20/11/1923 Daughter of Isidore and Nan Gordimer. Has lived all her life, and continues to live, in South Africa.From her early childhood Gordimer witnessed how the white minority increasingly weakened the rights of the black majority.1932: at the age of 9, she starts to write.1939: at the age of fifteen, her first short story is published in a South African magazine.1949: "Face to Face", a collection of short stories is published.1953: "The Lying Days", her first novel

She has lived her whole life in the country and coped with the apartheid set by South African government in 1948

Apartheid literally means separateness and was a legal system to enforced racial segregation.

It was similar to the racial segregation in America but much stricter for both sides. The apartheid lasted until 1993.

Nadine Gordimer was one of the main writers and public figures to step out against the apartheid. (one of the famous post-colonial writer)She was writing by the age of 9 and published her first story at age 15. Her novels and short stories explore the effect of apartheid on the lives of south Africans. Novels and collections includethe conservationist(1974),crimes of conscience(1991),contents andget a life(2005). Gordimer won the 1991 nobel prize for literature.

Gordimer's post-apartheid work has continued to explore the difficult issues of a society in transition from a tragic past to an uncertain future, as well as the sorrows of her own personal experience.

Her 1998 book, The House Gun, dealt with the increasing level of violent crime in a newly free South Africa.

She has been a fervent campaigner against racism in South Africa and has long held an iconic status there as a champion of tolerance, free speech and understanding. She has also displayed great conviction and self-belief in refusing to become an exile, despite the banning of three of her works by the South African regime.

ALON PATON

Birth:Alan Stewart Paton ,South African author and anti-apartheid activist was born in Pietermaritzburg, Natal Province. His parents were: James Paton, a civil servant, and Eunice Warder Paton.

Marriage:While Paton taught at Ixopo High School, he met Dorrie Francis Lusted. They married in 1928, and remained together until her death in 1967. He married his secretary, Anne Hopkins, in 1969.

Education:He was educated at Maritzburg College and Natal University College. As a child, he read Walter Scott, Charles Dickens and Rupert Brooke.

Career:He worked as a teacher at the Ixopo High School, and later at a Pietermaritzburg High School. In 1935, he became the principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory for delinquent urban African boys near Johannesburg.

Death:He died of throat cancer on April 12, 1988 at Lintrose, Botha's Hill in Natal.

CRITICISM

Patons writings focused on political and social criticism.

Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) is a social protest against the structures of the society that would later give rise to apartheid. (A system of racial segregation enforced by the National Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority non-white inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacyand Afrikanerminority rule was maintained.)

During the time in which the novel is set, black workers were permitted to hold only unskilled jobs and were subject to pass laws that restricted their freedom of movement. In 1913, the Natives Land Act radically limited the amount of land that black South Africans were permitted to own.

In 1948 (four months after the publication of Cry, The Beloved Country), the National Party gained power and introduced apartheid. Under apartheid, every South African was classified according to race, and the Group Areas Act enforced the physical separation of blacks from whites. Every aspect of South African life was racially segregated.

According to economist Walter E. Williams, apartheid "maintained white power by denying political and economic liberty to black South Africans.After decades of struggle and bloodshed, the ANC prevailed, and South Africa held its first free election in 1994.

List of works by Alan Paton:1955 - The Land and People of South Africa 1956 - South Africa in Transition1965 - South African Tragedy1973 - Apartheid and the Archbishop: the Life and Times of Geoffrey Clayton, Archbishop of Cape Town

BESSIE HEAD

Her real name is Bessie Amelia Emery.

One of Africa's most prominent writers, was born in South Africa in 1937.

The child of an "illicit" union between a Scottish woman and a black man, Head was taken from her mother at birth and raised in a foster home until the age of thirteen.

Attended missionary school and eventually became a teacher.

1953, passes Junior Certificate exam, chooses teacher training

1955, finished 2-year teacher training course

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1956-1958, teaches primary school in Durban

mid-1960 - mid 1961, publishes own newspaper, itThe Citizimticisen; meets Harold Head

1961, marries Harold Head; the couple live in District Six

1986, died in Sekgoma Memorial Hospital, Serowe, Botswan

CRITICISM

Head explored the effects of racial and social oppression and the theme of exile throughout her short fiction.

Another defining subject of Head's short fiction is the devastating impact Western religion and its monetary-based economy and culture has had on traditional tribal and village life in Africa.

Her works deal with issues of discrimination, refugees, racialism, African history, poverty, and interpersonal relationships

Head's stories focus on the profound impact of racism on the people of South Africa.

Her work casts a distinctly feminine perspective on the ills of societal injustice and the psychological costs of alienation.

1951 writes a parable, "The Stepping Stones of Truth

1959 April, Bessie moves to Johannesburg, continues to write for Drum publications, meets many leading figures.

Head's collection of short stories, The Collector of Treasures, and Other Botswana Village Tales (1977), investigates several aspects of African life, especially the social condition of its women.

The tales are rooted in oral storytelling traditions and in village folklore and much of the material is derived from interviews conducted by Head with the villagers of Serowe.

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