’’Under the veil of estrangement: or
how the post-colonial identities are
constructed?’’
MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities Universiteit van Amsterdam Author: Jūlija Frolova Student number: 10191879 Main Supervisor: Dr. M. Rensen
Second supervisor: Dr. Y. Rodrigues- Perez June, 2016
This work is dedicated to the poor souls who lost their link with
the native culture, traditions and society.
It is dedicated to those who wish with all their hearts to find a
place of belonging in this separated, pluralistic society.
It is also dedicated to those who think that we are different,
because we are not.
Table of Contents
1. A brief theoretical note ……… 6
1.1. Post-colonialism ………....6
1.2. Autobiography ………..7
1.3. Debate ………..10
1.4. A changing position of autobiography ………13
1.5. The African identity ………14
1.6. Education and Mimicry ………...15
1.7. Relevancy and Contribution ………16
1.8. Thesis Question and Aims ………...17
2.Narratives ………...……. 19
2.1. Camara Laye ……….19
2.2. Buchi Emecheta ………22
2.3. Ken Bugul ………25
3.Note into analysis ……….…………... 30
4.Traditionalism and its elements ……….. 31
4.1 Community and society ………..………. 31
4.2. Religion …..……….………….... 40
4.3. Mother figure ………..………...………. 44
5.Modernity and its elements ……….………..……….… 54
5.1 Education ………...………… 54
6. Explicit symbols of Modernity ……….………... 67
6.1. The Railroad ………...……….… 67
6.2. Racism………...……….….. 70
6.3. The cities ………...……….…. 76
7. Conclusions………..………..81
´´Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.´´
Camus ’’The Rebel’’
’’autobiographers cannot lie because anything they say,
however mendacious, is the truth about themselves, whether
they know it or not. ’’
Stanley Fish
1. A Brief theoretical note
1.1. Post- colonialism
After some centuries of practice of domination and exploitation, which involved the subjugation of one people to another, which mostly resulted in the further expansion of territory of the dominating power,1 or colonialism, proceeded a long and painful period of
post-colonialism. Post-colonialism is an academic discipline that analyses, explains, and
responds to the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism.2 It is ''about a changing world,
a world that has been changed by struggle and which its practitioners intend to change further.''3 In addition to this, post-colonialism focuses on the people who for a very long time
stood at the margins of the society, those who were oppressed, or those who were seen ''worthless, inferior or primitive.'' Post-colonialism resists all forms of exploitation and ''stands for empowering the poor, the dispossessed, and the disadvantaged, for tolerance of difference and diversity, for the establishment of minorities' rights ...'' 4
Decolonisation is the renouncing of colonisation, where the colonies get their independences and freedoms. It granted the Africans and many others the opportunity to share the knowledge of the experiences of the exploited African souls. This knowlegde was shared by means of various literary genres. Some authors chose to use the novel form where they described the hardship of the ex-colonial subjects, others used the lyrical form of poetry to remember the past. There was also a group that decided to write in the form of autobiography in order to highlight a particular part of their lives, to explain and help others understand the world around them. James Olney stated that ''black history was preserved in autobiographies rather than in standard histories.''5 Thus, this form of writing gave them a possibility to not
only consider and describe the sufferings, ''lost'' happiness of their continent, or destroyed histories, but also gave them the space and chance to analyse themselves, their changes, their identities and development.
Robert J.C. Young in his small work on post-colonialism states that the post-colonial discourse is not only about the effects of the colonial powers on the colonies or the hardships of the Africans, but it is also about ''disruption, dislocation and dis- remembering,''6 which
became crucial terms for every post-colonial subject. Post-colonialism is closely linked with the feeling of alienation and estrangement. It is a constant struggle to find your own place in the changing world. It arouses a constant feeling of the need to be distinct or different and
2 Postcolonialism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism, accessed on 30.05.16.
3 Robert Young, Postcolonialism, ,New York: Oxford University Press 2003, p. 7.
4 Ibidem, p. 113.
5 James Olney, ’’ Autobiography and the cultural Moment.’’ in: J. Olney ed., Autobiography: Essays
Theoretical and Critical ,New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, p. 15.
not only in the Western society, but even in your own right. It is about a formation of new identities, the hybrids, those new transculturals that arise from cross- cultural exchanges.
1.2. Autobiography
There is an immense amount of definitions for the term ''autobiography.'' Etymologically, the word consists from three parts: autos (self) , bios (life) and graphe (writing),7which literally
means ''self-life-writing.'' Roy Pascal states that autobiography involves ''the reconstruction of the movement of a life, or part of a life, in the actual circumstances in which it was lived. ''8
John Sturrock states that it is very hard to theorize the autobiography, and that it is the certificate of a unique existence...''9 The French philosopher and epistemologist Georges
Gusdorf (1912-2000) said that '' autobiography is the mirror in which the individual reflects his own image10 and that this form of writing offers the ''testimony of a man about himself,
the contest of a being in dialogue with itself, seeking its innermost fidelity.''11 Autobiography
can be regarded as a memory of the distant past, distorted by the author himself. It is distorted because '' the man who remembers his past has not been for a long time the same being, the child or adolescent, who lived that past.'' 12
If we bring all these definitions together we can see that there are some basic ideals or similarities that all definitions share: ideals of individualism, awareness, retrospective, movement and unique past. Linda Anderson adds that '' the autobiography is based on the ideals of autonomy, self-realization, authenticity, and transcendence […].''13 At the same time,
there are also some differences between all these definitions. According to Robert Folkenflik, the autobiography has norms, but not rules, and many theorists ''would deny that
7 Autobiography, www.encyclopedia.com/topic/autobiography.aspx, accessed on 31.05.16.
8 Roy Pascal, Design and truth in autobiography, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1960, p. 9.
9 John Sturrock, '' Theory Versus Autobiography,'' ed. Robert Folkenflik The culture of Autobiography,
Standford: Standford University press 1993, p. 21.
10 Georges Gusdorf, ’’Conditions and Limits of Autobiography,’’ in : J. Olney ed., Autobiography: Essays
Theoretical and Critical, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, p. 33.
11 Ibidem, p.43.
12 G. Gusdorf quoted in Audrone Raskauskiene, '' Composing the self in Ann Radcliffe's and Mary Wollstonecraft's autobiographical writing,'' ANGLICA, p. 55.
autobiography is a genre,''14 because for a very long time it was perceived as the inferior or a
variant of the biography.15 Certainly, since the 18th century it has been recognized as a genre
by its writers and readers, as Folkenflik proceeds. Georges Gusdorf praises autobiography as ''a conscious awareness of the singularity,'' where this awareness is seen as '' a marking the epistome of Western civilization.''16
For a very long time, the autobiography was perceived as an inferior to the biography, however, it is very important to note that autobiography significantly differs from biography, because of the innermost personal doubts, emotions and feelings that are more present in the former than in the latter. Also, the biography is about ''a completed life, a telos''; whereas the autobiography is about ''a life in process.''17 Although, the human, his memories and his inner
self takes a central position in the autobiography, the author does not forget about the world around him either. By narrating the story of his life by himself, the writer understands and analyses his own persona and establishes the links between different parts of his life. The autobiography is usually in the form of a dialogue where an older version of the creator talks to the younger version of himself and tries to see the truth in all the memories. If the biography is mostly a linear and chronological account starting with the birth of a person and ending with his death, autobiography is limited in time and space.18 The author may choose a
particular part of his/her life and give an extended account about this moment. The work does not always start with the birth, but may directly start from the middle of their lives (in medias res), and following the way in retrospective. Another difference is the fact the biography is a descriptive work written about someone by another, whereas in the autobiography the writer is an observing subject and object of investigation. According to Roy Pascal:'' the self-knowledge is a primary motive of autobiography,19 whereas the biography tries to understand
and explain the personality, his behaviour, thoughts and the world around him.
14 Robert Folkenflik, ''Introduction: The Institution of Autobiography,'' in Robert Folkenflik The culture of
Autobiography, Standford: Standford University press 1993, p.13.
15 Julia Watson, ''Toward an Anti- Metaphysics of Autobiography,'' p. 58.
16 Ibidem, p. 59.
17 Robert Folkenflik, ''Introduction: The Institution of Autobiography,' p.15.
18 Georges Gusdorf, ’’Conditions and Limits of Autobiography,’’ p. 29. and Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson
Reading Autobiography: a guide for interpreting life narratives, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
(2010) p. 14.
Very often autobiography is compared with novels or fictional life stories, and it is difficult to identify what the reader has in his hands: an autobiography or a novel. In order to find the solution, Phillipe Lejeune in his very influential book Le pacte autobiographique (1982) writes about the existence of a particular pact between the reader and the writer, calling it ''an autobiographical pact.'' By signing and working according to this contract, the author attests and proves that the name which stands on the cover of the book is similar to that of protagonist of the book.20Thus, if the reader may identify and equate the protagonist with the
author, then there is a great chance that the reader holds the autobiography in his hand, if not stated otherwise. The autobiographies chosen for this thesis are very good examples of the required autobiographies, because they do honour this pact, and the reader may be confident that the author and the protagonist of the book is the same person.
The autobiographies are very interesting, though very complex, products for the analysis of identity formation. As a researcher, you have to be constantly aware of the fact, that the autobiographies do not always provide a truthful description of the identity. Frequently enough, it is an identity that the author shapes, gives or develops for himself. Due to the fact that the autobiographies deal with the very old past memories of childhood or adolescence, it is very important to remember that the authors are not the same as the protagonists of the books. The authors are not young anymore: the time and place have changed them. So even, by depicting a particular moment from their past, which seems so vivid and close to their hearts, it is still very important to realize that this particular moment was interpreted and passed through a significant amount of memory layers and time. It is logical and human to forget things or remember them in a different light or colour. As a reader, you can never be sure that what you are reading is totally true. Even the autobiographies of Camara, Ken and Buchi are the proofs of that.
1.3. Debate
This brief introductory note is to prepare the reader for the debate that exists within the autobiographical studies and is important for this thesis. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson highlight that the autobiography ''is a term for a particular practice of life narrative that emerged in the Enlightenment and has become canonical in the West.'' 21 For a very long time, 20 Phillipe Lejeune quoted in Linda Anderson, Autobiography, p. 3.
21 Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson Reading Autobiography: a guide for interpreting life narratives, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (2010) p. 3, emphasis mine.
the autobiography was perceived as something Western, dealing with the stories of the ''great'' people of Europe. It was mostly stories of the men that was worth telling and recounting. Take Augustine's Confessions (354- 400 AD) or Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1782-1789) for example, both are about white males and personalities of great importance. There is very little accounts produced by the women, people of low social class or people of colour during the Enlightenment. At that time no one would have considered that a woman or a slave would be able to produce an autobiography of a high quality.
Jumping forward in time to the 20th century during the decolonisation period, a heated debate
occurred when some of the theorists started to wonder if there was such a thing as the African autobiography and can Africans actually write autobiographies? Though there are lots of works dealing with this question, most of the critics or writers sincerely believe that the Africans cannot write autobiographies. James Olney in his Tell me Africa (1973) agrees with this. 22 He states that Africans do not actually write autobiography, because the African
autobiographer does not claim ''an absolute uniqueness... instead the African autobiographer portrays the life shared by the group...''23 These individuals, according to Olney, are shaped by
the communal memory and history: rituals, legends, oral traditions, stages of birth and death, parenthood. There is no such thing as an independent individual in the African society. Their lives are integrated into the community. Georges Gusdorf and Roy Pascal agree with Olney on this.
Pascal sincerely believes that the Africans cannot write autobiographies, because it is ''a distinctive product of Western, post- Roman civilization,24 and only after some time in
modern times, this genre was spread to other civilizations. Gusdorf is even more blunt and sharp in his opinion. He states that autobiography ''expresses a concern peculiar to the Western man.'''25 Gusdorf and Georg Misch think that '' a history of autobiography, since it
has to deal with the more complicated phenomena of mental life, cannot reach back to the primitive peoples.''26 Both thinkers are convinced that ''autobiography is not possible in a 22 James Olney quoted in Roger A. Berger,’’ Decolonizing African Autobiography,’’ Research in African
Literatures (2010), p. 33.
23 Idem.
24 Roy Pascal, Design and truth in autobiography, p. 180.
25 Georges Gusdorf, ’’Conditions and Limits of Autobiography,’’ p. 29.
26 Georg Misch quoted in Bart Moore- Gilbert, Postcolonial Life- Writing: culture, politics and self-
cultural landscape where consciousness of self does not, properly speaking, exist.''27 This
argumentation suggests that they perceive Africans as primitives and not being able to create something as autobiography, because the concept of ''self-consciousness'' is not familiar to them. Furthermore, Gusdorf regards autobiography as a ''cultural monument to the individualized subjects of Western culture – inevitably white, male, and highly literate.” 28
Thus, if we take this quote for granted, then it means that the women, people of colour or people of low social class are not able to produce something as highly intellectual as autobiography, because only the white men have an ability to do it. At last, to confirm his opinion, Gusdorf says that ''genre of autobiography […] has not always existed nor does it exist everywhere.''29
Also, on the other side of the debate stands a few writers who have another opinion. Roger Berger thinks that the African autobiography exists and ''it struggles with the same rhetorical and existential problems that are found in other autobiographical texts...''30 Roger Rosenbeatt
acknowledges that there is a heated debate about the existence of black autobiography and that this question can be answered in the same manner as the ''most frequent question concerning whether black fiction exists as a genre or not.''31 He is convinced that ''it exists as a
special form of literature because there are discernible patterns within black autobiographies that tie them together.''32 There is always something that connects African autobiographies
with each other: their struggles and pain, their development and estrangement, their African side versus their European side. The black autobiographies have a high degree of subjectivity, loneliness, unfairness and sense of victimization that falls on the part of the central character.
33The blackness, according to Rosenblatt, becomes the condition that prescribes and
predetermines a life,34 and eventually the life-writing. Furthermore, the black autobiographies 27 Georges Gusdorf, ’’Conditions and Limits of Autobiography,’’ p. 30.
28 Georges Gusdorf quoted in Julia Watson, '' Toward an Anti- Metaphysics of Autobiography,'' ed. Robert
Folkenflik, The culture of Autobiography, p. 59.
29 Idem.
30 Roger A. Berger,’’ Decolonizing African Autobiography,’’ p. 35.
31 Roger Rosenblatt, ’’ Black Autobiography: Life as the Death Weapon,’’ in : J. Olney ed., Autobiography:
Essays Theoretical and Critical, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, p. 169- 70.
32 Roger Rosenblatt, ’’ Black Autobiography: Life as the Death Weapon,’’ p. 170.
33 Ibidem, p. 171.
have two versions of realities: their wishful thinking and the ''house of mirrors.''35 The first
reality is like a solvable puzzle that the small author gives to himself and hopes to conquer when he is a grown-up, or it is a particular childhood's wish that the author wants and tries to achieve in the future. The second reality ''shifts its shape and refutes the best efforts of these autobiographical characters not to conform, but to be different and special. 36 If we should
look closer on this reality, it has some tiny similarities with the Bhabha's concept of ''mimicry.'' These black autobiographies are the imitations of the ''originals,'' they are almost the same, but not quite yet,37 if we would take the Gusdorf's claim that the autobiography is
the Western invention. Even though, those African writers use the Western means in order to bring their stories closer to the people, it does not only mean ''the success of the West's imperial project,'' as Gusdorf states,38 but proves how both unique yet fundamentally related
the African autobiography is to the rest of the autobiographies.39
1.4. A changing position of autobiography
Many years have passed since this heated debate took place. A lot has already been written, reviewed and created in order to prove that autobiography is not just an invention of the white Western men. Since the '80s and '90s an immense amount of autobiographies came to light, not only of the people from Africa, but also from the other parts of the world. We’ve got a significant number of autobiographies written from the woman's face, also Black women such as, Ken Bugul's The Abandoned Baobab, or Emecheta's Head above water. There is a rise of autobiographies written by the people that survived Holocaust or genocide of any kind. These memoirs were filled with suspense, reality, emotions and the power of the creator's spirit and his wish of living. Piera Sonnino Zo was het: een Italiaanse familie in
Auschwitz40, Denis Avey with Rob Broomby The man who broke into Auschwitz,41 or Heda
35 Ibidem, p. 174.
36 Idem.
37 Homi Bhabha, ’’ Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,’’ Discipleship: a special
issue on Psychoanalysis, (1984) p. 140.
38 Quoted in Bart Moore- Gilbert, Postcolonial Life- Writing: culture, politics and self- representation, London and New York: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, p. xii.
39 Roger A. Berger,’’ Decolonizing African Autobiography,’’ p. 47.
40 Piera Sonnino, Zo was het: een Italiaanse familie in Auschwitz, Amsterdam: Athenaeum- Polak & Van
Margolius Kovaly Under a Cruel Star: a life in Prague 1941- 1968,42 would be good
examples of this type of writing. Migrants' autobiographies may also be added here, because it usually, though not always, tells the stories of the people of a low social class and their hard path of integration in the foreign country. Take Gazmend Kapllani's autobiography A short
Border Handbook (2009) as a good example of it.
An immense magnitude of research has been devoted to the autobiographies of the slave narratives. Such works as Twelve Years a Slave of Solomon Northup,43 Harriet Jacob's
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl or Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass are very important examples of slave narratives, that deals with painful hardship,
subjugation and pain of people of colour. A great researcher Marijke Huisman contributed also a lot with her work on slave narratives. Although the slave narratives are of great importance for understanding the black autobiography, this thesis will not provide any extensive account or explanations on what makes slave narrative truly ''slave narrative,'' and what we can see and learn from these type of life-writing. It is first and foremost due to the lack of space that this part will stay untouched. Also, this thesis will not address this matter due to its irrelevance to the whole of the work. The autobiographies chosen for this thesis are not connected in any matter or degree with the slavery, so this information seems unnecessary and redundant at the moment.
1.5. The African identity
There are lots of things that may affect the process of identity building. ''Identities are multiple in nature, or even 'kaleidoscopic', as Professor Michael Wintle states in his book. '' A person may have a single identity, but it will be made up of many levels of loyalty and identification.''44 To be more specific, a person may be Congolese but at the same time
African (continent), woman (gender), daughter, wife (civil status), feminist (political views), Islamic (religion) etc. The identity consists of many components and they form new, unique identities. Such things as religion, family and community values, gender, class, age, kin, place, time and many other affect our world views, loyalties and eventually identities. 41 Denis Avey with Rob Broomby, De man die naar Auschwitz wilde, Vianen/ Antwerpen: The house of books 2011.
42 Heda Margolius Kovaly Under a Cruel Star: a life in Prague 1941- 1968, London: Granta 2012. 43Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave , London: Penguin Books 2012.
Particular events, situations, ceremonies, rites may also influence our identities. Our identities change according to time and space. Even the things that at first hand seem unimportant and minor may become the major trigger of identity formation and change, for example: train, city, uniform, language etc.
There is a huge debate going on about the existence of the African identity and the difficulty of identifying it. Due to the lack of space, the thesis cannot address this issue in full details, but can only state that the African identity, as the notion of African continent, is an invented and constructed concept. (Gatsheni) The subject of emergence of the African continent is vast and complex,45 so it is not easy to say what make someone truly African. The African identity
was formed by different things throughout the long history of the continent: by colonialism, imperialism, slave trade, the African resistance, their own tribal/ national histories. According to Michael Neocosmos, ''the slave trade affected significantly on the continent's identity forming and meaning of Africanness.''46 For a very long time the Africans were associated
with being slaves and inferior, and that thinking left its deep mark on formation of African identity. It is very difficult to shake off the centuries- old history of slavery. With the advent of colonialism, the race became a prominent factor in defining the belonging in Africa. Moreover, colonisation stressed ''the division of Africans into Francophone and Anglophone identities. ''47 Thus, different colonial systems accentuated their own identities by means of
educating or ''colonizing'' the African minds with the colonial language, ideals and norms.
1.6. Education and Mimicry
Modernity comes with education. Education plays a significant role in shaping identities and future of the individuals. If you are a colonial subject in a particular African country, the colonial education becomes a prominent tool in order to shape ''the new'' French/ English etc. subjects. As a small African child, you are taught the new ''acceptable and right'' ideals and norms, you are taught what is good and what is bad. You start to behave and speak as if you were a Westerner, forgetting your actual roots. The mimicry emerges, as Homi Bhabha states in his influential work The Location of Culture (1994). He states that ''mimicry emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge''48 and that it
45 Zeleza (2006) quoted in Sabelo J., Ndlovu- Gatsheni, ''Do 'Africans' exists?'' p. 284. 46 Michael Neocosmos quoted in Sabelo J., Ndlovu- Gatsheni, ''Do 'Africans' exists?'' p. 284.
''repeats rather than re-presents''49 the subject. Mimicry is as a camouflage, not a
harmonization or repression of differences: it is being almost the same, but not quite.50
We may also look quite differently at the concept ''mimicry.'' If we would take the Gusdorf's or Porter's position for granted, who states that the autobiography is something peculiar to the Western individual, then the African or black autobiography would be the imitation of the original. The black autobiography would try to repeat as closely as possible ''the Western invention,'' though it would never be able to fully become Western due to its differences in voice, tone, identity, structure, theme etc.
According to Frantz Fanon, the Europeans use the policy of de- cerebralization with the Africans, ''they have been made to see themselves as other, alienated from their own culture, language, land.'' 51 Being brainwashed for so many years, no wonder that the naive African
children become alienated or estranged from their native cultures and start to perceive themselves as the Europeans, as the whites. From this emerges another issue, the issue of race.
Being surrounded their whole lives by their own people, the African ''enlightened'' children did not realize at that time, that the white skin colour would not necessarily mean he would be acknowledged as a Westerner. They did not know that their language proficiency and knowledge of Western norms and ideals were not enough for them to be called and accepted as a Westerner. No matter how strongly and deeply those Africans were assimilated in the Western system, when they step in on the European continent, the differences rather than similarities become visible and highlighted. Only then, the African ''children'' apprehended and started to doubt the validity and truthfulness of the knowledge they got at their schools. This brings us to the fact that by inculcating white values and ideals you never can become a white, no matter how hard you wish and try. This thought became very unsettling for many Africans, because they would never have thought that the race was significant for the make up of their identities while they were living in Africa. This brings us to the fact, that no matter how hard you will study or assimilate in the colonial policies and ideals, you would never be
48 Homi Bhabha, ’’ Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,’’Discipleship: a special
issue on Psychoanalysis, (1984) p. 126.
49 Ibidem, p.128.
50 Ibidem, p. 130.
fully accepted in the society. There would always be something that would accentuate you from the group. This awareness then establishes an enormous inferiority complex, from which it is very difficult to escape, and which influences your whole identity and being.
This brings us to the following conclusion that the African identity or identities, as Sabelo Ndlova- Gatshemi states are ''products of complex histories of domination, resistance, complicity, creolisation and mimicry- mediated by various vectors of identity such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion and generation. ''52
1.7. Relevancy and Contribution
In order to be able to proceed with the analysis, it is essential to explain why particularly these autobiographies have been chosen for this thesis. There are some reasons for this choice. First of all, these are the texts which may be characterised as the good examples of the autobiographies as they deal with a unique individual, its singularity, awareness and development. These three autobiographies are about the self-consciousness of the African individuals that use the Western language, some narrative structures and also their own unique African elements to create their life narratives. The works of Camara Laye, Ken Bugul and Buchi Emecheta are the good examples of the autobiographies because as it was mentioned before, they honour the ideals of autobiographical pact.
Secondly, these books have been chosen because they deal with the relevant themes of the contemporary society: the identity and integration. The chosen authors are originally from different African countries and were objects of different colonial educational and linguistic systems. They are the authors of different time periods, who were able to travel, live and attend the schools in three main cities of Europe: London, Paris and Brussels, and who tried to integrate and find their place in the Western society. Everyone had its own special path, a path that brought them on the way of modernisation and progress, but also estrangement, alienation and loneliness. These are the autobiographies about the foreigners that wanted to achieve something in life, to get knowledge, to develop themselves. They were also the unfortunates, who in greater or lesser degree, realized the falsity of the colonial policies and ideas, and who afterwards struggled to find the way in these lies and hardships.
My work can become a very good contribution to the large, already-existing studies on post-colonial autobiography due to the fact that it will take a unique path of comparison of three
different black autobiographies. The thesis will try something new: it will try to analyse how the identities of these three different African individuals were constructed, and how successful their integration process was at the end. Nowadays, it is relevant because the concepts of identity and integration take the most significant place in our societies. We very often come in touch with the people who do not share the same norms, values, history or language as the majority do and who need or may sometimes even wish to integrate into the society. Every person, irrespective of his/ her gender, religion, nationality or ethnicity, is a unique individual, formed and influenced by different elements, and who follows his own path towards development, estrangement and integration. In order to understand how quick or how successful the integration of someone may be, it is important to learn from which components someone's identity consists. By looking at the chosen authors, the reader would be able to see not only the story of the happiness, but also of tragedy and loss. These are the books that provide different contexts, perspectives, which would help to depict three different pictures of identity and integration. This theme is also relevant, because we may learn how different elements may influence our identities, which eventually lead us to our voluntary choice of path toward alienation or integration.
1.8. Thesis Question and Aims
This thesis will address a number of things in order to answer the question of the thesis. This thesis aims at digging deeper into the aspects of identity and wants to find how the post-colonial identities are constructed. To achieve this, the thesis will use three autobiographies of three different African authors: Camara Laye's The African Child (1952), Buchi Emecheta's The Head above the Water (1986) and Ken Bugul's The Abandoned Baobab
(1982).
Firstly, it will provide the introductory into the chosen autobiographies which will help to show how the authors perceive themselves and what kind of identities the authors were made up of. Then, by taking some strategies from the ''A tool kit: Twenty Strategies for Reading Life narrative'' of Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson's Reading Autobiography (2010), it will give a brief narrarological analysis of the narrative, plot structures and some of the other elements.
The post-colonial identities are duplex in its essence. These identities were formed not only by their native societies and cultures, but also by the modern things that came with the colonizers and their colonial policies, languages and education. It is important to realize that
both dimensions are inter-connected and both have influenced the building of post-colonial identities. Therefore, the main body of the thesis will outline the most influential elements that have affected the identities of the authors. First of all, it will deal with the elements of traditionalism where we will look closer at communal society that surrounded the authors in Africa and the importance of religion. Also, we will look at the contradictory relations between the community and the individual. Moreover, some attention will be given to the prominent element of traditionalism: the mothers.
Afterwards, the thesis will continue with the modernisation and the elements linked to it. The reader would be able to see how influential the colonial education and its practices can be and how such things as racism, the railways and the cities may affect your whole being.
Finally, the thesis will draw conclusions as to demonstrate what kind of identities the authors suggested for themselves and what contributed to the formation of their identities.
2. Narratives
'' I have not made my book more than my book has made me.''
Montaigne
It is essential to understand what kind of books the reader has in his hands, what kind of identity the authors shape for themselves and how they do it. That is why it is very important to look closer at the narrative, and plotting elements of the autobiographies chosen for this thesis, before proceeding with the actual analysis of them. To achieve this, this first chapter will take a few concepts from the ''Toolkit'' that Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson give at the end of their common book on autobiography and will briefly try to show what kind of image and identity the authors created for themselves.
Camara Laye
Camara Laye, who was born Kouroussa, Guinea 1928, died in Dakar, Senegal 1980, was a first African writer from the south of Sahara who achieved an international reputation.53
Camara distinguished himself as a student and received a scholarship to study in France. An eye-opening experience for many Africans of his time. The actual trip to France brought lots of disappointments with itself; his scholarship to pursue his baccalaureate was withdrawn and he needed to support himself as he could. Impoverished and on the verge of starvation, he took any work in order to survive.54 Out of loneliness, frustration and fear that he would
forget his traditions and roots, Camara decided to write his childhood memories, L' infant noir (The Dark Child) that was published in 1953 and became one of the most widely read African literary texts in French and English-speaking worlds.55
L'enfant noir, tells the story of an adult man who remembers and looks back at his happy
childhood in French Guinea through the eyes of a small child. It is partially a chronological account: the narrator skips his actual birth time, but starts directly with the story of a five-year-old child, proceeding with his adolescent period and ending at the age of 17/18, when he went to Paris.
The author has chosen a very interesting narrative plotting to present and shape his nostalgic autobiography. The autobiographical ''I'' (a grown-up man) takes a position of a child (a narrative ''I'') and have a constant dialogue between each other. It is a dialogue between a child, not yet Westernised, and an adult, who realised the falsity and gaps of his colonial education, and who wants to remember the loss of his traditional self. According to Abner Nyamende: ''Nowhere in the novel is the African child explicitly identified. It is mainly through the use of the first person ''I'', that we are able to judge Camara Laye himself to be this particular African child.''56 If we take into consideration Philip Lejeune's
''autobiographical pact''- a contract that implicitly declares that the author and the protagonist of the book are the same 57 - then we also may state that Camara himself is the protagonist of
53Camara Laye, http://www.britannica.com/biography/Camara-Laye, accessed on 27.01.16.
54Charles R. Larson, '' Laye's Unfilled African Dream,'' Book Abroad, Vol.43, No.2 (1969), p. 209.
55Jacques Bourgeacq,’’ Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir and the Mythical Verb,’’ The French Review, Vol. 63, No.3 (1990), p. 503.
56 Abner Nyamende, ’’ Deeper than the child perceives Camara Laye’s The African Child,’’ Theoria: A Journal
of Social and Political Theory, No. 68, Literature in South Africa Today (1986), p. 59.
this story, because the name put on the cover of the book is similar to that of the voice of the book. The story does not have multiple plots, but has different kinds of dialogues: dialogues between small Laye and his father, his mother or his friends. These dialogues may help the readers to see and understand - at least a bit - how these dialogues affected the author and what he has learnt from them.
In addition to this, Camara shaped the book in the form of the life lessons model. Every chapter learns him something new about the traditions of his society and his place in it, but also something about himself as an individual. This form of writing shows the reader the development of the child through the time and space, but also the narrator's estrangement from the traditional society and traditional way of life. Laye the adult ''traces the evolution of the child, but he also reveals himself directly in the work by means of interjection, lapses in memory and nostalgic atmosphere.58
The reader is constantly affected by the two different voices of the autobiography. A reader may easily see how the ''old'' version of Camara occurs almost always at the end of every chapter or at the important moments of his childhood, when he wants to comment on them or give those moments some thought. Because it is a story of a child, a voice of the child is a dominant one. There are no tensions between the two voices; they contribute to each other,and help to shape a full picture of the situation around the protagonist and about himself. The African Child is a nostalgic memoir, so the text holds a very emotional, kind, sentimental, and in places regretful tone. The author gives much more attention to the younger version of himself, sharing almost nothing about the adult version. Only through the comments can we note the existence of the other self of Camara.
Camara Laye excludes the stories of his adult life, that of Paris and afterwards, and because of that it does not give a permanent closure to the book. As a reader, you want to know what had happened next when the protagonist left his country, what he felt when he reached his destination, how the Western society saw him and what was next when he returned back home. There is no information about his marital status, nothing about his children and his working experiences. There is no information about these aspects, giving a feeling of unfinished-ness.
58 Paul R. Bernard, ’’Individuality and Collectivity: A duality in Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir, ’’The French
Camara had a particular audience in mind. Many African texts have been written partially with Western in mind, and his text is not an exception. He addressed two public in a single text.59 The author, by using French language as a ''tool,'' shares his memories with the
Westerners in order to show them ''the intrinsic beauty'' of Malinke culture60 and naturalness
of African civilization. At the same time, Laye wants to show to his own African people why and how he had become who he is. The book is dedicated to his mother, whom he immensely misses and loves. It is she who evokes those lost childhood memories and experiences, and it is because of his distance from her and exilic position in Paris, he decides to write this book. Layewas scared that he would forget his childhood and roots. It was a conscious decision of a grown-up man to recapture the mysterious aspects of African civilization which were constantly being eroded by time, colonization and modern European education.61
Paul R. Bernard in his analysis62 suggests that the book is more than the portrayal of a black
African child's life. It is a story about him being part of a community and him being an independent individual. It is also a book about departure and isolation, but also return and integration.63 In looking back upon his past, Camara sees that his contact with the West
through his education was bringing him separation, depersonalization and exile.
Although the text has lots of omissions and gaps, it does not affect the understanding of the text so much. As a reader you can still be taken away by the stories of his adventures and customs. You can still feel the author's regrets, emotions and pains. The text asks you to be sympathetic and, in some cases, very naïve, open-minded, and not a cynical reader. It is normal that at the end of the book, the reader would ask even more questions than at the beginning, and that, according to me, is the beauty of this book.
Buchi Emecheta
Buchi Emecheta (1944) is one of Nigeria's early prominent female writers of Igbo origin, that is best known for her semi-biographical work In the Ditch (1972) and a fictitious work The
Joy of Motherhood (1979). Emecheta wrote a significant amount of books which dealt with
59 Jacques Bourgeacq,’’ Camara Laye’s L’Enfant Noir and the Mythical Verb,’’ p. 507.
60 Ada Uzoamaka Azodo, ’’The work in Gold as spiritual journey in Camara Laye’s The African Child,’’ Jrnl.
Rel. Afr. XXIV, 1 (1994), p. 53.
61 Idem.
62''Individuality and collectivity: a duality in Camara Laye's L' enfant noir''
the women's role in the traditional Nigerian society. Inspired by her culture and her personal background, Buchi expresses and confronts particular sociological themes, mainly women subjugation, their role and position within the family and the community. Head Above the
Water (1986) It is a story of a woman that tried to find her own place in the world, by
resisting traditional patriarchal thinking of her Igbo society and prejudices of the British society. It is a book about the strength of a woman that fights against every hardship, loss and pain that she gets on her way in order to fulfil her calling: becoming a self-sufficient writer and independent self. It is a story of individual self-making and a call to action. In addition to this, this is a story of a journey from marginality to empowerment. 64
Head Above The Water is not a chronological account. The author builds her story in the
form of in medias res, starting directly with her trip to Great Britain. She does not give too much emphasis on her childhood memories, summarizing all her childhood in three short chapters. Buchi gives more focus on her actual life and identity building in London. The text has multiple plots; her own story of becoming a successful African woman, that of a woman who constantly fights with the patriarchal society of the diaspora in London, and who desperately wants to be released from it.
As Camara Laye, Emecheta builds her book on the moments that affected her world views and the picture of herself. It is a story of a black African woman 's life in the racist British society, so Buchi does not forget to emphasize the importance of such subjects as a gender, race and ethnics in her autobiography. She was neither the part of the British society, nor of the Black one. Buchi was rejected by her own Black community, not only because of her marital status, Western way of thinking and behaving, but also because of her success as a writer and sociologist. ''Emecheta becomes a subject in process who never fully belongs anywhere: neither with the Black, the African community, not with the British society.''65
Emecheta understood that in order to be able to build a life in London, she needed to change and adjust. She started to write, stubborn(y) sending her manuscript to every publisher, until she got a positive answer. Buchi dared to attend London University in order to get her sociology degree, though she had already so many other responsibilities. She did not wish anymore to have a husband for whom she would slavishly bow her head.
64Delphine Fongang,’’ Diasporan subjectivity and the dynamics of empowerment in Buchi Emecheta’s ’’Head Above Water,’’ African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 6:1, p. 43.
65 Delphine Fongang,’’ Diasporan subjectivity and the dynamics of empowerment in Buchi Emecheta’s ’’Head
Buchi's identity was significantly affected by the fact that very early she became a wife and mother. It was also formed by her faith, her loneliness and writing. Buchi was forced to marry very early, and very quickly she got her first child, and then many others. Her husband was not interested in family matters, so the author needed to take care of all by herself. Buchi behaved as it was expected from the Nigerian woman, but more often she got a feeling of tiredness and loss. The author could not deal with her husband's unfaithfulness, and his cruel burning of her ''brainchild'' (first manuscript) only pushed Buchi to leave her marriage for good. It was a hard hit for her identity, because she felt guilty about not being able to save her marriage. Buchi was searching for forgiveness, because she felt happy being alone, and not traditionally married. Only at the end of her book she would realize that ''it was not a sin to be happy.''66 Loneliness and writing are two inter-connected feelings that follow Buchi all the
time. Buchi acknowledged that ''because I was too sensitive, and felt too easily hurt, I was condemned to be a writer living alone with no one to talk to, but the typewriter. ''67
Loneliness became a part of her identity.
If we look at the ''coherence'' and ''temporality'' of the text, then the reader directly may state that the text of Emecheta is full of omissions, gaps and silences. The information about the childhood is almost non-existential, the descriptions of traditional Africa and its habits is not found. There is no information of the landscapes, colours, noises, voices, people of Africa. All these things would be very useful and helpful in shaping and understanding her view of Africa and herself as a part of the African continent. By looking at her text, you may get a feeling as if she is ashamed of her roots, or is not interested in them. However, it is not true, because in her two previous semi-autobiographical books In the Ditch (1972), Second Class
citizen (1974) Buchi shared some details about the African society, its norms and values, and
her life. Still, some background information would be very appreciated. The text has lots of flash-backs and flash-forwards that enfold a long period of time.
Although the author decided to shape her book in the form of a success story, the reader has to take into consideration the things that she omitted to say. Even though her childhood memories fitted in only three full chapters, it is important to note that the memories of her education, mother position and the story of her birth got the most emphasis from the author. It gives us a picture of what kind of things affected and shaped her the most and which were not worth noting.
66 Buchi Emecheta, Head above Water, London: Fontana Paperbacks 1986, p. 243. 67 Ibidem, p. 164.
The autobiography does not have multiple voices. The great part of her book, the reader hears a voice of a grown-up Nigerian woman that lives with her five children in London and tries to fight the hardships of the British society. The text has a changing variety of tones. At one point the text has a very defensive tone, when Buchi goes against her own traditional society or wants to achieve her goals. At the other moments it is a self-critical tone, where she cannot forgive herself of not being able to be a good traditional wife, or self-important when she ''stubborn -ny'' fights for her chance of becoming a successful writer. Emecheta has multiple identities, according to me. She is a racialised subject on the one hand, ethnic subject on the other, the woman on the third, and mother on the fourth. The author was successfully able to connect all these identities and explain how all these small parts in separate contributed to the whole.
As Camara, Emecheta has both Western and Nigerian audience in mind. With her autobiography, Buchi wants to change the women's position in the patriarchal society in Nigeria and wants to warn her co-patriots that the life in the British society is not such a paradise as they think. The author criticises the British society for their stereotypical and racist thinking, and by doing it, Buchi wants to show the short-comings of the society, hoping that the Western readers would see and realize the hardship of the Others and would do something about it.
Ken Bugul
Ken Bugul (1947) is a Senegalese Francophone novelist, whose real name is Mariètou Mbaye Biléoma. She was educated in French colonial schools, attended university in Dakar, Senegal and won a scholarship that brought her in Belgium for further studies. Ken was raised in a polygamous environment, born to a father who was a marabout (Islamic leader). She published nine books to date, worked for various non-governmental organisations and the International Planned Parenthood Federation in Africa in the field of family planning.68For
this thesis was chosen her best known autobiography The abandoned Baobab: The
autobiography of a Senegalese Woman (1982), which is a tale of a ''quest for identity and
love undertaken by a woman who feels abandoned by her family, her society and later by those with whom she has chosen to identify.''69 It is a straightforward account of a young
68Jeanne Garane, ''Afterword'', in Ken Bugul The abandoned Baobab, p. 162.
African woman, raised by the colonial school and her bitter experiences getting wisdom in a European metropolis.
The abandoned Baobab is a tale about the false consciousness and the process of
self-decolonization. Ken Bugul, as Buchi Emecheta, does not deal so much with childhood and adolescence, but starts directly with the protagonist's trip to Belgium, where she goes studying. She was leaving Africa for her ''Promised land,'' going to ''her ancestors, the Gauls'', believing that these were the people who would understand her, cast away her loneliness and accept her as she is. Ken was eager to experience and verify everything she had learned, assimilated for the last twenty years. She was eager to find herself. She was going to Belgium for her study, but it was not the studies that she was interested, ''it was the country of the white people I was interested in.'' 70
Because of an explicit sexuality and shocking content of the book, the editors published the book under the pseudonym Ken Bugul, which means ''one who is unwanted'' in Wolof.71
Feeling unwanted and misunderstood in her own society, Ken hopes that she finds her place in the country of ''her ancestors.'' Unfortunately, Ken experiences the invalidity and falsity of a school mantra ''the Gauls are my ancestors'' and realizes that everything she has learnt before at school were lies. The protagonist of the book follows the way of the decay hoping that at least somewhere she will find her place of belonging. She sinks in drugs, alcohol, homosexual tendencies, ending with prostitution. Racism and the colonial past follow her also and does not ease her search for her own place in this world. Ken truly feels alien, the Other and unwanted in her ''promised land.'' The pseudonym very precisely summarise the identity issues of the author and fits perfectly with the content of the book.
Bugul's text has a multiple amount of narrative plots. It is not only a confession of a woman that dared to write such a passionate, poetic and surprising account, where she described her fall and decadence in Belgium, but it is also a story of conversion through fall and enlightenment. The dominant plotting is a story of individual self-making, where the protagonist tries to find her own place and belonging, and where she, unfortunately for her, experiences the invalidity and falsity of a school mantras. The story of the loss of her mother contributes even more to this dominant plotting.
70 Ken Bugul, The abandoned Baobab: the autobiography of a Senegalese Woman, Charlottesville & London:
University of Virginia Press 2008, p. 27.
Although the text did not start chronologically from her birth, the reader still may find lots of information about her childhood. In comparison to Buchi, Ken gives most descriptive accounts of her childhood, portraying the traditional life of Senegal in her ''Pre-history'' chapter, providing pictures of the African landscapes, nature, weather and their culture, giving a dominant position to her mother's departure and her colonial education. Ken accomplished all that by beautifully using the flash-backs and - forwards in order to jump from time to time, and in order to show how important these memories are. Still, the autobiography has some omissions, gaps and silences. As a reader, you still want to know more about her traditional society and their ideals. You want to know what became with Ken next when she returned to Senegal, did she get married, had she got any children, had she found her own place in the world. The closure does not provide the answers to these questions.
''The trauma'' from the toolkit of Watson and Smith, is a very suitable tool in order to see what kind of identity Ken presents to her readers. She is an outsider, not only in her own society, but also in the Western one. She uses a self-critical and ironic tone in order to describe and judge herself, and defensive, harsh and very critical tone when Ken goes against the Western society and its ideals. Though the story is about an adult version of Ken, the author still does not forget to give some attention to the younger version of herself. By repeatedly adding and mixing her traumatic memories of mother's loss throughout the narrative, Bugul only accentuates the importance of these events in her identity building. The narrative may be characterised by one dominant voice of an adult Ken, that is in quest of her place in this world, and the explicit conflicting voice of a small Ken, that cannot let go of her past, that haunts the life of the narrative ''I.'' This second voice may be seen as a voice of her consciousness and it emerges all the time when the author falls deeper and deeper into the decadence of the Western society.
Ken's life may be seen as an onion. Every misstep like a layer covers the next layer. From these layers her identity was formed and ideals debunked. Abortion was the first layer, which was followed by her homosexual friend, artist Jan Wermer, who brought her to different exhibitions and meeting, and where she experienced the luxury and the decline of the West. She had always been in the spotlight, because of her Blackness, sophistication, intelligence and provocative character.72Not being able to find a place of belonging, the author started to
use drugs, hoping that at least with these ''fallen creatures'' she would find her place.
Unfortunately, Ken realized only more the falsity of the colonial ideology and its educational system. Her whole life was cleverly manipulated by the colonizers, making her think that the whites were a part of her identity. The Gauls were not her ancestors and this thought brought the author in total dis-balance with herself.
The feelings of lost childhood, unfulfilled dreams, false ideology, the French school and departing mother- all these things followed, weighted on her and pushed her on the wrong path. Ken discovered LSD and alcohol. She cut herself from all contacts with her own compatriots and started to hang around different cafes and bars, accompanied by marginals and intellectuals of the decadent society. '' I was living a fall with the Westerner, a fall that wasn't mine.''73 She was searching for anything that could hide her sense of emptiness,
loneliness and rejection, and that is why she took the refuge in drugs, hoping to forget who she was becoming in reality.
Because there was a huge interest in everything African, Ken was perceived as an exotic treat, a fascinating thing that everyone wanted to have, speak or touch. This behaviour maddened her and she rebelled only further. She started to wear the transparent dresses, advertise surrealism, even had a homosexual relationship. Ken was ready to do anything to feel recognized as one of them (white),74 and that she proofs with her last step of
self-destruction: the prostitution.
In Hilton hotel, in a luxurious room, with the wish to be recognized and accepted by the white man, the protagonist realized how deeply she had felt: '' I believed I'd been born without having been conceived. I found myself colonized again in the group of those who had 'no mother's lap, no place to rest their head'.''75 The thought of suicide started to fascinate her.
Ken was crying for not being dead, she was praying that God would ''let me [her to] be born again, as if almost a quarter of a century hadn't happened.''76 She destroyed herself by
self-analysis, turning upside down, her whole life and behaviour.
Norman Rush, a journalist in The New York Times names Bugul ''a woman in a broken mirror.''77 For so many years Ken was looking through the mirror of the colonial education,
shaping her identity, seeing herself as the French, not realising that the mirror was long time
73 Ibidem, p. 82.
74 Ken Bugul, The abandoned Baobab, p. 82. 75 Ibidem, p. 109.
76 Ibidem, p. 157, my explanation.
77 Norman Rush,’’ The Woman in the Broken Mirror,’’ The New York Times,
broken. The abandoned baobab is a book about the path of hardship, identity quest and unfolding of the imposed ideologies.
All in all, The African Child is a story of a ''tragic alienation from the romanticized, precolonial culture.''78 It is also a story where the narrator ''called on the child to enlighten
him.''79 Emecheta's account is a description of ''a steady, but difficult assimilation into (white)
British social life.''80 It is a narrative that details the struggle to become an economic success.
Bugul's autobiography is a traumatic, in places shocking and eroticed, dramatic story of the Black subject. No visual images were used in order to provide more background information about the author and their lives. All books were explicitly dedicated to someone; to mother in Camara's case, to Chiedu, an older daughter of Buchi and to the obliterated in Ken's case. Every writer used his own writing style in their narratives: Camara used more imaginistic, sentimental, metaphorical and symbolic language,81 whereas Ken uses lots of dramatic
phrases. Buchi's style is a mix of sociological components and harsh reality.
78 Roger R. Berger, ’’Decolonizing African autobiography,’’ Research in African Literatures, Vol. 41, No. 2
(2010), p. 36.
79 Jacques Bourgeacq, ’’Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir and the Mythical Verb, ’’The French Review, Vol. 63,
No.3 (1990), p. 511.
80 Roger R. Berger, ’’Decolonizing African autobiography,’’ p. 42.
81 Tony E. Afejuku,’’ Language as sensation: the use of poetic and evocative language in five African
3. Note into analysis
If you were a colonial subject, the chance was big that two different worlds would come together within you: the modern Western part and your own traditional African soul. It is not surprising that the mixture of these two completely different worlds formed totally new identities. Taking something from both worlds, making some characteristics of the other world your own, lead to the development of the ''hybrid identities;'' or the individuals that lived in the parallels of the ''in-betweenness'', as Homi Bhabha wrote in his article.82 Those
''hybrid'' subjects had a very difficult position: they saw not only the beauty, advantages, or disadvantages of the worlds they grew up in, but also stood in the position when it was very hard to find a place where to belong and with what to identify with.
Being born, first and foremost as an African of a particular country, lots of individuals could have had a very normal and simple life, but due to their first contact with the colonial system (modernity), those individuals started to change. It is hard to say whether the authors' lives (Camara, Ken, Buchi) changed in a good or a bad ways, but we may claim that even though they were eager to study, they never forgot where their roots were. Tradition and education went hand in hand simultaneously for those individuals, bringing conflicts, misunderstandings and questions about themselves and the world around them.
The proceeding two chapters of this thesis will talk in more details about two different worlds that affected the formation of post-colonial identities: modernity and traditionalism. Both are essential in understanding lives of the individuals and their development. First of all, we will start with the elements that are connected with the traditional part of their lives in order to show how did they influenced the authors, and what kind of African soul was hidden under the Western clothes. Afterwards, we will proceed with the modernity that significantly shook the worlds of many African individuals.
4. Traditionalism and its elements
4.1. Community and society
'' To think we raise all these men who later
suppress us!''
83CamaraLaye described how he was not a regular boy who played and behaved as the other African children. His education took hold of him and in the following chapter I will discuss in which manner and how this colonial education influenced him. Due to the different European influences small Laye, unconscious of that, naively questioned the order, ceremonies and rites of the African society. He acknowledged their existence, never rejected them, took part in them, but he had never thought of looking deeper behind them. The wish to understand his native roots came much more later, and the feeling of loss can be followed throughout his whole book.
There is a moment in the book where Laye firstly shows his doubts about his place in the world. It happened during the season of the rice harvest, that Laye impatiently waited, in his grandmother's village Tindican. When the process of cutting started, Laye was not allowed to hold sickle and help. Everyone was working for the overall cause, but '' one of the characters who was deprived of privilege of asserting himself in purposeful work was the African child
himself.''84 His young uncle did not give him any activities to perform, because he thought
that Laye would never be suitable for this labour job. The reader did not get an information about what had seen young uncle in Laye that made him say these words, but we know that this thought unsettled small boy very much. He said that he ''[…] could become a reaper like the rest, a farmer like them,''85 if only he got a chance. Thus, Laye did not exclude the
possibility of becoming a part of this traditional society, he saw himself doing this job, being one with it. But something about him let the others think that he was different and would never be able to do this job. Camara was scared of what was awaiting him. ''It was true that I had been day-dreaming: my life did not lie here... and I had no life in my father's forge. But
where was my life?''86
In addition to this, this specific tradition brought not only questions about the society and its life, but also more anger against himself, because he was not interested enough to ask what all these customs, traditions meant. For example, before actual gathering of rice would start, the heads of each family cut the first swath of rice that would signal the beginning of the festival. As a small boy, Laye never questioned this custom, but he was aware that ''like all our customs, this one had its significance, which I could have discovered by asking the old villagers...''87 The voice of grown- up Camara judges himself very harshly: he thinks that his
disinterest shows his lack of interests in the society and in his own culture, but it is not true. Laye forgets, that he was just a small boy, perhaps not curious enough, but still a small boy. Second example is the animistic practices. Laye was neither able to explain them satisfactorily, nor was he able to accept them totally.88 He was fascinated by them, but also
bewildered, and that betrays and shows his lack of integration in his own society. Another example is the moment when Laye was marching back from his initiation ceremony and saw the white threats attached very high to the thorny bombax trees. He was wondering who did it and how. ''For my own part, I never succeeded in obtaining an explanation: at the time when I
84 Abner Nyamende,’’ Deeper than the child perceives Camara Laye’s The African Child,’’ Theoria: A Journal
of Social and Political Theory, No.68, Literature in South Africa Today (1986), p. 64, mine alterations.
85Camara Laye, The Dark Child: The autobiography of an African Boy, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1994, p. 59.
86Camara Laye, The Dark Child p. 59-60, emphasis mine. 87Ibidem, p. 56.
88 Eloise A. Brière,’’ L’Enfant noir by Camara Laye: Strategies in Teaching an African Text,’’ The French
might have obtained it... I was not longer living in Kouroussa.''89Camara acknowledges his
loss of traditions, he knows that it is already too late to bring the time of his childhood back and change everything. Perhaps, that is why he decided to write his autobiography, in order to show that he remembers the rites of his community, that he has interest even though Laye is already grown-up. With his book he wanted to share the mysteriousness of the traditions and rites of his country with everyone, even though he has no background information about them. At the same time, Laye explored himself by putting his memories on the paper.
Laye described that the ceremonies of initiation and circumcision were very influential in his life. Initiation procession formed a group from the uncircumcised boys of twelve, thirteen or fourteen years old who was being collected for a very mysterious meeting with Konden Diara: a vicious lion that was always used as a punishment for the naughty children.90 In his
book, Laye described how anxious and scared he was when he waited in the middle of the yard until he got picked up. He was overwhelmed when he got surrounded by the group, feeling ''[…] alone, curiously isolated, still free and yet already captive.''91 It is a very
interesting how Laye depicted his feelings. He felt alone, though he was surrounded by the people. He was free, but yet captive. On the one hand, he was an independent individual, on the other, he was a part of the community. Perhaps, he was scared of too much attention or he just did not know how to behave and what to feel. Laye acknowledged why this initiation was needed, but it did not give him a much awaited answer of where was his own place in all these customs, rites and community?
The circumcision ceremony, the most painful tribal rite, brought too many questions in small Laye. Circumcision was seen as the second birth, a moment when the small boys turned into the mature men, symbolised the beginning of the new life.92Laye eagerly wanted to take part
in this ceremony. ''I wanted to be born, to be born again.''93 A heavy-loaded message is hidden
in these words. Why did he want to be born again? Was it because he wanted to be a part of his community, because this was a natural step of the evolution (baby-boy- teenager- man) or because it would show him the right way? Was he hoping that this ''re-birth'' would give him
89Camara Laye, The Dark Child, p. 107.
90 Camara Laye, The Dark Child, p. 94.
91 Ibidem, p. 96, emphasis mine.
92 Ibidem, p. 112.
