Exploring the Breath, Range, Character,Scope and Reception of Cyprian Ekwensi's Writings

Ekwensi one particular of Africa's most prolific writers who died late last 12 months and was buried early this yr, maintained a vibrant writing activity all through his life, publishing a assortment of short stories, Cash On Delivery, his last work of fiction and completing perform on his memoirs, titled, In My Time for various a long time on to his death. With over twenty novels, collections of stories and quick novels to his identify, Ekwensi's thematic preoccupation equally covered the Nigerian Civil War from the perspective of a journalist and existence in a pastoral Fulani setting in Northern Nigeria.

Ekwensi's 1st published operate was the novella, When Adore Whispers, published in 1948, ten a long time ahead of the fantastic African novel, Achebe's Items Fall Apart, appeared in London. He was inspired by sorrow around his unsuccessful try to court a young woman whose father insisted that she tends to make a marriage of usefulness topublish it. This short, light romance formed aspect of what became acknowledged as the Onitsha Marketplace college of pulp fiction, and its good results inspired Ekwensi to carry on in that identical mode.

Ekwensi had currently distinguished himself by the various quick stories he had written for broadcast on radio. These he later put with each other, within ten days, although on his way to Chelsea College of Pharmacy, London, to comprehend his 1st novel, Folks of the Metropolis, which Nigeria's premier newspaper, The Everyday Times, published in installments prior to it appeared in guide type in 1954. but which was not published in the United States until eventually 15 many years later. Folks of the City (1954) was the very first West African novel in modern day fashion English to be printed in England. It's publication thus marked an critical improvement in African literature with Ekwensi turning into 1 of the very first African novelists to get significantly publicity in the West and eventually the most prolific African novelist.

The reality that Cyprian Ekwensi began his writing job as a pamphleteer is reflected in the episodic nature of Individuals of the City (1954) a collection of tales strung with each other but studying like a novel, in which he offers a vibrant portrait of the fast-paced life in a West African metropolis, Lagos. Folks of the Metropolis which recounts the coming to political awareness of a young reporter and band leader in an emerging African nation is stuffed with his operating commentary on the problems of bribery and corruption and despotism bedeviling such states. In it and several others, Ekwensi explores the lure, thrills and problems of urban existence, and the intense permissiveness and impersonal relationships permeating the lives of migrants to the city, exactly where near-ties usually fostered by the prolonged family members method of their traditional societies constitute asevere verify on the deviant lifestyles that discover complete expression in the metropolis.

According to, Bernth Lindfors, none of Ekwensi's quite a few functions is fully free of charge from amateurish blots and blunders. Lindfors for that reason concludes that he could not call any "the handiwork of a careful, skilled craftsman." On his portrayal of the moral irresponsibility in metropolis lifestyle, Bernth Lindfors, argued that "because his sinful heroines usually come to poor ends, Ekwensi can be seen as a serious moralist whose novels supply instruction in virtue by displaying the tragic effects of vice. But it always appears as if he is more interested in the vice than in the virtue and that he aims to titillate as well as train." Although this view might be contested, it is undeniable that he often strove hard to attain his audience in the most immediate and intimate model. Certainly, it was to sustain this that he clung to these themes that afforded him the massreadership he so significantly craved

In a 1972 interview by Lewis Nkosi, Ekwensi defined his role as author therefore: "I believe I am a writer who regards himself as a writer for the masses. I don't assume of myself as a literary stylist: if my type arrives, that is just incidental, but I am more interested in finding at the heart of the fact which the man in the street can understand than in just spinning words."

Ernest Emenyonu, a Nigerian critic noted for his sympathy in direction of Ekwensi, fees that Ekwensi "has by no means been appropriately assessed as a author."

Yet another sympathetic critic,the extended-standing American convert to the examine of African Literature, Charles Larson, describes him as one particular of the most prolific African writers of the twentieth century. According to Larson, Ekwensi "is most likely the most broadly-go through novelist in Nigeria--possibly even in West Africa--by readers whose literary tastes have not been uncovered to the much more complex writings of Chinua Achebe and other more skilled African novelists."

Kole Omotoso previous President of Nigerian Association of Authors and Drama professor at University of Ibadan confessed a lifelong fascination with him after reading through his novelette The Yaba Round about Murder as a little one, for, as he confesses, it taught him the value of room in writing fiction. Omotoso goes on to state that Ekwensi's significant value in Nigerian writing is due to the fact he believed in himself and 'made us believe in ourselves.' The pan-Africanist slant of his writings and his publications currently being largely in Nigeria had been found commendable. When several other African writers had been in self-exile, he chose to continue being in his native nation, rather than reside overseas wherever publishing opportunities are a lot more abundant.

Whilst some scholars discounted Ekwensi's novels, others valued their social realism. Charles R. Larson set his perform in historical perspective: "Regional coloration is their forte, whether it be Ekwensi's metropolis of chaos, Lagos, or Onitsha ... ; the Nigerian reader is positioned for the very first time in a viewpoint which has been previously unexplored in African fiction."

Placing Ekwensi's work firmly in the popular idiom, Douglas Killam explained their relevance: "Well-known fiction is constantly significant as indicating present common interests and morality. Ekwensi's function is redeemed (although not saved as artwork) by his severe problem with the moral difficulties which inform modern Nigerian life. As this kind of they will constantly be appropriate to Nigerian literary history and to Nigerian custom."

Ekwensi informed stories that, like nicely-cooked onugbu (bitter leaf) soup, left a pleasant following-meal tang on the palate. Through his performs Ekwensi advised us that a operate of fiction does not deserve that honourable title if it does not at initial sight-...-arrest the reader like a cop's handcuffs..... I examine many of Ekwensi's publications, and conserve for 'The Drummer Boy', which was a advisable text when I was in junior secondary college in Plateau State, the others have been examine because they are what a book-hungry soul requirements for sustenance. Who can, having been initiated into the cult of Ekwensi, forget the revenge-driven Mallam Iliya, the sokugo-stricken Mai Sunsaye, the skirt-besotted Amusa Sango, the raunchy belle, Jagua Nana (they don't develop women like that any much more, whether in fiction, on the telly, and almost certainly in true existence); and the heart-rending Ngozi and heroic Pedro? They are my buddies for lifestyle.

Ekwensi did considerably far more than create 'airport thrillers'. He informed fantastic tales that stay on in the hearts of all who encountered them. ( Henry Chukwuemeka Onyeama a Lagos-primarily based author and instructor)

An Ibo, like Chinua Achebe, Ekwensi was born in 1921 in Minna, Niger State, in Northern Nigeria, but attended secondary school in a predominantly Yoruba area, Ibadan. He is really acquainted with the several major ethnic groups in his country, and therefore possesses a knowledge typically nicely exploited in his novels. He went on subsequently to Yaba Larger College in Ibadan and then moved over to Achimota University in Ghana where he studied forestry. For two a long time he labored as a forestry officer and then taught science for a short period. He then entered the Lagos College of Pharmacy. He later continued at the University of London (Chelsea College of Pharmacy) throughout which period he wrote his earliest fiction, his 1st book-duration publication Ikolo the Wrestler and Other Ibo Tale (1947) , printed in London. His writings earned him a location in the National Media exactly where he rose to Head of attributes in the Nigerian Broadcasting Providers and finally becoming its Director.

A number of occasions in Ekwensi's childhood contributed later to his writings. Despite the fact that ethnically an Igbo, he was raised among Hausa playmates and schoolmates and so spoke the two tribal languages. He also learned of his heritage via the several Igbo stories and legends that his father informed him, which he would later publish in the assortment Ikolo the Wrestler and Other Ibo Tales. In 1936 Ekwensi enrolled in the southern Nigerian secondary school recognized as Federal government School, Ibadan, where he discovered about Yoruba culture as effectively as excelling in English, math, science, and sports activities. He go through every thing he could lay his hands on in the college library, concentrating on H. Rider Haggard, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, and Alexandre Dumas. He also wrote content and stories for quite a few college publications, particularly The Viking magazine.

For the duration of the later component of his stint as a forest officer Ekwensi started out yearning for the metropolis. So beginning in 1947 he taught English, biology, and chemistry at Igbobi University in close proximity to Lagos. To his courses he examine aloud manuscripts of books for kids, Drummer Boy, Passport of Mallam Ilia, and Trouble in From Six, and short stories. Eventually, soon after decades of supplementing his writing career by operating in broadcasting and carrying out other public relations work, Ekwensi gave up his day jobs in 1984 to pursue writing complete time. He returned to writing grownup novels, picking and deciding on from his personal "archive" of previously written manuscripts considerably of which he revised into the novels Jagua Nana's Daughter, Motherless Baby, For a Roll of Parchment, and Divided We Stand, which have been published in the 1980s. For illustration, in For a Roll of Parchment he recounted his journey from Nigeria to England, as he had in People of the Metropolis. He did, nonetheless, update his material to portray publish-Globe War II Nigeria, with its faster paced existence.

Sex, violence, intrigue, and mystery in a recognizable contemporary setting most usually in the rapidly-paced melting pot of the city were common diet regime in Ekwensi's performs especially in Jagua Nana, in which a really worldly and very appealing forty-5 yr previous Nigerian woman with several suitors falls in really like with a young teacher, Freddie. She agrees to send him to examine law in England on the comprehension of their obtaining married on his return. Close to this beautiful and outstanding prostitute, Ekwensi sets in motion a complete panoply of vibrant, amoral characters who have drifted from their rural origins to grab the dazzling pleasures of the metropolis.

And the novel by itself exhibits us the seedy underbelly of the big metropolis, Lagos, where Jagua's favourite haunt, the Tropicana bar, sets the scene for much of the story.

Someday, again in the 1950s the Onitsha Market place 'literary' mafia, strarted creating and advertising and marketing openly, a semi-nude photograph of a buxom Igbo teenage elegance, with the sassy caption, "Beateam mee lee" - I dare you to beat me!

Those had been the prudish days of higher moral values in Igboland and certainly Nigeria , of Elizabethan style with cane-wielding main school teachers and headmasters. The offending photo sent shockwaves right down the spines of the public who, nonetheless, rushed to get copies. Males who turned up their noses at the photos in public, secretly purchased, seen and relished copies. And..school boys did odd jobs for dad and mom, and the dollars they earned were saved up to the one particular shilling cost of the photograph, which they employed to invest in it and then usually tucked it away, in-in between books, absent from the prying eyes of dad andmom or the class teacher, from wherever curious peeks of the treasure could be sneeked sometimes, at its owner's chance, even in the center of a lesson. Noted for churning out almanacs, with images of the famous, unfolding occasions, folk artwork, as effectively as this kind of literature as individuals of Ogali A. Ogali, author of the legendary "Veronica My Daughter", the mafia knew wherever to draw the line. Intercourse, however, marketed any day and age and the mafia knew this. But no one needed to be identified with something even remotely pornographic. "Beateam mee lee" was consequently, at the time, the mother of all daring.

It was against this backdrop that Ekwensi took the Nigerian literary scene by storm with the publication of the raunchy Jagua Nana. Ekwensi's most broadly go through novel, Jagua Nana, published in 1961 returned us to the locale of Folks of the City but with a significantly much more cohesive plot centered on Jagua, a courtesan whohad a love for the expensive as reflected in her identify itself, which was a corruption of the expensive English vehicle, Jaguar. Her existence personalizes the conflict involving the outdated conventional and modern day urban Africa. Though Ekwensi had previously shown the path of his works with the publication, in 1954, of Men and women of the City, it was Jagua (the lead character in this novel) that constructed the Ekwensi legend and assumed a life all its individual, starting to be a folk hero of sorts. Jagua dared the reading public. Ekwensi the artist, also had the magic of finding out names of his characters that had been instant hits. They stuck like glue in the reader's memory and helped animate the fictional personality. Bold, defiant, imaginative and rendered with unusual technical finesse, Jaguar Nana absolutely established Ekwensi as the ultimate chronicler of Nigerian metropolis life.

Published in 1961, the novel Jagua Nana, tells the storyof an aging prostitute named Jagua who tries to present for herself security in her later existence by way of her relationship with a youthful guy. Yet while this youthful man is studying law in England, Jagua entails herself in a variety of routines, some dubious, some not. Jagua Nana, witnessed some improvement in plot quality and management, unlike what obtained in Men and women Of The Metropolis, chronicling the adventures of an ageing prostitute in Lagos, in love with her function and the pricey lifestyles, but who ends up in grief and disappointment.

Ekwensi's attempt to dust her up later and usher her into some type of happiness and fulfillment introduces the quest motif in his work, which manifests itself completely in the sequel, Jagua Nana's Daughter (1987), exactly where Jagua, soon after a long search, was in a position to reconnect with her educated, socially elevated daughter, who had also had her individual fair share of loose lifestyle. Both daughter and mom have been at the exact same time engrossed in a quest for mutual fulfillment and healing right up until they met fortuitously. In the stop, following she suffers sufficiently, Ekwensi permits her to have happiness.

As was to be in numerous of his other novels, Ekwensi's moralizing is evident and reform is possible for some characters. For illustration, in the later novel Iska Ekwensi portrayed a youthful Ibo widow, Filia, who moves to Lagos following her husband's death. There she tries to lead a respectable lifestyle. Although she tries to get an education and accountable employment, she encounters several obstacles, which permit Ekwensi to show readers a wide array of urbanites. However this novel, printed by a European press, could not compete for popularity with its predecessor, Jagua Nana, which triggered controversy for its frank portrayal of sexuality. When an Italian movie firm desired to film Jagua Nana, the Nigerian federal government prevented this energy fearing unfavorable media portrayals of the region.

Speaking about what inspired him to publish the function in an interview, Ekwensi mentioned: I was a pharmacy pupil at the Yaba Higher University those days and I lived in the exact same compound with a young man who was quite romantic. He would never miss his evening club for anything at all. We had a night time club then, referred to as Rex Club, run by the late Rewane - the two Rewanes are dead now, by the way and one particular of them was at Federal government College, Ibadan even though the other one particular was a politician.

Now, several a long time later, I was named upon to do a programme for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) about evening life and I identified out that I had so much material about this subject that I could truly construct it into a complete book. That was the inspiration.

But yet another of his novels is Burning Grass (1961) a assortment of vignettes giving insight into the existence of a pastoral Fulani cattlemen household of Northern Nigeria..The novel and the characters are primarily based truly on a actual household with whom Ekwensi himself had previously lived. For right after studying forestry at the Yaba Higher College in Lagos in the course of Globe War II, Ekwensi started a two-yr stint as a forestry officer which familiarized him with the forest reserves,from which he was enabled to publish such adventure tales in rural settings as Burning Grass..

"In the days in the forest, I was in a position to reminisce and publish. That was when I actually started to create for publishing," he told Nkosi. The a number of months spent with the nomadic Fulani individuals, later became the subjects of Burning Grass.in which he follows the adventures of Mai Sunsaye, who has Sokugo, a wanderlust, and of his loved ones, who attempt to rescue him. While seeing his protagonists via varied adventures, Ekwensi portrays the lives of the Fulani cattlemen. This early work, considered 1 of his far more "serious" novels, was published by Heinemann educational publishers and reissued in 1998

Two novellas for youngsters followed in 1960; both The Drummer Boy and The Passport of Mallam Ilia which had been workouts in blending conventional themes with undisguised romanticism.

Between 1961 and 1966 Ekwensi published at least a single significant work every yr. The most critical of these had been the novels, Beautiful Feathers (1963) and Iska (1966), and two collections of short stories, Rainmaker (1965) and Lokotown (1966).

Gorgeous Feathers (1963) displays the nationalist and pan-Africanist consciousness of the pre-independence days of the 1950s and how the young hero's youthful commitment to his excellent leads to the disintegration of his family, thus underscoring the proverb alluded to in the title: "nevertheless well-known aman is outdoors, if he is not respected inside his very own house he is like a bird with beautiful feathers, amazing on the outdoors but ordinary inside of."

From 1967 to 1969, in the course of the Nigerian civil war, when the eastern portion of Nigeria tried to secede, Ekwensi served as a government details officer the experiences from which he used to create the 1976 picaresque novel Survive the Peace. which realistically portrayed the actions of a radio journalist in the wake of the civil war in Biafra.who in his work to reunite his loved ones, encounters the violence, destruction, refugees, and relief operations that these kinds of chaos engenders. By means of flashbacks, Ekwensi also depicts the war by itself giving a post-mortem on the just-concluded , interrogates the problems of surviving in the so-called peace. It looks for instance at the pathetic fate of James Odugo, the radio journalist who survives the war only to be cut down on the street by marauding former soldiers.

In these early functions as the collections Ikolo the Wrestler and Other Ibo Tales, and An African Night's Entertainment, the novel Burning Grass, and the juvenile works The Leopard's Claw and Juju Rock, Ekwensi told tales in a rural setting.

Ekwensi continued to publish beyond the 1960s, and among his later works are the novel Divided We Stand (1980) in which he lampooned the Nigerian civil war, the novella Motherless Child (1980), and The Restless Metropolis and Christmas Gold (1975), Behind the Convent Wall (1987), and Gone to Mecca (1991).

Ekwensi also printed a amount of performs for youngsters.this kind of as Ikolo the Wrestler and Other Ibo Tales (1947) and The Leopard's Claw (1950). In the 1960s, he wrote An African Night's Enjoyment (1962), The Excellent Elephant-Bird (1965), and Trouble in Form Six (1966). About time, Ekwensi made other books, mainly for youngsters, which even though they might not have been internationally acclaimed, had been nonetheless nicely acknowledged and go through all about Nigeria and Africa. They incorporated Rainmaker (1965), Iska (1966), Coal Camp Boy (1971) Samankwe in the unusual Forest (1973), Motherless Baby (1980), The Restless Metropolis and Christmas Gold (1975), Samankwe and the Highway Robbers (1975), Behind the Convent Wall (1987), Gone to Mecca (1991), Masquerade Time! (1992), and King Forever! (1992). In 2006, he completed work on two other books; "Tortoise and the Brown Monkey", a short story and "Another Freedom".

Gratifyingly Ekwensi is even now writing, He has published a number of titles as When Adore Whispers, Divided We Stand, Jagua Nana's Daughter and King for Actually! all associated to before performs.

When Enjoy Whispers like Jagua Nana revolvesaround a quite beautiful woman with multiple suitors. But while she thinks she has won the adore of her life her father expects her to get married to an older man in an organized marriage.

Divided We Stand (1980) was written in the heat of the Biafra war by itself, though published later. It reverses the obtained wisdom that unity is power, showing how ethnicity, division, and hatred carry about distrust, displacement, and war itself.

Jagua Nana's Daughter (1986) revolves around Jagua's daughter's traumatic search for her mom foremost her to come across not only her mom but a companion as properly. She is able to get married to a highly placed skilled as she, not like her mother, is a skilled as effectively. She therefore gains the safety and protection she desires.

King for Actually! (1992) satirises the need of African leaders to perpetuate on their own in electrical power. Sinanda's climbing to electrical power from humble track record does not avert his vaulting ambition from soaring to the height exactly where he was now aspiring to godhead

In the decades since Ekwensi commenced writing, the Nigerian readership has altered. As opposed to the days of the Onitsha Industry fiction, when books had been printed inexpensively and offered cheaply to suit popular tastes at the turn of the millennium couple of publishing companies managed the alternative of books published; guide costs created books often go past the reach of the masses, restricted largely to schools and libraries, which cater to nonfiction and instructional supplies. With a variety of types of media growing in reputation, the incentive to read has fallen. With fewer people reading through for pleasure, novels are in tiny demand. Since of these conditions, inventive writers experience. Of this downside, Ekwensi advised Larson, "Journalists thrive here, but imaginative writers get diverted and the creativity gets washed out of them if they need to take the bread and butter property."

At a public lecture in 2000, quoted by Kole Ade-Odutola in Africa News, the elderly but even now vivacious Ekwensi expressed his need to "create and nurture youthful minds in the customs and traditions of their communities" by means of his writings. He explained, "African writers of the twentieth century inherited the oral literature of our ancestors, and creating on that, placed at the centre-stage of their fiction, the values by which we as Africans had lived for centuries. It is these values that make us the Africans that we are--distinguishing in between excellent and evil, justice and injustice, oppression and freedom." In tune with the occasions, he had started self-publishing his writings on the Web. Despite the vagaries of the African publishing world, at age 80 Ekwensi was even now pursuing his objective because as he wrote in his essay for The Important Ekwensi 15 years earlier, "The satisfaction I have gained from writing can never ever be quantified."

References

Beier, Ulli ed., Introduction to African Literature (1967);

Breitinger, Eckhard, "Literature for Younger Readers and Schooling in Multicultural Contexts," in Language and Literature in Multicultural Contexts, edited by Satendra Nandan, Uinveristy of South Pacific, 1983.

· , Volume 117: Caribbean and Black African Writers, Gale, 1992. Dictionary of Literary Biography

Dathorne, O. R. The Black Brain A Historical past of African Literature. Minneapolis: College of Minnesota Press, 1974.

Emenyonu, Ernest, Cyprian Ekwensi. Evans Brothers, 1974.

Emenyonu, Ernest, editor. The Crucial Ekwensi. Heinemann Academic Books, 1987.

Larson, Charles R., The Emergence of African Fiction. Indiana University Press, 1971

Larson, Charles R. The Ordeal of the African Author. London: Zed Publications, 2001.

Lindfors, Bernth, 'Nigerian Satirist' in ALT5

Laurence, . Margaret Lengthy Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists, 1952-1966 (1968).

Mphahlele, Ezekiel

Palmer Eustace. The Growth of the African Novel. Studies in African literature. London: Heinemann, 1979.

Exploring the Breath, Range, Character,Scope and Reception of Cyprian Ekwensi's Writings