>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

>> Good afternoon, everybody, and I'm really delighted
to see you all here for this very special event.
I'm Mary Jane Deeb, chief of the African Middle East Division,
and I'd like to welcome you all on behalf of the Division
and the African [inaudible].
This division is responsible for 78 countries, countries in Africa,
the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus.
We go as far as Kirghizstan, Afghanistan, South Africa, Morocco.
We go to those countries.
And [inaudible] that we could only collect from those countries,
but we do programs about them.
We show films, we have seminars, symposia,
and last year we started a very special series called --
that we called Conversations with African Poets and Writers.
And the idea behind it was that we wanted not only people
in the United States but all over the world to know
about what is being written in Africa.
We wanted to bring in established writers and thinkers,
and we wanted to see also what young people are thinking, doing, writing.
And we wanted to focus on literature, poetry, and novels.
And so we partnered -- we, the African Section,
the African Middle East Division --
with two very inspiring people and their organizations.
We partnered with Bernadette Paolo, who's the President and CEO
of the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa,
and with Rob Casper, the head of the Poetry and Literature Center here
at the Library of Congress.
Both of them are fabulous people, whose interest and enthusiasm is
as strong as my own for this program.
And the African Section has just been wonderful,
with the four specialists have pulled together
and organized programs centering on this series.
So the series is going to be part, is webcast and is going to part
of an archive, which will remain in the Library of Congress for years
to come, and is accessible, not only in the United States
but anywhere in the world.
So the professors, and we have a number of them, like Man- jung here,
and others who want to teach about every kind of literature
and let people know about the writers in their own voice,
in their own tongues, if you want, can actually go into this archive
and use them for their students and also for scholars and others.
So now I'd like to introduce my other partner, Bernadette Paolo.


>> Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests.
Thank you to Dr. Mary-Jane Deeb and Rob Casper and Dr. Angel Baptiste,
African and Middle Eastern Section of the Library of Congress,
the Poetry and Literature Section as well.
This is our second program this week in this series,
and the time expended is minimal compared to the return
that we're going to get from this series.
People all over the world will finally see poets,
authors from the continent of Africa, and will give voice
to the talent that has long been forgotten, particularly [inaudible].
The mission of the Africa Society of the National Summit
on Africa then is to educate Americans about the countries,
the cultures, the economies, the contributions emanating
from the continent of Africa.
And what better way to do that then with our partners
than to see the continent through the eyes and experiences
of these poets who are our distinguished guests.
We appreciate the participation of those of you
who are attending this program in person at the Library of Congress,
and we so value those of you who will be tuning in online
and have the opportunity to see this firsthand.
Together we're growing and we're learning daily.
We can't do this, as Mary-Jane said.
Mary-Jane Deeb and I go back a long way.
The Library of Congress is very important to me.
I was on the Hill for a number of years ago; 25 years ago,
Mary-Jane was one of our panelist expert presenters before the
Subcommittee on Africa.
Times have changed, and I'm proud [inaudible] shift
in the United States with respect to this continent.
Africa has moved from the bottom
of the foreign policy agenda to a much better place.
It's still now where we want it to be, but hopefully as Americans begin
to know and understand fully the value of the African Diaspora
within the United States and the continent that portends
for our future, our relationship will continue to get stronger.
Thank you once again.   It's really -- speaking of partners,

it's great to see Professor Sulayman Nyang from Howard University,
Dr. Cha, Mrs. Langley, whose husband was a famous professor
at Howard University.
The African Society has had a 12-year partnership
with Howard Bundt Center, so we're glad to see you.
So without further adieu, I'd like to turn to Rob Casper,
who will introduce Tijan Sallah from Gambia, who's not only a writer
and poet but an economist as well.   Rob?


>> All right.   Thanks so much to Bernadette.

Thanks to Mary-Jane as well, for a wonderful introduction.
I can't tell you how excited we at the Poetry and Literature Center are


I'm thrilled and honored to introduce Tijan M. Sallah.
Tijan M. Sallah was born in Gambia in 1958 to a Wolof Muslim family.
He studied at Berea College in Kentucky
and Virginia Polytechnic Institute,
where he received a Ph.D. in economics in 1987.
He also received an honorary doctorate in literature
from the World Academy of Arts and Culture, Taiwan, in 1984.
Dr. Sallah has worked at the World Bank since 1989.
As an economist, he has supervised and managed development projects
on agricultural development and world development of water
and other environmental resources in South Asia,
the Middle East, and in Africa.
Currently he is sector manager of the Agriculture World Development
and Irrigation Unit for the Africa Region at the Bank.
Dr. Sallah has written in a variety of literary and critical genres,
such as poetry, short stories, cultural monographs,
as well as biographical and critical essays.
In the book, "Culture and Customs of Gambia," he is described as quote,
"one of the most important African writers following the generation
of Nobel Laureate playwright Wole Soyinka and novelist Chinua Achebe."
Dr. Sallah's writing has been included
in major African anthologies, such as "Under African Skies,"
"The Heinemann Book of Contemporary New African Short Stories,"
and "Modern African Poetry."
He's also edited the anthology "New African Poetry,"
which Library Journal said quote, "presents a body
of valuable poetry inaccessible to readers from the West.
In his biography, Chinua Achebe, teacher of light,
was heralded in African Studies Review as a quote, "fitting tribute
to the renowned African writer and a lasting contribution
to African literature generally."
His most recent collection, "Dream Kingdom: New and Selected Poems,"
spans more than 25 years of his work.
Please join me in welcoming Tijan M. Sallah.

>> I wanted to start by giving you an anecdote, [inaudible] anecdote,
about an intellectual who was once invited to speak before an audience.
And when he came, the crowd had gathered with great anticipation
about what this individual was going to say, and he said to the audience,
"Do you know what I'm going to say to you?"
And the entire crowd said, "No."
So he said that when you are ignorant, there's no need for me
to tell you, and he left.
Okay. Decided to come in the second time,
and this time the audience agreed that they will all unanimously agree
and go on the affirmative.   So the intellectual


and he left.   He decided to come the third time,

decided that they will use [inaudible] yes,
and the others will say no.
He came before the audience and said,
do you know what I am going to say to you?
And half the audience said yes, the other said no.
He said let those who say yes, those who know,
tell those who don't, and he escaped.

I feel like that, because this is
such an [inaudible] people I've known over many years,
who've been veterans in African Studies, African literature,
and I mention in particular Sulayman Nyang, who has been the head
of the African Studies program at Howard University,
and Professor Charles Lawson, who has been the head
of the English Department at American University, both of whom,
Charles Larsen in particular and then Professor Bay Cham,
who is an eminent critic of African film and so on.
So having these people in the audience,
I think we have a very rich group, whom I think we can learn a lot
about African [inaudible].
Going to do today, and I have the challenge of reading from the work.
I have reading a poem titled "Dawn Visit."
It is a poem about a person who arrives at your house unexpected
at the wrong hour -- at dawn, for example.

"You came at dawn, cocks have not yet crowed.
How can I open the door?
You are a stranger, and even if I know you,
the night is not meant for visiting.
This, you must know, there is a cock crow for everything.
My ancestors loved strangers.
One at dawn, not one who vies with the moon and stars,
not one who like a scavenger, is the green of night.
We are day people.
If you come by daylight, when the afternoon dangles yellow
on the cactus and grass I will spread my tablecloth,
everything for you.
Salmon, bread, shrimp, lemon, water, ginger drink --
it, drink to satisfaction.
But now you come at dawn, with fill birds drunk, asleep in guava trees.
When the rats that wrestle it he darkness open brown cassavas,
and you want me to open the door for you, how can I,
when gray-bearded knights are not meant for visiting?


>> The second poem I'm going to read is a poem about my own experiences
in the U.S. When I came to this country, I had the opportunity
of going to an African-American black church,
and it was a really amazing experience.
The drama in the church resembled a lot,
looking at particularly African ritual practices.
"Family day, American black church, invited us to her church.
It was [inaudible] day.
we came in happy faces in our dashikis and tie-dyes.
We came as our groups.
We came and did rituals with choir music,
as the church world bobbled with [inaudible].
Pews with confused faces side-glanced us with amusement.
Some were straight to us and welcome us with a handshake.
There were happy beauties in the choir.
We stretched our eyes to meet their smiles.
As youth we came to sleg our odge.
The choir men and choir women were desarab-derata.
We shifted to onyx and chocolate faces, admiring the plumage.
The church was African Methodist Episcopal,
better shortened into AME.
The congregation behaved like a crowd of continental Africans,
with only a slight variation in ecstatic intensity.
The preacher asked for us to be introduced between music
and the collection plates.
We stood up and made our bid welcomed by a clap that ramped
on four walls, and some said, 'Praise the Lord.'
And the preacher said, 'Let's welcome our visitors in prayer.'
And the congregation bowed, their eyes closed in reverence.
The literature man made funny noises,
and the congregation responded to the preacher's call,
'Thank you, Lord, thank you Jesus.   Thank you, Lord, thank you.'

And the preacher preached about Moses and Joshua, about his people
and about the Promised Land.
And he quoted from Moses, 'Let my people go.'
The congregation drifted into galaxies of ecstasy,
and hands were raised and hands were waved in unrelieved repentance.
For a moment, I thought the mad hour was here.
For a moment I thought, the Second Coming was here.
Some stood up to repent solitary deed,
some stood up to repent solitary scenes, some stood up, some stood up
and drifted to the center with unrelieved hand waves.
The preacher preached, adjusting his white robes, with hands raised
in characteristic ascension.
The congregation charged in celebrative excitement,
their [inaudible] like raindrops into a mighty, mightless dream.
The congregation kept the refrain
with the unison chant of Buddhist monks.
The congregation swayed like a tree, then it swayed like a forest.
Thank you, Lord, thank you.
For a moment I thought, no world extended behind the church worlds;
for a moment I thought all time was reduced to a single moment.
My Nigerian friend Grace and was moved by the scripture praise.
We admired this girl's, choir girls,
who admired the voices of the elders.
We all were hypnotized of things gone and left undone.
We awaited the radical embrace."   Thank you.


>> I want to read a poem which I wrote in 2000, when I was going
through England and had an accident, a femur fracture,
and spent one month in London, recovery.
And what was interesting about that experience,
I spent every day I wrote a poem, and the poems were all rhymes,
which I've never written before
because I usually write in free verse.
But during this period, I went through the whole process
of convalescence, mainly writing a poem every day, in rhyme form.
And the poems I wrote were called "poems harrow."
I spent the time at the time basically
in a location called harrow, you know,
where you have the famous British school Harrow.
You had the Clementine Churchill Hospital.
It was quite interesting that I was convalescing in Harrow
with at the same time having gone through a harrowing experience,
so I decided that I will put up this collection of poems as "Harrow:


"Here, I lie now in Harrow, licking over my sorrows
like a dog whose endured dignity makes him howl silently in pity.
Life has a way of coming to a bump.
When I'm speeding endlessly at the hump of the quest for coins
and fame, for why should I be suddenly lame?
Here I lie now in Harrow.
I might as just well have been in a wheelbarrow, for time ticks slowly
to the aching of joints and muscles and a body slowly waking.
My friends, the words bring books and shoes.
Their love takes away my mind from the blues.
They joke about the Dickinson hell I've been in.
I look up and see warmth in their faces to the brim."

I wrote another poem in a sequel to this.
It was -- it was me looking at the orthopedic doctor,
and getting the sense that the orthopedic doctor was a carpenter
working on me, a carpenter constructing a furniture
that has just broken.
"So I paid my tribute to the body carpenter.
After my model furniture is broken, I need his hammer and nail,
I need his bandages as a stoken.
So I sing praises to the body carpenter,
for he has X-rayed my body furniture,
taken blood samples, stabilized my leg.
Now I wait for his genius to rebuild me at the peg.
My body is no better than a broken furniture,
wobbly it is, and its music squeaks.
Looking like some animated painful picture, I move slowly,
and surely so that nothing breaks.
I know I will be left with scars, but who knows a carpenter
who does not leave marks?
I pay my tribute to the body carpenter of scars,
who joins muscles and bones with hearts and backs.

I wanted to read a poem titled "Dialogue with My Dead Grandfather."
You know, I think one of the most interesting experiences we have
in our lives is when you have the sort of unrelenting feeling
of a person who passed away
and you say you wish you had had an opportunity,
just one last time, to talk with them.
It continues somehow to haunt you all your life,
and you keep on somehow dealing with this in different forms and so on.
And I'm sure this is an experience typical to many people.
So this poem is titled, "Dialogue with My Dead Grandfather."

"'There are several ways to have a dialogue with a dead man,
say my grandfather, whom I've never met but who believed
that fertility paved the streams of the future.
My grandfather, who believed in neither sport nor idleness.
There are many ways to talk to him, but I cannot talk to him.
That is too impolite.   You cannot talk to your grandfather,

or he will send you hell-bound till your rudeness turn to respect.
One way is to reach deep into our bones
and feel the grace of generations.
There, my grandfather will die quietly
with the wisdom of quite teeth.
He'll tell me, send me a model telegram to watch
out for all the evils of modernity which are disguised as civilization.
But modernity to me, is elephants languishing behind computers
and children hatching out of eggs into efficiency apartments.
Another way my grandfather, is to kneel by the solemn graveyard
and speak to him in the silence of spirit.
There he will inquire why my age has forgotten the dead, waiting,
wasting away emotions in basketball and soccer fields,
screaming at each other as if tormented by the devil.
But of course, I shall not agree.   The dead have their fences.

It is they and us, and life has changed, faster than the color
of the clouds, and modern man lives in the hurry and worry
of blue chip stocks and sluggish bread loaves.
There are several ways to dialogue with a dead grandfather.
one way is for me to tell my father who in turn tells his father.
At the limit, my grandfather will get the message, and to get back
to me, my grandfather can do likewise.
But what if my grandfather does not speak our modern lingua franca?
Will my father suffice as a translator?
If so, will he agree to carry the message
to a generation deaf from modernity?   I do not know.

What I do know is that to dialogue with a dead man,
you have to die somehow, learn the language of the dead,
or keep communion with the dead.   And in this our age so obsessed

with youthful living, death is a word obscene.

I don't want to read too much poems, maybe leave some time for questions
and if you want me to read -- I wanted to read one last--
>> We're going to have a conversation with you.
>> Okay, conversation, okay.   I wanted to read one last poem.

It's a poem deeply rooted in the Gambia, and it's about --

it's an elegy for -- and if you go to Gambia
and the center Gambian area,
you hear this musical instrument called a kora,
which is like a harp-lute that greeters use to tell the history
of families going back to generations.
And the elegy of Masanneh Ceesay, which I learn more from city Jamna
and forever more about which I -- it's a fascinating one.
It's about basically a man who grabbed this village beauty,
had planned for this great day of the marriage ceremony,
and on the day of the ceremony itself, discovers basically
that the suitor was dead.
The entire village had prepared for this event and were ready
for this great occasion, and the day of it they found
that the suitor was dead.   Elegy for my son.

It's a sad poem, in a way, but Ceesay has a twist to it,
and I hope maybe in the discussions and so on.
"So this is life after all.
This is what the instrument harvest, after all,
suddenly dash by the calling, the herbs of Bullion women,
mournful Masanneh Ceesay.
Near the Benton river, they say, leave this revered suitor.
His name was Masanneh Ceesay on the day of the marriage,
the suitor lay in shrouds.   His name was Masanneh Ceesay,

All over Manding people [inaudible] His name was Masanneh Ceesay.
The bright knelt in tears, sad drops reigning down her sapphire dress.
The women comforted her with songs.
The bright wept with unease, her bep tie drenched in tears,
and the kora yellows comforted her with praises.
This world, the Wolof say, is the lady Kumbanje.
The opera she wears is only a transitory deception,
for if the saints have vanished with the quickness of lightning,
then we should know that on this Earth, nobody would be left.
All over Manding they say, the sudden death
of a hero should the futility of this life and the people
of Manding remember, Masanneh Ceesay, as what could go wrong


>> First of all, I would like to say to Dr. Sallah,
thank you so much for joining us.
I know Dr. Sallah has an extremely busy schedule.
He's just coming in from a month-long work assignment
in Africa, so we are very, very pleased to have you here.
At the same time I must apologize.
Due to the hurricane last week, Hurricane Sandy, I was not able
to get Dr. Sallah's books here for a book signing,
but after we're finished I hope that all of you come up front,
take a look at some of his works, and they are available


At this point, we'd just like to get to know, who is Dr. Tijan Sallah?
You've been acknowledged by critics as Africa's most famous poet,
you've been acknowledged as an African T.S. Elliott,
and you've been acknowledged as a Renaissance Man.
When did you start writing creatively,
what influences your writings, and why did you turn to poetry


>> Thank you very much for this generous --
I basically write, I start [inaudible].
I started writing in the 1970s.   I was then in high school.

I went to a Catholic high school,
which was run by Irish Holy Ghost fathers.
For those from the Gambia, who are in the audience,
they know St. Augustan's High School.
While was at St. Augustan's in the early '70s,
we had a school curriculum in literature,
which was lightly British literature.
We studied, of course, the Shakespearian Classics.
We studied some of the works of Joyce, Dubliner's and so on.
We studied also some of the British poets, Wordsworth, Byron Shelley.
But African literature had not yet really come
in as a main thing in the curriculum.
I was studying, of course,
under some quite very inspiring Holy Ghost fathers
who would make us basically read various English writers
and then compose essays.
There was particularly a priest by the name of John Goff.

your hand on poetry.   Now, I never knew what poetry was.

I basically thought poetry was rhyming, doing anything,
putting words that rhymed, that was a poem,
because much of what we said the British classics we were fed
on the steady daily staple, was mostly rhythmic poetry and also much
of it was 19th century poetry.
I'm talking about snow, and we never saw snow.
I grew up [inaudible].
I've never seen snow, except maybe in the Frigidaire.
But you read about snow and so on, and a lot of things --
you appreciated the human condition expressed in the works,
but the images that were invoked were not immediately relevant
to your environment, birds that were mentioned,
the creatures that were involved were not.
So basically I used to write essays.
Father Goff one day told me, well, you write, too, why don't you try.
And I wrote my first poem, was called "The African Redeemer."
And it was a tribute to Kwami Nkrumah because Nkrumah at the time,
the first president of Ghana, was quite a very influential personality
in Africa, very much admired by African youth in particular,
because he sort of championed the idea of a United States of Africa.
And he came at the time of independence
when African countries had not yet consolidated their identities
around a nation state [inaudible] national bound.
At that time he was talking about that Africa needs to come together,
form one unified government, build interstate highways,
allow the mobility of people,
and the Africa would then develop a very dynamic economy
and [inaudible], take its place among the community of nations.
So I was very much inspired by that,
and the first poem I wrote was a tribute to Nkumah.
We had a newspaper in high school called "SunukiBaaro"
which is a combination of Wolof and Mandinka,
sunu meaning arachbaaro means news.
And my poem was featured in the school paper, and of course,
as a young pass in writing, when you see your work
in printed form, it inspires you.
And a lot of the kids in the school then told me they appreciated the
work and so on, and that of course just encouraged me.
It was only in 1970 when a Gambian by the name of Bembar Tambado,
had started a program in Radio Gambia called
"Writers of the Gambia."
There were not many writers in the Gambia at the time.
There was only one internationally known writer by the name
of Lenrie Peters, who was a medical doctor trained in England
and had returned and kept practicing his [inaudible]
as a poet and a novelist.
So there were not many writers [inaudible] Gambia,
which was to encourage young experimenting writers
and give them basically the avenue to express their works and share
with the writer population [inaudible] beginnings
of a literary culture, you could say.
So I was featured in that program and that also inspired me.
It's only when I left the Gambia and came to the U.S. in the mid '70s,
around '76, '77, I came to a high school
in Georgia called Rabun Gap Nacoochee School.
This high school was known for a magazine called Foxfire.
If you're from the South, this publication called Foxfire.
It was done by kids at this high school who would go
up in the mountains and interview all kinds of Appalachian people
in the mountains about different types of folk remedies,
folk costumes and so on, and I was there and started publishing some
of my works on campus and later on began to publish in America.
That's how I got basically into this whole writing obsession.

>> Thank you.
>> In your work "Dream Kingdom," there's a comment that you make
that I'm hoping that you can expand upon.
You say midlife is a stage
where life's possibilities narrow to probabilities.
You stare at the end more forthrightly and say,
"Is this what the human instrument harvests after all?"
And my question is, how does this comment fit into your dimensions
or your dual dimensions, or the dual dimensions of your life as a career
or a professional economist and a professional poet and writer.
>> Well, when I wrote that statement,
it was actually the introduction to my book of selected poems.
What I was particularly interested was looking


mountain. You have all these huge dreams that you're going
to be somebody in the world and that you're going
to make great difference in life.
And as you get to midlife and reach the peak of the mountain,
then all that world possibilities is not to a world of probability.
You can now begin to see what your life is under,
now is no longer looking uphill and seeing the sky,
it's looking downhill and seeing the ground.
So like I said, that's what I --
when I wrote my book of selected poems, that was the sort of angst
that I was sort of dealing with.
I felt that I had in those early years when I was having all kinds
of dreams of what I could do, I was going to return to my country,
I was going to make huge contributions,
but now I find myself I'm in sort of voluntary exile.
The political conditions in the country are not so attractive,
the economic conditions are not attractive.
So you live abroad.
You live with this sort of sense of alienation.
You could do so much, but somehow you're limited by circumstance.
You're limited by the environment that you are in.

So that was what -- in terms of my rules and economies --
literature has always been my heart, I said this throughout my years
in high school since I got involved in it.
I saw it being the freedom, the possibility to export imagination
that you can't do ordinary; for example,
in economics, which is very narrow.
You're working with issues of resourced care, [inaudible]
and managing the problems of scarcity and so on.
I ought to say that economics rules with the head


>> Can you speak about the contemporary literary scene
in Gambia, in Africa, in continental Africa
and here in the African Diaspora.   >> Thank you.

In the Gambia, since Lenrie Peters --
Lenrie Peters can be seen
as the founding father of Gambian literature.
Now, since Lenrie Peters over the past 30 years, there have been much,
a number of voices, quite credible,
some have become internationally known.
One, I think one of the more impressive voices, was a writer who,
Gambian writer, who live in his latter years --
he passed away in the UK and he was called Ebou Dibba.
And he has written three novels, two sort of novels for adults and one
which is more for young adults.
But I think he tried to capture a lot
in his writings, Gambia of the 1960s.
That's when the Gambia he left when he went to, '60s and '70s,
when he went [inaudible].
There are a lot of emerging writers like Nana Grey-Johnson,
who has written the collection
of short stories, some novels and poems.
Much of his work is mostly read locally in the Gambia and much
of it is published locally.
There's also a group of -- number of young writers who are emerging,
for instance, in the Gambia,
who are also catering a lot to the local market.
They are to come.
I think the writers who have really seen some
of the international retribution is Bamda kita, Ebou Dibba,
Nana Grey- Johnson has one novel, has one international,
but likes to write for the local audience.

On the African, we can see [inaudible] in the audience,
when I look at people in the African world, for example,
which is one genre to look at, if you look from the 1920s
until the 1970s, there were certain dominant voices
which were loudly reacting to colonialism.
You have basically three I would say, generation of writers.
There was the generation that was writing during the colonial,
strictly in the colonial period, and they wrote what they called
"apprentice literature," because much
of their literature was not really great work in terms of style,
but it was literature that tried to apologize a lot for colonialism.
Like there is for example, Venice was a basic who said, thank you,
Brittanie, for giving us wards, for giving us food, et cetera.
It was apprenticeship literature,
trying to imitate Western literature,
but basically being apologetic.
And there are a number of writers like who are in that gyration --
Michael d'Anon, H.R. Palomo, Gladius Heyford, and so on.
Then there were the writers who wrote
within between the Colonial period and then what also came
into the Independence period, and this is where really you began
to have some very impressive stylists in African literature --
African poetry and African literature.
You have for example, Leopold Senghor from Senegal
who was the president of Senegal but was also a poet,
and he was the leader of the negritude movement.
You have Wole Soyinka, you have Chinua Achebe, a novelist,
and you have Gabriel Okara from Nigeria, you have Buabua we-Kayembe
from -- these group of writers
who basically during the Colonial period when independent.
And then there were the writers
who were not during the independence period,
and that's the third gyration of writers,
and this includes mostly Ben Bopre,
a novelist writing out of England [inaudible],
I'm sure some of you are familiar with.
You have writers like [inaudible] who is a poet,
Ama ata Aidoo who was a poet as well,
mostly work in the Indolence period.
Now, if you look at the themes, these writers, basically for the --
those who worked during the Colonial period,
strictly wrote about heroism.
You'll see in a lot of their works references to Greek images,
there are a lot of Greek images.   You'll see also a lot of references

to the Bible biblical references in their works.
Those who wrote during the Colonial going into the Independence period,
many of them were writing a lot of anti-Colonial writing,
no [inaudible] negritude was a responsible French colonialism
in Africa, espeically French assimilationist policy.
People like Chinua Achebe, in "Things Fall Apart,"
was dealing basically with the encounter
between the British encounter with their colonies and so on,
and how basically the traditional appeal was overtaken
by the forces of Colonialism.
And then you have so many modernists like this
who just wrote basically during the current era,
who are much less accusatory of Colonialism but more trying to deal
with the realities of their current day.
They are more envigored voices trying
to express their individual experiences.

>> So what might we say?   What are the themes today?

What are today's themes that are coming out of that [inaudible]?
>> Well, you have themes, for example, those of corruption,
the fact that independence came and you have the replacement
of black faces as opposed to white faces with black faces
because the Colonial period you had the Colonial dominant Wolon,
but these black faces now are doing things worse than what was happening
in the Colonial period, some of the dictators.
So now many writers are now struggling
with the current African state on issues of corruption,
issues of bribery, issues of the inequality
between the [inaudible], other areas.
Some are dealing rightly just
with regarding folklore, folklore and so on.
And I could give you illustrations maybe in my readings, for example.
There is a coin by [inaudible] where he talks about
"we're everybody's king," basically talking about how
in the modern period, some people just sit and say well, I'm the king,
so if you don't do work to [inaudible].

>> Another question that I'd like to address to you.
What would you consider to be the future of African literature?
How can African literary scholarship become recognized
within the international community of literary?

>> I think the future of African writing is bright.
I think there are certain challenges we have, which is the challenge
that you have still a large population
that doesn't have the purchasing power to buy books.
So the publishing industry is a very nonprofit-oriented industry.
It is an industry about money, so they publish lively a lot
of things we sell, people buy.
So many Africans writers are writing, but they have the challenge
of finding publishers that will publish their works.
And even after they publish their works,
you have the difficulty of who buys the works.
Many people can't afford it.
So I think that there is a deliberate policy needs to happen
from the side of all governments, ministries of education,
where African books will be adopted in African schools,
and as part of their procurement policy ministries of education need
to be buying books, contract with publishing houses to buy our books
to use in schools, and thereby support the publishers
and thereby into, support the writers and so on.
But there are many young writers
that I imagine, many are from Nigeria.
I'm sure you know people like Chinua Achebe,
supposedly become quite famous, published by Doubleday and so on.
Ben Okri is not new among you, but there's E. Bandetta Thomas,
who's published -- many of them are published for some reason in the UK,
in British British publishing houses.

There are a few that I imagine, but I wouldn't think many have outlets,
and I think the biggest challenge --
I really think there is a lot of support
to invest in African publishing.
It's basically an area that's going --
there's currently an Ethiopian publisher called [inaudible].
I don't know if you know who runs the Africa World Trade --
it's published some of my stuff.
But he runs a sort of muddy, a very, very good business,
one that supports the writers and so on.
But it's a great book in that he's basically providing opportunities
for many of the writers for the world to see the light of day.

>> My final question to Dr. Sallah.
How do you see African poetry within the context of American poetry,
and also, what contribution does African literature have


>> I think African literature can contribute a lot
to world literature.
I mean, it reminds of Sanwar's famous saying, that when you go
to the banquet of world civilization,
you need to have all cultures at the table.
All human cultures have some special value.
They have some special value in their narrative
that they be able to give.
I think Africa, there is the oral traditions of Africa,
which have almost been reached,
but none of it has been not been recorded.
It's only in recent years that you begin to see some of the epics
of people like Sundiata, Benuendo epic, you see the epic
of Sundiata Keita that are now being recorded.
So there's an almost reservoir of traditional oral literature,
oral literature that is now being recorded,
but there's still a lot of [inaudible].
On some of the current writings, I think what Africa brings
to the table is that -- there are currently a lot of issues
about human condition that is in Africa,
issues of inequality, for example.
In Africa, the rich class of people who control government
or who have a lot of wealth, and a large segment
of the population who are poor.   Because one of the things you see

in Africa today is you have the wealthy class of people
who live first world lifestyles,
or lifestyles which are the unenforceable lifestyle.
And then second in the population that's really likely
with almost Medieval sort of lifestyle, living in hard sense.
Then you got some who have huge mansions and swimming pools
and go to Europe for vacation.
So there's that whole issue of inequality.
How can you deal with that?   I think there is a sense,

and the rest of he world has the statements there, that yeah,
there are some issues that African people have not challenged,
if not dealt with, has implications for the rest of the world,
because you have people immobilized what.
If you have let's say an ebola outbreak in DFC,
the next day it would be in New York City or something like that.
So if you don't deal with poverty issues in Africa,
you should be ready -- it will one day come to you.
Somebody had once told me this, that how can we make the rich world
of the West sensitive to Africa, sensitive to some of the poverty
in Africa and in Asia and in Latin America?
They say you should make poverty infectious.
When poverty is infectious, then people take attention.
They become alive.
And this you see here in the rich societies of America and so on.
If you don't pay attention to the poverty in the inner cities,
the poverty in Appalachia and some,
one day this will visit the boughs of the rich people.
We are in one world, we are in first you're in one U.S.,
you have one Africa, but we always say one world
because it's a globalized world, and people are moving,
ideas are moving, and so on.   >> Thank you, Dr. Sallah.

I think that what one can say in terms of your work,
you're allowing us to seek the human face of the world in your work.
So we thank you for that.   Again, I thank you.

We thank you here in the African Middle Eastern Division,
for joining us, for becoming a part of our archive.


>> At this point, we'll have about five minutes of questions.
I would like to know that this program is being webcast.
If you should ask a question, you are giving consent to being webcast.
But I know there must be some interesting questions


>> The question is African poetry writing becoming more universal
with access to the Internet?
Does that allow African writing or African literature
to become more internationally recognized?

>> Well, the essence of that is yes.
There are lot of poets in Africa, young poets.
There are a lot of young poets in Africa
who are developing their own websites and projecting their works
to an international audience and so on.
The problem I think, with a lot of those works coming
in the web is it's not filtered.
It's not filtered, so it's not work that has been reviewed by people
who look at the quality of the work and so on and so on.
So you get -- it's a wiki, it's a wiki world basically, wiki poetry.
The word wiki is everybody is crowd sourcing.
Everybody throws their thing into it and so on.
So you get -- it's like working in the streets.
In the street you might hear somebody singing
who is a good singer and somebody
who is a terrible singer, but he's still singing.
So in a sense, it democratizes poetry, because it allows anybody
who has access to the computer to project that work, but the downside
of that is it's not going to filter so that somebody best is selected
and put on the web and so on.
And so maybe developing web magazines we can filter
and where some good work is selected and put,
that's probably the way to go.
But suddenly the web has created empowered Africans.
It has bridged the digital divide in remarkable ways today.
If you look at the net worth density in terms of access to cell phones
in Africa today, it's amazing.
If you go to the most remote village, and they are talking
with somebody in the capitol city or they're talking with women.
The most remote village which you never thought people can link up,
they're talking with their brother or sister
who is somewhere in Australia and so on.
And that is also happening with the literary arts.


>> Thank you.   Any additional questions?


I was going to say, some of the scholars here.

>> The question is what languages should African writing take
place in?   >> The language question has been --

personally I lean with Chinua Achebe.
There has been this debate that when writers like Chinua Achebe who say
that a writer should write
in whatever language you're comfortable to write in.
So even if you are an African writer and you're comfortable
in writing English or French, use English or French.
And those who say no, the African writer should write
in an African language, because if you don't use African languages,
over time they will die out.   They will die.

Any language that is not being utilized over time,
even for balancing process of natural selection, it will die out.
So I personally lean more towards the direction of Chinua Achebe.
The reason being, I agree that we need to do a lot
to revive our languages, to write in them if you can,
but I think developing that restrictive manual,
that you can only write in your local language,
I think we shut a lot of great imagination and creativity
that could be shared with the larger society in Africa over the rest
of the world, if you just write in your own language.
Of course, there is the school for translation,
you can translate and so on.
But I think writers who have just been writing
in their own indigenous languages,
have difficulty having their works appreciated.
You can see that with some of the Eastern European writers and so on.
Much of their work is capsulated within their narrow.
Of course, eventually they find translation, but cannot appreciated
by the -- I think really you should write
in whatever language you're comfortable with,
and in fact if you can write in English and so on,
it would be appreciated by the larger world community.
Because our societies are very, very differentiated.
You have many ethnic groups, and so if I'm in one country,
let's say South Africa and I speak Zulu and I write in Zulu,
but there are courses, there are other groups in that country
and so on, now, how would my works be appreciated by the rest of the --
it would have to be translated.   It is a double effort.

I don't know, but I do agree that --
in a sense, I also think that we should support our languages,
because I think there's a -- I'm divided.
>> One last question, there's one last question.

>> Your question correctly, Doctor,
and I believe that you're asking the author,
how will African writers integrate the African Diaspora experience
with the African experience of trying
to preserve the cultural heritage of both of those experiences?
>> Summation.
>> It sounded like a simple question, but is it --
when I look at the language question, which I think is that -
just like they're talking about biodiversity today,
that the world is losing a lot of species of plants,
species of animals, that's why when we look at animals
which are going extinct, we try to put them in a zoo to preserve them,
we look at plants which are going extinct, we preserve them.
So it is so more so with the issue of languages.
Because we are a tower bobbit, the world is a tower bobbit, basically.
Basically if you believe in God, we are in a universe where you have
so many language, and it is that richness and diversity of languages
which makes the world rich and so on.
But some languages because they're spoken by very few group of people,
maybe half a million, they disappear over time.
Languages which are spoken by more in numbers
and which have stronger advocates continue to survive.
Now, what do we do to preserve that genity diversity in languages
that exists in the world?   What do we do to do that?

I think it's important, because there are many languages.
When you look at Noah's Ark, it's basically the diversity of people
in that ark which make the ark to survive.
So simply I think we could say, same thing with languages, that when,
that if we work on preserving indigenous languages,
it's a great thing.   But what I would want to --

what I would agree is that people should not be forced to write
in indigenous languages when they would not be able to do,
because some people cannot do it.
I know that I cannot write in Jalaa in the way
that I can write in English.
So I don't want to be politically forced to say that I write --
that I should be writing in Jalaa.
So people should write in whatever, but we should work
to preserve indigenous languages, because that's necessary
for human survival, just like human diversity is necessary
for human survival.
So linguistic diversity, necessary for survival.
I don't know if I answered you.   [ Inaudible comments from audience ]

>> Yeah, because all humans are part of this Earth, and people are going
into societies where they are one race, one tribe,
they speak a certain language.
I think we need to preserve all that,
as part of the human condition, which is invaluable.
>> we thank you.
At this point this concludes our program.
I'd like to invite all of you to come back
to the African Middle Eastern Division here
in the Library Congress.
We have one of the most comprehensive collections
in the world of Africana resources, particularly materials
on the cultural and history of the Gambia.
So we invite you to come back.
Or on Wednesday, November 14, this coming Wednesday,
we will have another noon program, which we will be hosting.
It will be on Building the Cultural Heritage of the New South Sudan.
So we invite you to join us for our Wednesday program.
Again, thank you for coming, thank you, Dr. Sallah.

>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.