ME Eng 8 Q1 0101_SG_African History and Literature PDF Study Guide

English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature LESSON 1.1 African History and Literature Table of Contents Introduction 1 Objectives...

English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature LESSON 1.1 African History and Literature Table of Contents Introduction 1 Objectives 2 DepEd Competency 2 Warm-Up 2 Learn about It 3 Ancient Africa 4 African Empires 5 African Slave Trade and European Imperialism 5 Anti-colonialism and Reconstruction 6 Post-independence Africa 8 Key Points 10 Check Your Understanding 10 Let’s Step Up! 11 Bibliography 11  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature Lesson 1.1 African History and Literature Introduction Africa is a land with a rich and vibrant culture, which is very evident in many of its literary masterpieces. These gems share the story of the Africans’ origins, existence, and their hopes and aspirations. Powerful and deeply moving, African works chronicle the life and the struggles of the continent’s inhabitants. Hence, as Filipinos, studying these will allow us to reflect on and make meaning out of our own hardships and victories. 1  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature Objectives In this lesson, you should be able to do the following: Discuss the history of Africa and the development of African literature. Describe the notable literary genres contributed by African writers. Gain an appreciation for the role that literature plays in culture and society. DepEd Competency At the end of this lesson, you should be able to analyze literature as a mirror to a shared heritage of people with diverse backgrounds (EN8LT-IIIe-10). Warm-Up Think-Pair-Share Materials pad paper writing materials Procedure 1. On a sheet of paper, write three to five words that show your general impression of Africa. 2. Next, choose a partner, and take turns in sharing what you have written. 3. Lastly, discuss how you and your partner have arrived at these impressions. 2  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature Guide Questions 1. What are your first impressions of African literature? 2. What aspects of African literature would you like to learn more about? Learn about It Africa is considered the world’s second-largest and second most populated continent. It is divided into five subregions: North Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa. It is home to 54 countries, ten small dependent territories still controlled by colonial powers, and two disputed territories. The literature produced in this region reflects its long and turbulent history, documenting its peoples’ struggle for liberation. Vocabulary disputed fought for by two or more entities or power (adjective) crude makeshift; an instrument that was made in a basic way (adjective) servitude the state of being under the control of someone more (noun) powerful diaspora dispersion or the scattering of a group of people (noun) pseudonym a pen name or a fictitious name used by some authors (noun) emancipation freedom from slavery (noun) secular not bound by religious control (adjective) 3  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature Essential Question How did African history contribute to the development of its literature? Ancient Africa About 5 to 2.5 million BCE, fossils and skeletal remains were discovered in the Rift Valley and its surrounding areas. This led to the theory that humans originated from Africa. In 600,000 to 200,000 BCE, they spread throughout the continent, and some began migrating to Asia and Europe. These humans, called Homo sapiens, are hunter-gatherers who are capable of making crude stone tools. In 6,000 to 4,000 BCE, river people emerged along the Nile, Niger, and Congo Rivers. It is also within this period that the first written documents were made. Ancient Egyptians began using burial texts to accompany the dead. In 2,300 to 2,100 BCE, the earliest written creation stories, namely the Heliopolis Creation Narrative of the Kemetic Priests of On (“Kemet” is the ancient name of Egypt) and the Memphite Declaration of the Deities, were written on papyrus. Creation narratives were passed on through oral tradition. Ancient Egyptian literature includes poems, plays and narratives, and religious texts. Africans have mostly oral literature. Like in other ancient cultures, African orature is created and transmitted as part of dance and music. African oral arts genres include proverbs and riddles, epics, oration, and personal testimony, praise poetry, songs, chants and rituals, legends, and folktales. All these have religious, artistic, and social functions. 4  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature African Empires The expansion of the Roman Empire from AD 300 to 700 marked the rise of Axum (Ethiopia) and the African conversion to Christianity. However, in AD 610, Africa witnessed the advent of Islam. From AD 639 to 641, Khalif Omar conquered Egypt with Islamic troops and established an Islamic presence in the country by promoting written literature. Since AD 700, roughly 14 million Africans have been sold through the Arab Slave Trade. The rise of an Islamic empire in Africa influenced the early written literature of sub-Saharan West Africa. More so, East African literature emerged during the 14th to the 15th century. An anonymous history of the city-state of Kilwa Kisiwani written in Arabic was discovered; it was believed to be written in 1520. “Message” poems containing religious viewpoints also existed. In 1441, the European Slave Trade in Africa began. African slaves were exported from Africa to Portugal. Even before the European invasion, slavery in Africa already existed. However, ancient Africa's concept of slavery was based only on servitude under the kinship system. The coming of the Arabs and the Europeans introduced the concept of race and created large-scale human trade. African Slave Trade and European Imperialism After Portugal, Spain joined the slave trade in 1479, followed by Britain in 1562, North America in 1619, Holland in 1625, France in 1642, Sweden in 1647, and Denmark in 1697. The 18th century marked the height of the Atlantic Slave Trade and was considered the Black Holocaust because of the slaughter of 28 million Africans. With the African diaspora, Africans carried with them their oral arts. African folktales featuring the tortoise, hare, and spider were widespread on the African continent and were carried to the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States. One of the first slave narratives in English, written in 1789, was The Interesting Narrative of 5  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa. Enslaved from Nigeria to the United States, Olaudah Equiano wrote an autobiography under the pseudonym Gustavus Vassa. This fueled the Abolitionist Movement in Europe and the United States. Anti-colonialism and Reconstruction The 19th century sought the emancipation of slaves from foreign colonial powers. From the 1850s, Black journalism and secular writings were published. Most writers were educated in Europe or European government schools of the sub-Saharan colonies. Works of literature were written in European and African languages. In the 1880s, writers justified the concept of “Africanness,” which then led to the rejection of European culture in literature. South African Olive Schreiner wrote the novel The Story of an African Farm (1883), considered a pioneering work about race and gender. In 1913, Muhammad Abubakar wrote Utenzi wa Liyongo Fumo, or the Epic of Liyongo Fumo, an epic poem on the Southeastern African oral tradition of Liyongo. During the 20th century, Samuel E.K. Mqhayi wrote in his native language, Xhosa. Also, novelists Thomas Mofolo and Solomon Tshekisho Plattje protested injustices suffered by Black South Africans. African-American writer W.E.B. Du Bois reinforced Pan-Africanist ideas of unity and shared identity and roots among Africans in diaspora in his work The Souls of Black Folk (1903). 6  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature Around the 1920s to the 1930s, African writings reflected ideas from Black nationalism and anti-colonial politics movements. At the same time, European missionary-influenced writings integrated traditional oral forms and were translated into African languages. The 1930s gave rise to the Negritude movement. It asserted African identity and culture and denounced the colonization of Africa. Senegalese poet and later president Leopold Sedar Senghor founded the movement and incorporated this in his writings, together with Martinique poet Aime Cesaire, Leon-Gontran Damas, Birago Diop, and David Diop. A journal promoting Negritude, Presence Africaine, was published in 1847. In addition, the Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poesre Negre et Malgache de Langue Francaise or the Anthology of New Negro and Malagasy Poetry, which is written in French, was published in 1948; it contains works of French-speaking Black African and Caribbean poets. In 1950, more South African writers emerged: Xhosa writer A.C. Jordan, Zulu poet Rolfus R.R. Dhlomo, playwright and critic Lewis Nkosi, and prose writers Alex La Guma and Bloke Modisane. Shaaban Robert of Tanzania was East Africa’s leading Swahili poet and essayist. He wrote Kusadikika or To Be Believed (1951), an allegory patterned after Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In 1952, Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola was published in London through his work The Palm-Wine Drunkard, an adventurous tale from Yoruban oral traditions. Tutuola’s work was written in African English. In 1953, Camara Laye of Guinea wrote The Dark Child, an autobiographical novel. Meanwhile, Mongo Beti and Ferdinand Oyono wrote satires. Peter Abrahams recounted his experience of racial oppression as a child in Johannesburg in Tell Freedom (1954). Generally, at the end of the 20th century, African writers have started integrating oral traditions into their work. 7  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature Post-independence Africa Written in African English, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) examines how Western values threaten African traditions through events unfolding in a small tribe. This book is considered a milestone in African literature as it was the first one to receive global critics’ acclamation. In the late 1950s, anti-apartheid literature existed through the works of white South African writers in English such as Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, and Athol Fugard. In 1967, Martinique writer Frantz Fanon examined racism and the evils of colonialism during World War II in Peau Noire, Masques Blancs or Black Skin, White Marks. Black South African poet Dennis Brutus portrayed the effects of racial discrimination in Sirens, Knuckles and Boots (1963), Letters to Martha (1969), and Stubborn Hope (1978). The turn of the 20th century gave rise to the publication of African oratures. For one, Kofi Awoonor of Ghana collected and translated into English traditional African oratures. With the hopes of recovering or reinventing precolonial African culture to affirm the continuity of African creative forms, he incorporated them in his poetry and fiction, such as in This Earth, My Brother (1971) and Night of My Blood (1985). After African colonies gained independence from European colonial powers, African literature reflected the Africans’ battle against the effects of neocolonialism. Both Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters (1965) and Achebe’s A Man of the People (1966) satirically represented the modern predicaments of African countries under corrupted political systems. 8  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature The first novel published by a Black African woman writer from Nigeria, Flora Nwapa’s Efuru (1966), made history by exposing the life of African females. After that, other African women writers emerged: Mariama Ba, Aidoo, Awa Keita, Eno Obong, Aminata Sow Fall, and Khady Sylla. At the University of Nairobi, Kenya, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Henry Owuor-Anyumba, and Taban Lo Liyong called for the abolition of the English department to be replaced by a Department of African Literature and Languages to study African oral traditions. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who wrote Weep Not, Child (1964), The River Between (1965), A Grain of Wheat (1967), and Petals of Blood (1977), was forced into exile from Kenya in 1982 after the imprisonment of many Kenyan students and teachers. Several African writers were awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Some of them were Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka in 1986, Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz in 1988 (the first prize-winning writer with Arabic as his native tongue), and South African writer Nadine Gordimer in 1991. A long-time political prisoner, Nelson Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for his leadership that ushered in a democratic South Africa. Then in South Africa’s first multiracial elections in 1994, Mandela was elected president. Let’s Check In Answer the guide questions below: 1. When did Africans start writing their literature? How did they share their literary works before that period? 2. What is the Negritude movement? What did it stand for? 3. Who were the African literary scholars who called for the abolition of the University of Nairobi’s English department? What was their purpose? 9  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature Key Points Africa is considered the world’s second-largest continent and is home to a diverse group of people. For most of its history, the people of Africa fought against slavery and colonial rule. Throughout history, the people of Africa turned to literature to document their struggles, beliefs, and aspirations. Many writers used literature as a way to fight against their oppression. This gave rise to notable literary genres and movements, such as Black journalism, the Negritude movement, and anti-apartheid literature. Check Your Understanding Match the following literary concepts with the appropriate period of African history. Column A Column B Literary concepts African historical period _____________ 1. Negritude movement a. Ancient Africa _____________ 2. Slave narratives b. African empires _____________ 3. Anti-apartheid literature c. African slave trade and European imperialism _____________ 4. Oral literature d. Anti-colonialism and 10  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature reconstruction _____________ 5. Message poems e. Post-independence Africa Let’s Step Up! Search for the poem “Telephone Conversation” by Wole Soyinka. Read it carefully, then answer the following question in one paragraph: How does the author expose the harsh reality of discrimination against Africans? Support your answer using textual evidence. Bibliography Afriprov.org. “African Proverbs.” Accessed June 17, 2022. http://www.afriprov.org/. Agatucci, Cora. “African Timelines.” Accessed May 29, 2022. https://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/timelines/htimelinetoc.htm. Dikson. “50 African proverbs to get you thinking.” Accessed June 17, 2022. https://matadornetwork.com/bnt/50-african-proverbs-to-get-you-thinking/. Encarta. “African Literature.” Accessed June 2, 2022. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761555353/African_Literature.html. Encyclopedia Britannica. “David Diop.” Accessed June 18, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Diop. 11  English Grade 8 Unit 1: African Literature Ogumefu, M.I. Yoruba Legends. London: The Sheldon Press, 1929. http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/yl/yl00.htm. 12