African Writers Conference
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In 1962 a conference of African literature in English language, the first African Writers Conference, was held at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. It was attended by many prominent African writers, including Chinua Achebe (winner of the Commonwealth Prize), Wole Soyinka (later Nobel Laureate in Literature), Ezekiel Mphahlele, Lewis Nkosi, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (then known as James Ngugi) and Rajat Neogy (founder of Transition Magazine).
The conference dealt with the issue of how the legacy of colonialism had left the African writer with a dilemma with regard to the language choice in writing. The questions raised and debated at the conference were:
- What constitutes African literature?
- Is it literature written by Africans, literature that depicts the African experience?
- Does African literature have to be written in African languages?
At the conference, several nationalist writers refused to acknowledge any literature written in non-African languages as being African literature.
The conference is often regarded as a major milestone in African literature, and is thought to have defined many African authors' style of writing. For example, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o rejected Christianity in 1976, and changed his original name from James Ngugi, which he saw as a sign of colonialism. He also resorted to writing in Gikuyu language instead of English.
