By Jean-Hugues BITA’A M.
The purpose of this report consists in expanding the current reading material offered by the Rhetoric and Composition Office (RCO) to students taking Composition I and II courses. In an effort to introduce our students to more culturally and ethnically diverse content, as well as expanding their knowledge of rhetoric and technical writing, this report and the works selected aim specifically at shedding a nonetheless important light on the quality of writing by non-Western or minority authors, their rhetorical wealth and their use to teaching composition and writing. To achieve this objective, the following report will include a selection of twelve (12) works of literature and critical theory, with reports stressing the content to be taught and the quality of these readings when it comes to teaching rhetoric and composition.
The rationale behind this research is based on two observations. First, it is a trop that the texts taught in Composition or World Literature include a vast majority of Western (mainly European/American) texts. For instance, the first volume of The Norton Anthology of World Literature includes a section on The Renaissance period (from the 15th to the 17th centuries) with main European authors such as Dante Alighieri, Niccolo Machiavelli, Michel Montaigne, or Marguerite de Navarre. In this case, the issue does not lie at the level on the texts or the authors, but the absence of non-Western perspective. The inclusion of a female author such as Marguerite de Navarre, though groundbreaking gender issues, is unfortunately insufficient. The initiative aims, in the long run, at providing a reading platform for the inclusion of more non-Western texts into the teaching curriculum. Second, we are living times in which debate and contestation have grown beyond the political or social scenes thanks to social media. It is our contention that education has an important role in the training and molding of young generations on the complex realities of argumentation. As such, offering them new, different, and challenging perspectives about composition can be beneficial to them, allowing them to understand different cultures, and discovering the richness of their own culture. Composition plays an important role in this mission because it relies on writing and critical thinking, pushing students to think differently and to open their minds to different realities. Therefore the writer of this report believes it is important to offer our students groundbreaking content, to further their knowledge and training in writing and composition, and to expand their views on diversity and inclusion.
As a senior teaching assistant in the Department of English, I have had the opportunity to work closely with students, and to observe their desire for new and attractive content. After three years of teaching Composition and World Literature courses, I have acquired the experience to teach and train students in the complexities of critical thinking and writing. On Spring 2021, I designed and taught a course on Composition II with an emphasis on Postcolonial thought. In this course, I used a multi-disciplinary approach to combine theories on genre writing and postcolonial thinking. The objective of this course was to train students to recognize and appreciate how various genres such as the essay, fiction or drama could be adapted to defend socio-political issues in non-Western communities. With an emphasis on African cultures and writing, I encouraged my students to look beyond the thematic concerns of African intellectuals and artists to appreciate the stylistic approaches undertaken by some of them to further their political and ideological agendas. This research report includes some of the readings used in that course, as they are considered masterpieces on the literary and rhetorical perspectives.
This report will discuss twelve works of literature or critical theory, from various places and continents. The aim here is to offer a wide array of texts that cover issues such as colonization, independence and nation-building, African Feminism, the diaspora, and the Global South. For each work, I will include a brief background of the work as well a brief commentary on the themes discussed in the work. Then, I will discuss the rhetorical impact of the work, pointing out why I think the text and which section could be used in a Composition class.
My choice to include this text in this report finds its origins in the realization that postcolonial thinking speaks not only to the recent history of formerly colonized countries, but also goes back to the early contacts between European explorers and non-Western communities. As early as Columbus’s discovery of Hispaniola, issues such as the role and position of women in colonial communities, the importance of language as a tool for political and social denunciation already existed. Inès de la Cruz’s “Response to Sister Filotea of the Cross” exemplifies this problematic by raising the writer’s awareness on the capital role women play in the expansion ang growth of the Catholic Church in Latin America. Born and raised in current Mexico, Inès de la Cruz became a nun thanks to her autodidactic skills, learning to read in Spanish. In her response to Manuel Fernandez de Santa Cruz, bishop of Puebla, Sister de la Cruz achieves rhetorical mastery thanks to her combination of philosophical ideals, biographical information, and rhetorical questions, aiming not only at highlighting her opponent’s misogynistic positions, but also to stand as a representative of female empowerment, an empowerment that builds on knowledge and science to thrive.
Inès de la Cruz’s “Response” is a complex rhetorical web that includes arguments, narration, philosophical discussions, and questions. The author expertly plays with the various genres en vogue during the Renaissance, breaking patterns and imposing the reader to enter a world in which order, and correctness have little, if not no effect on her writing. This is certainly the interest for this research lies when it comes to this text. The author uses her text as the demonstration of her ability to master various rhetorical genres, rather than a platform to discuss social issues, even though they clearly transpire in her letter. The briefness of the text also constitutes an advantage any instructor may use, should they envision the opportunity to teach such a text in a Composition I or II class. Whether it is basic composition or genre writing, the “Response” is a brilliant text that deserves rhetorical scrutiny.
If there is a work that deserves a place in this report, it is Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Published in 1958 in England, Achebe’s first and greatest novel has enjoyed critical and academic attention in universities, bookshops, and libraries around the world. This novel, the first to attack Western racism and to introduce English readers to the complexities of an ethnic group in Africa, embodies the message of diversity and deconstruct the paternalist attitude fostered and nurtured by colonization in Africa. It is not surprising to find high school students who have read the novel. Achebe’s novel discusses the downfall of the community of Umuofia in his native Nigeria. From a literary perspective, Things Fall Apart narrates the rise and fall of Okonkwo, born and raised in Umuofia, whose fate is tied to his village and whose death signals the subversion of African culture under English imperialism.
From a rhetorical perspective, Things Fall Apart constitutes a goldmine for students. The author’s use of simple and plain may be deceptive, but the recourse to proverbs, images and colorful descriptions constitutes the opportunity to evaluate how language can be simple but abstract. Achebe’s translation of proverbs such as “He who brings kola nut brings life” epitomizes this duality of simple language but abstract meaning. It would be interesting for students to analyze how it is possible to obtain various meanings or interpretations from a single utterance, as well as discussing the cultural validity of such statements. Along with proverbs, the text is full of images that depict a specific cultural context that could be useful in a discussion on culture and context. I would suggest using the first section of the novel as this section introduces the readers to the style and discourse of the writer. With this section, the instructor or lecturer could explore various techniques to develop statements or build narrative or descriptive paragraphs. In addition to the learning of writing and developing sentences and building paragraphs, the learners could be introduced to narrative logic and character building. Such activities could be carried out during workshops or assignments with specific excerpts taken in the first section of the novel.
Another classic of postcolonial and subaltern thinking, Edward Said’s Orientalism occupies a central place in many departments and programs of literary and cultural studies. It is a revolutionary text whose impact is still felt nowadays because of the author’s emphasis on the perception of non-Western cultures as inferior and subjugated by Western (European and North American) countries. In this essay, Said demonstrates how the West as a global and cultural entity relied on imperialism and colonialism to build its own image of racially and culturally superior, as a civilization other communities could emulate.
Orientalism could be considered the beginning of postcolonial studies, whose main objective consists in analyzing the attitudes, policies and historical facts that demonstrate the subjugation of non-Western cultures and the political, socio-economical, and cultural mechanisms in place to perpetuate this domination. In this sense, Said’s work offers a model of research that, to some degree, could be applied in a Composition class. No doubt, Said’s essay is huge, maybe difficult to read for some, but it offers some interesting insights into the meanders of technical and genre writing. In this objective of analyzing genre writing, the first chapter in Said’s book may constitute a good start when it comes to presenting an argument and laying a clear outline for the rest of the essay. The first chapter of the book constitutes a clear example of how to introduce, defend, and outline an argument in a text. Said is certainly aware that in a context of racial and socio-political tensions as it was the case in the 70s, his message may be considered anti-American. His approach consists in offering a clear and concise argument to his readers. One possible way to use the text in a Composition may include an analysis of the first chapter of the book, in which Said defines what Orientalism is and stands for, outlines his argument, and defends his position in his essay. This section could stand as the central part of a lesson on how to introduce a topic as the author defines his main concept and advocates the study of non-Western cultures to prove his point.
Mariama Bâ’s Scarlet Song is another prominent work of literature I would like to include in this report. Unlike Achebe’s Things Fall Apart that explored the impact of colonization and used various forms of orature such as proverbs and idioms to dismantle any form of anti-Black/anti-African racism, Bâ’s novel focuses on the issues of nation-building, and most importantly, the role and place of women in this difficult process. To address these themes, she creates a narration that combines an intercultural and tragic love story, the clash between traditional Senegalese and Western values, and the fate of women in a patriarchal community. From a stylistic perspective, Scarlet Song combines various genres of fiction such as letters, narration and a great deal of psychological development destined to expose the complex nature of a marriage between a Senegalese man and a French woman. The tragic end of the interracial couple could be interpreted as the sign that fiction is an open environment in which innovation and creativity are constantly encouraged.
The issue of innovation and creativity justifies the inclusion of the novel in this report. Scarlet Song, at first glance a love story turned, also portrays the situation of Senegalese women, stuck between the hammer of tradition and the anvil of Islam. The conflict with Islam offers Bâ a platform to discuss the impact of feminist ideals in Africa, and the impact of emancipation and education for African women. On the rhetorical perspective, it is a rich text in which narration, psychological analysis, dialogue, proverbs, idioms are present, offering the reader a wide array of cultural tropes to explore and discover. My suggestion would be to focus on the second part – the novel including three, in which Bâ adopts a more traditional approach to her fiction. This section combines various genres such as letters, commentaries and historical/cultural background that may be of use to the students. Students could be tasked not just on analyzing the characteristics of the genres identified, but also on the author’s rationale, and potentially begin a conversation on writing strategies.
Among the most important and richest texts in postcolonial thinking, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Decolonizing the Mind stands out because Ngugi, at the time, a lecturer of English literature in his native Kenya, exemplified the African intellectual: one whose contact with Western education, values and culture contributed to build his vision of African culture and his position as a participant to the building of his country. This work, the first of a series of observations on politics and the state of art and literature in Africa, illustrates Ngugi’s belief that African languages should be at the forefront of literary creation. In the chapter consecrated to “The Language of African Literature”, Ngugi advocates his fellow African artists to not just translate idioms and proverbs into English, but to subvert the system by writing in their native tongues. In effect, Ngugi published many pieces of drama in Gikuyu to strengthen his point.
On the stylistic aspect, Decolonizing the Mind includes a collection of essays assembled by the author. These essays include presentations to conferences, newspapers articles and other texts compiled by the author. It is fair to assume that the aesthetic and rhetorical benefit would be immense for students. The students will be exposed to a wide variety of texts and approaches, all aiming at a single objective, all defining the same project. Rhetorically speaking, the text offers a variety of genres with specific characteristics. It is safe to say that both instructors and students may find reliable material to exploit in this text. For instance, the chapter on “The Language of African Literature” exemplifies the structure and organization of an advocacy paper. It would be useful for an instructor to analyze this section and highlight the various strategies the author uses not further his argument, and to defend his radical position. This section also includes elements of an academic presentation with instances of spoken and written language sometimes mixed overall. The benefit for the students is enormous and I believe that thanks to the variety of its content, this work deserves its place in this report. BELOVED by Toni Morrison (1987)
Just like Said or Achebe, Toni Morrison has left an important impact on the literary scene and her inclusion in this report follows the belief that her work as a writer and an intellectual deserves to be analyzed under the lens of style and rhetorics. Morrison’s dedication to unravel the evils of slavery and their impact of the memory of contemporary America inevitably raises the question of the benefit of her work in this report. Beloved, one of her most acclaimed novels, is a novel in which past and present, repressed memories and traumas constantly clash with each other, producing an atmosphere in which ghosts and livings cohabitate, sometimes for the worst. As Sethe, the main female protagonist, struggles to live with her daughter Denver and enjoy her freedom, she must also deal with the absence of her two sons, and accept the trauma of her infanticide.
Beloved offers a clash between past and present, resulting in a series of traumas, sometimes unresolved by the protagonists. On the rhetorical perspective, Morrison’s novel is full of analepses that characterize her style in this text. Their usage contributes to expose Sethe’s unstable mind. It would be useful to explore their rhetorical influence and to see how students can evaluate the discursive impact of the figures of speech in general. The purpose is not to determine how good their language is, but to raise their awareness on how to keep the reader’s attention but providing them with the right info at the right time. A text like Beloved challenges conventional rules of fiction by maintaining a high level of suspense and uncertainty. Its inclusion on this report signals my intention to offer our students a different perception of rhetorics, one in which the reader is an active part to the discursive process. Class activities could focus on the central role of the audience, their expectations, and desires and how the writer can meet them using figures of speech such as analepses. A passage from the first section, exposing Sethe’s memories of slavery and her escape to freedom, could clearly illustrate this point and expose the rhetoric impact of the text.
Lucha Corpi may not be as a literary or intellectual juggernaut as the other personalities mentioned here, but her inclusion in this report follows the objectives set by the writer: to include more diversity in the curriculum of Composition and create a space where students can discover other perspectives when it comes to writing. The choice of crime fiction, a genre whose influence in the academia is still minor compared to fiction, drama, or poetry, also falls within this line of thought. The genre has enjoyed popular success, so it makes sense to include it here. Corpi’s novel inaugurates her series on Gloria Damasco, a Latina medical practitioner turned detective, who investigates the murder of a 7-year-old child found dead in the streets of Los Angeles. The novel covers more than a decade during which Gloria uncovers the truth of the murder and loses her best friend in the process.
On the rhetorical point of view, crime fiction offers a unique set of thinking based on a double narration: the first narration consists with the investigation of the crime, and the second includes the unveiling of the culprit and the manner the crime was committed. This innovation in the narrative structure illustrates the possibility to combine various genres in a single text. Unlike Ngugi’s collection of essays that includes various genres and texts, Corpi’s novel combines various genres such as newspaper articles, narration, monologues, letters into a single text. Students would be able to evaluate the impact of narrative constructions as exemplified in crime fiction, and the possibility to include various genres in their genres. For instance, when writing a statement of purpose or an advocacy, an activity focusing on one of these two assignments could enlighten the students on how the combination of logos and pathos heightens the quality of the text and helps to reinforce the author’s argument.
Homi K. Bhabha’s collection of essays includes a series of articles that focus on the author’s exploration of important postcolonial themes such as culture, colonial discourse, postcolonial narrative, and cultural narration. This collection of essays explores and evaluates the influence of postcolonial theory, advocating the birth of a different, non-Western approach that centers on differentiation, and that questions the narratives of Western superiority, through the rediscovery of culture and politics. Bhabha also reevaluates the impact of Frantz Fanon, a Caribbean psychiatrist paved the way to the exploration of the psyche of the oppressed, laying the basis of a thought that combines economic exploitation and racial discrimination, demystifying the narratives of universalism and racial superiority, and laying down the path towards the quest for autonomy for the oppressed. In essence, Bhabha’s collection of essays have laid the foundation to a re-discovery of the cultures of the oppressed and the mechanisms of recognition of the oppressed.
On the rhetorical perspective, The Location of Culture displays many characteristics we have mentioned previously. Among them one could include the author’s choice to build his book on a single topic, with a variety of chapters and genres aiming at addressing a different topic. At the level of building a bigger text from a collection of shorter texts, The Location of Culture may constitute a good example. At the level of the individual chapters, it would be interesting to analyze Bhabha’s style in each section, evaluating how the author adapts his organization and structure to the needs of the audience and of the topic discussed. In some cases, Bhabha opens the chapter with a long quotation, offering the reader a different take of the problem. One proposed activity may focus on the structural components of Bhabha’s essays, focusing on the role quotations play in the preparation and furthering of his argumentation. We could suggest to analyze how the critic relies on outlines to expose his argument and prepare the reader to his analysis.
The rationale of the selection of this work consists in the full understanding of postcolonial or subaltern studies as a body of knowledge. The best way to grasp this body of science involves getting to know the main concepts that structure postcolonial studies. This work, edited by experts in this domain, offers the reader a comprehensive analysis of the main concepts and arguments on postcolonial studies. These concepts cover a wide variety of domains from arts to sciences, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and social sciences. It is a comprehensive and groundbreaking work, and therefore it is included in this report. On the rhetorical aspect, this work offers a wide variety of genres that make the text quite complex and worth considering as a teaching material. Edited as a dictionary with detailed and argued definitions, the work proposes the reader a comprehensive analysis of the main concepts in postcolonial studies. Its interest lies in the possibility to show students how to write good definitions for their argumentative essays.
In this section, I wanted to include a work that deals with contemporary issues and offers an insight into the area of Francophone African literature. The inclusion of Mariama Bâ offers an incursion into the domain of African Feminism and its struggle against tradition and religion. Kourouma’s novel plunges the novel into the contemporary history of Africa, exposing real political issues that plague the continent such as poverty, education, civil war, and violence. The novel describes the chaotic travel of Birahima, a 10-year-old orphan, forced to travel from Côte d’Ivoire to Liberia, seeking for asylum and a family. As he reaches Liberia, he is forced to become a child soldier and experience the madness of civil war. Stylistically, Kourouma’s novel revisits the concept of the journey motive, with a complex dose of psychological analysis, plunging the readers into a nightmare of violence and blood, while keeping his protagonist’s mind safe from any trauma. Birahima comes out unscathed from his experiences, giving the impression that he is just and observer.
Kourouma’s Allah Doesn’t Have To exemplifies the postcolonial text, one that questions the political and economic stakes of African states, while subverting the canons of Western literature. By adapting the concept of the journey motive to the realities of civil war and child abandonment, the Ivorian novelist constructs a complex novel that may certainly attract students in World Literature classes. The emphasis on the observation of the situation exposes the complexities of the first-person narrative, while showing the students how a narrator can achieve objectivity, even in the face of horror. The novel also includes elements of fantasy, to build the text’s credibility and to reduce the impact of the violence the writer describes. Undoubtedly on the best Francophone texts of the 2000s, Allah Doesn’t Have To would impact our students.
I wanted to include another crime novel not just for personal reasons, but also to expose the student audience to a wide range of texts and cultural perspectives. The list so far includes authors from Nigeria (C. Achebe), Senegal (M. Bâ), Côte d’Ivoire (A. Kourouma), so it makes sense to include an author from the diaspora, that somebody from the African descent, born in Africa and raised in the West. Mukoma Wa Ngugi was born in the US but raised in Kenya, and this info confers to his work a double perspective I wished to highlight in this report. As a member of the African diaspora in the U.S., Wa Ngugi’s interest in his writing is marked by his duality and the manner language, culture and politics reflect this duality. His writing also exposes the multi-cultural, sometimes multi-ethnic nature of Africa, as it explores the meanders of African contemporary history. His first novel, Nairobi Heat, explores the complex relationship between African Americans and Africans, transforming a return to the homeland of an African American police detective in a complex dive into the trauma of the Rwandan genocide.
From a stylistic perspective, the novel debunks the traditional narrative of crime fiction, as the resolution of the murder that opens the novel is secondary to the unveiling of the memory of the genocide. The novel becomes a platform the narrator uses to allow the victims to expose what they witnessed. It is this aspect of witnessing, coupled with the weight of the past and the sufferings it entails that constitute the interest. Through witnessing, students can analyze how the impact of pathos, the veracity of witnessing over narration, and most importantly, evaluate the status of the victims. This text will expose students to another set of discursive realities, one in which reality overtakes fiction and plunges the readers into a world of profound questioning. From the perspective of looking into the realities of victimization, I recommend Nairobi Heat because I believe this novel can constitute a wake-up call for our students.
The last item in our list is a native of Cameroon, and a bona fide writer whose reputation in the academia transcends the boundaries of literature and critical thinking. Nganang, just like Mukoma Wa Ngugi, was raised in Cameroon and migrated to Germany and the US where his literary career reflects the complexity of the African diaspora, whose quest for socio-political recognition is mixed with the nostalgia of the homeland and the critique of the postcolonial current state. Nganang’s writing excavates the meanders of Cameroonian history, a taboo even in his country. In Mount Pleasant, the writer examines the end of German colonization in Kamerun in 1918, following the end of WWI, with a specific focus on one of the most popular local chieftains of the era. As the French administration takes over their German rivals, the fate of the local people remains the same as their culture and beliefs are constantly under the colonial threat.
Mount Pleasant is a complex rhetorical unit in which the writer combines memory, psychoanalysis, and narration. The novel includes numerous flashbacks on which the author builds his research into the colonial past. On the rhetorical perspective, the novel offers a wide variety of writing strategies. With flashbacks, witnesses, and diaries, the novel is full of figures of construction that complexify the aspect of colonial domination, exposing the contradictions of traditional rule and the position of women in Cameroonian ethnic groups. On the teaching aspect, one of the activities we could suggest may include the analysis of flashback techniques, or the use of witnesses in the novel and how they affect the perception of victims in writing.
The purpose of this report involves proposing readings produced by diversity and minority authors. This selection of novels and essays includes works from Africa, Latin America, the U.S., Australia focus on postcolonial philosophy and writing, with the aim of exposing socio-political concerns from ethnic and cultural groups from formerly colonized or dominated groups. Far from being exhaustive, this list relies on the belief that students would gain more by being exposed to rich and challenging content that exposes to new cultures and offers a variety of rhetorical strategies and genres to the reading audience. This list is a platform for further reflection and should be considered as a first step towards a bigger project.