21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World Quarter 2 – Module 1.

1:
Representative Texts and Authors from Asia and Africa

Representative Texts and Authors from Asia

Asia, the largest continent in the world, has a vast literary tradition in terms of scope
and length of existence. Literature in the Eastern hemisphere prospered and mirrored the
developments in religion, war, and politics. It is wise to study the Asian literature by
geographical region.

East Asia
China
China, one of the worlds cradles of civilization, has started its unbroken literary
tradition in the 14th century BCE. The preservation of the Chinese language (both spoken
and written), has made the immeasurable prolonged existence of their literary traditions
possible. It has retained its reputation by keeping the fundamentals of its identity intact.
Poets like Du Fu, Li Po, and Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the finest era of
Chinese literature, has produced world-renowned literary works. Chinese writers in modern times
are still creative and productive and have kept the Chinese literary tradition
prosperous.
• Du Fu
He is also known as Tu fu. According to many literary critics, he was the
greatest Chinese poet of all time. He wrote the poem <The Ballad of the Army Cats=
which is about conscription4and with hidden satire that speaks of the noticeable
luxury of the court.
• Li Po
He is also known as Li Bai, a Chinese poet who is a competitor of Du Fu as China9s greatest poet. He
was romantic in his personal life and his poetry. His works are known for its conversational tone and
vivid imagery. He wrote the poem <Alone and Drinking under the Moon= that deals with the ancient
social custom of drinking. • Wang Wei He was a poet, painter, musician, and statesman during
the Tang dynasty (the golden ages of the Chinese cultural history). He was the established founder of
the respected Southern school of painter-poets. Many of his best poems were inspired by the local
landscape. • Mo Yan He was a fictionist who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature. His first
novel was <Red Sorghum=, and still his best-known work. It tells the story of the Chinese battling
Japanese intruders as well as each other during the 1930s. It relates the story of a family in a rural
area in Shandong Province during this turbulent time.
• Yu Hua
He was a world-acclaimed short story writer and considered as a champion for Chinese
meta-fictional or postmodernist writing. His widely acclaimed novel <To Live= describes the
struggles endured by the son of a wealthy land-owner while historical events caused and
extended by the Chinese Revolution are fundamentally altering the nature of Chinese society.

Korea
 Korea’s literary tradition is greatly influenced by Chinas cultural dominance. As
early as the 4th century CE, Korean poets wrote literary pieces in Classical Chinese poetry
then transformations happened at the 7th century. Hangul, Korean9s distinct writing system and
national alphabet, is developed in the 15th century that gave new beginnings of Korean literature. In
contemporary times, the Korean War has made a significant mark on Korean literature. In 1950,
the themes present in the literary works are about alienation, conscience, disintegration, and
self- identity.
Ch’oe Nam-Seon
He was considered a prominent historian, pioneering poet, and publisher in
the Korean literature. He was also a leading member of the modern literary
movement and became notable in pioneering modern Korean poetry. One of his works, the
poem "The Ocean to the Youth= made him a widely acclaimed poet. The poem aimed to produce
cultural reform. He sought to bring modern knowledge about the world to the youth of Korea.
• Yi Kwang-su
He was also the one who launched the modern literary movement together
with Chloe Nam-Seon. He was a novelist and wrote the first Korean novel <The Heartless=
and became well-known because of it. It was a description of the crossroads at which Korea
found itself, stranded between tradition and modernity, and undergoing conflict between social
realities and traditional ideals.
• Kim Ok
He was a Korean poet and included in the early modernism movement of
Korean poetry. He wrote the first Korean collection of translation from Western poetry <The Dance
of Agony=.
• Yun Hunggil
He was a South Korean novelist who won the 1977 Korean Literature Writers
Award. He wrote the classic novel <Changma= (The Rainy Spell) that on a post-war family with two
grandmothers and their shared grandson.
• Pak Kyongni
She was a South Korean poet and novelist. She wrote the Korean9s
masterpiece and internationally acclaimed 21-volume epic novel T9oji (<The Land=),
wherein she chronicled the violent Korean history from 1897 to 1945.

Japan
Japan has a rich and unique literary history even though it has been influenced by
the Chinese language and Chinese literature. It has a world-renowned poetic genre called haiku ( a
short descriptive poem with 17 syllables) and the diverse forms of theatre Noh (traditional Japanese
theatrical form and one of the oldest extant theatrical forms in the world) and Kabuki
(traditional Japanese popular drama with singing and dancing performed in a highly stylized
manner). Japanese literature reflects simple yet complex, imperfect yet abounding with beauty
3 the traditional Japanese cultural identity. In contemporary times, Western influences take part
in the Japanese literature, specifically in the pioneering of modern Japanese novels, translations of
the poetry, and reinventions of traditional Japanese poetic forms like haiku and tanka.
Playwrights like Abe Kobo and
Mishima Yukio are Japans notable literalists.
• Abe Kobo
He was a Japanese novelist and playwright and also known by the pseudonym
of Abe Kimifusa. He wrote the best-known play "Tomodachi" (Friends) which
is a story, with dark humor, reveals the relationship with the other, and exposes the
peculiarity of human relations in the present age." He also won the 1967
Akutagawa Award. He also won the 1951 Akutagawa Award for his short novel Kabe (<The Wall=).
• Kimitake Hiraoka
 He is also known by the pen name Mishima Yukio, the most important
Japanese novelist of the 20th century. He was one of the finalists of the 1963 Nobel
Prize for Literature and won numerous awards for his works. He wrote the novel <The
Temple of the Golden Pavilion= and won Yomiuri Prize from Yomiuri Newspaper
Corporation for the best novel. <The Temple of the Golden Pavilion=, translated into
the English language by Ivan Morris, based on the burning of the Reliquary (or
Golden Pavilion) of Kinkaku-Ji in Kyoto by a young Buddhist acolyte in 1950.
• Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
He was a Japanese writer and regarded as the Father of the Japanese short
story. He wrote the short story <Rashomon= that recounts the encounter between a
servant and an old woman in the dilapidated Rashōmon, the southern gate of the
then-ruined city of Kyoto, where unclaimed corpses were sometimes dumped. The
Akutagawa Prize, Japan9s premier literary award was named after him to honor his
memory after he died by committing suicide.
• Haruki Murakami
He was a Japanese novelist who won the international award Jerusalem Prize.
He also won the Gunzou Literature Prize for his first novel <Hear the Wind Sing=. It
featured episodes in the life of an unnamed protagonist and his friend, the Rat, who
hang out at a bar. The unnamed protagonist reminisces and muses about life and
intimacy. Murakamis work has been translated into more than fifty languages.

Middle East
Arabic literary tradition has been flourishing in the Middle East. Islam is the
foundation of culture in this region - an essential component. Its literary tradition has grown
and influenced others like Persian, Byzantine, and Andalusian traditions. In return, Arabic
literature has also been influenced by other literary traditions of different countries. Even
European literature followed and imitated Arabic literature. In contemporary times, Arabic writers
experience difficulties in producing their literary texts due to the issue of freedom of expression and
the tension between religious and secular movements.

Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad

He was an Egyptian poet, journalist, and literary critic, an innovator of the
20th-century Arabic poetry and criticism. He became famous for his Abqariyat series,
a seven-book compilation that covers the life of seven of the most important Sahabah
(the disciples and followers of Muhammad).

• Taha Hussein
He was an Egyptian novelist, essayist, critic, and an outstanding figure in
Egyptian literature. His nickname was <The Dean of Arabic Literature=. He wrote the
novelized autobiography <The Days=, one of the most popular works of modern Arabic
literature that deals with his childhood in a small village, then his studies in Egypt
and France.
• Ali Ahmad Said Esber
He is known also as Adonis as his pseudonym. He is an award-winning
Syrian-born Lebanese poet, literary critic, and is a leader of the modernist movement
in contemporary Arabic poetry. He was the recipient of numerous honors, including
the 2011 Goethe Prize and the 2017 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in
International. Some of his famous poems are <First Poems= and <Leaves in the Wind=.

• Etgar Keret
 He is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and
scriptwriting for film and television. His 2019 Fly Already (<Glitch at the Edge of the
Galaxy=) published in English won Israel9s prestigious Sapir Prize in Literature.

South and Southeast Asia

India is the cultural giant over South Asia. Hallmark writings such as Veda, the Brahmanas,
and the Upanishads are the roots of Indian literature. As early as 1500 BCE, the Veda written in the
Sanskrit language introduced the birth of Indian literary works.
Around the 16th century, written literature in India appeared. In the succeeding centuries
of British colonization, English literature emerged that happen to be the significant
influence of Indian literary traditions until the 21st century period. Kalidasa is a notable
and famous Indian writer considered to be the Hindu Shakespeare.
The literary traditions of Southeast Asia possess the influences of Buddhist, Thai, and
English cultures, especially in Burma literature. Malaysian and Indonesian literature
reflects a large part of the Sanskrit language and Islam culture.
In contemporary times, India still manifests the impact of colonial rule through the
presence of the English language in literary traditions. Numerous Indian writers like the
Rabindranath Tagore, Prem Chand, Raja Rao, and R.K. Narayan are highly accomplished and
internationally known. Southeast Asia literature presents themes on colonial and postcolonial
experiences in Burmese literature and western literature influences in Thailand literature.
• Rabindranath Tagore
He was a Bengali poet, short-story writer, song composer, playwright,
essayist, and painter. He was referred to as <the Bard of Bengal=. He is a towering
figure of world literature and the most famous modern Indian poet. He won the 1913
Nobel Prize for Literature award for his book The English Gitanjali or Song Offerings.
It is a volume of poetry which is a collection of devotional songs to the supreme.

• Dhanpat Rai Srivastava

Also known by his pseudonym Prem Chand, he is a famous Indian author of
novels and short stories of his modern Hindustani literature. He pioneered in
adapting Indian themes to Western literary styles. He wrote the most popular Hindi
novel <Godaan= (Cow Donation) and considered one of the greatest Hindi novels of
modern Indian literature. Its theme was around the socio-economic deprivation as
well as the exploitation of the village poor.
• Raja Rao
He is an Indian writer of novels and short stories in the English language. His
famous novel <The Serpent and the Rope=, a semi-autobiographical account of the
narrator, a young intellectual Brahman, and his wife seeking spiritual truth in India,
France, and England, recognized him as one of the fines Indian prose Stylists. It won
him the Sahitya Akademi Award. He was also rewarded the Neustadt International
Prize for Literature. His literary works in various genres had a significant contribution to Indian
and to world literature.
• Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan (R. K. Narayan)
One of the finest Indian authors in the English language, he wrote the Sahitya Award-winning novel
<The Guide= which was adapted for film and for Broadway. It was based on the fictional town in
South India and describes the transformation of the protagonist from a tour guide to a spiritual
guide and one of the greatest holy men of India.
• Chart Korbjitti
He is the most successful Thai writer. He was recognized by his publication of his novel
Khamphiphaksa (The Judgment). His novel was named as Book of the Year by Thailand's Literature
Council and won him the S.E.A Write Award. He was awarded the National Artist in Literature (2004)
and was among the honorees of the inaugural Silpathorn Award, given to Thai contemporary artists.
• Nguyen Du
The best-loved poet and the father of Vietnamese literature, he was most
known for his epic poem <The Tale of Kieu= that recounts the life, trials, and
tribulations of Thuy Kieu, a beautiful and talented young woman, who has to
sacrifice herself to save her family. She sells herself into marriage with a middle-
aged man, not knowing that he is a pimp, and is forced into prostitution.

• Tengku Amir Hamzah

He was an Indonesian poet and National Hero of Indonesia. His poem
collection <Nyangi Sunyi= is considered the most developed and shows the theme
of God and His relationship to humanity, fate, dissatisfaction, and escape. Some
literary critics think that the collection is an attempt to address the worldly
problems of Amir. He was the only Indonesian poet recognized internationally.

Central Asia
Central Asian literature has different literary characteristics and political in
culture. In contemporary times, Russian influence continues to be present in Central
Asia literature. Some of the Central Asian writers and their literary works pave their
way to be known worldwide.

• Abdullah Qodiriy
He was known by the pseudonym Julqunboy. He was one of the most
influential Uzbek writers of the 20th century and Soviet playwright, poet, writer,
and literary translator. His most famous work is the historical novel O9tgan
kunlar (Days Gone By), the first Uzbek full-length novel.
• Mukhtar Auez-uli
 He was an early Soviet Kazakh writer and won recognition for the long
novel <Abay= which is based on the life and poetry of Kunanbay-uli.
• Chingiz Aytmatov
He was a Soviet and Kyrgyz author and the best-known figure in Kyrgyz
and Russian literature. <Jamila=, his first major novel was told from the viewpoint
of a fictional character that tells the story by looking back on his childhood. The
story recounts the love between his new sister-in-law Jamilya and a local crippled
young man, Daniyar, while Jamilya's husband, Sadyk, is "away at the front" (as
a Soviet soldier during World War II).

Here are some representative literary texts from different Asian countries.
CH'U YUAN (c.343 - c.289 BC) Chu’u Yuan, or Qu Yuan, was the greatest poet of ancient China and
the earliest known by name.
Battle
Chu9u Yuan
Translated by Arthur Waley

<We grasp our battle-spears: we don our breast-plates of hide.

The axles of our chariots touch: our short sword meet.
Standards obscure the sun: the foe roll up like clouds.
Arrows fall thick: the warriors press forward.
They menace our ranks: they break our line.
The left-hand trace-horse is dead: the one on the right is smitten.
The fallen horses block our wheels: they impede the yoke-horses!=

They grasp their jade drum-sticks: they beat the sounding drums.
Heaven decrees their fall: the dread Powers are angry.

The warriors are all dead: they lie on the moor-field.

They issued but shall not enter: they went but shall not return.
The plains are flat and wide: the way home is long.

Their swords lie beside them: their black bows, in their hand.
Though their limbs were torn, their hearts could not be repressed.
They were more than brave: they were inspired with the spirit of <Wu=.
Steadfast to the end, they could not be daunted.
Their bodies were stricken, but their souls have taken Immortality4
Captains among the ghosts, heroes among the dead.

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and moved to the United States in 1980. He is the
author of the New York Times bestsellers The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And
the Mountains Echoed. Hosseini is also a U.S. Goodwill Envoy to the UNHCR, the UN
Refugee Agency, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that
provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Excerpt) By Khaled Hosseini Mariam had never before worn a
burqa. Rasheed had to help her put it on. The padded headpiece felt tight and heavy on her
skull, and it was strange seeing the world through a mesh screen. She practiced walking around
her room in it and kept stepping on the hem and stumbling. The loss of peripheral vision was
unnerving, and she did not like the suffocating way the pleated cloth kept pressing against her
mouth. <You9ll get used to it,= Rasheed said. <With time, I bet you9ll even like it.= They took a
bus to a place Rasheed called the Shar-e-Nau Park, where children pushed each other on swings
and slapped volleyballs over ragged nets tied to tree trunks. They strolled together and watched
boy fly kites, Mariam walking beside Rasheed, tripping now and then on the burqa9s hem. For
lunch, Rasheed took her to eat in a small kebab house near a mosque he called the Haji
Yaghoub. The floor was sticky and the air smoky. The walls smelled faintly of raw meat and
music, which Rasheed described to her as logari, was loud. The cooks were thin boys who fanned
skewers with one hand and swatted gnats with the other. Mariam, who had never been inside a
restaurant, found it odd at first to sit in a crowded room with so many strangers, to lift her
burqa to put morsels of food into her mouth. A hint of the same anxiety as the day at the
tandoor stirred into her stomach, but Rasheed9s presence was of some comfort, and, after a
while, she did not mind so much the music, the smoke, even the people. And the burqa, she
learned to her surprise, was also comforting. It was like a one-way window. Inside it, she was an
observer, buffered from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers. She no longer worried that people
knew, with a single glance, all the shameful secrets of the past. -------- The women in the part of
Kabul were a different breed from the women in the poorer neighbourhoods 3 like the one where
she and Rasheed lived, where so many of the women covered fully. These women were 3 what
was the word of Rasheed had used? 3 <modern=. Yes, modern Afghan women married modern
Afghan men who did not mind that their wives walked among strangers with makeup on their
faces and nothing of their heads. Mariam watched then cantering uninhibited down the street,
sometimes with a man, sometimes alone, sometimes with rosy-cheeked children who wore
shiny shoes and watches with leather bands, who walked bicycles with high-rise handlebars and
gold-colored spokes 3 unlike the children in Deh-Mazang, who bore sand-fly scars on the cheeks
and rolled old bicycle tires with sticks. The women were all swinging handbags and rustling
skirts. Mariam even spotted one smoking behind the wheel of a car. Their nails were long,
polished pink or orange, their lips red as tulips. They walked in high heels, and quickly, as if on
perpetually urgent business. They wore dark sunglasses, and, when they breezed by, Mariam
caught a whiff of their perfume. She imagined that they all had university degrees that
they worked in office buildings, behind desks of their own, where they typed and smoked and
made important phone calls to important people. These women mystified Mariam. They made
her aware of her own lowliness, her plain looks, her lack of aspirations, and her ignorance of so
many things.

Representative Texts and Authors from Africa

Africa, the <Cradle of the humankind= according to scientists, has a literature that is filled with the
human spirit, desiring for freedom and contentment. African literature consists of oral tradition
and written literature ranging from local languages brought by the colonizers (English, Portuguese,
and French). The experiences of the colonization and post-colonization shape the African literature.
The oral literature of Africa such as myths, stories, riddles, proverbs, and dramas document the
exploits of the heroes of the communities, remind the people about their culture and
traditions, entertain and educate the youth. It flourishes across the continent in the 15th century CE
until the interaction of Africa with Europe and Asia, their trade and cultural partners, serves as the
main contributor to the African literature growth. In the 19th century, European countries
compete for the colonization of the African territory to gain political and economic edge. The
colonization and slave trade has awaken the African psyche (the soul and mind) incredibly.
The literary works are the vehicle, specifically the newspaper, in exposing the psychological
social impact of colonization. African writers express their cry for freedom from oppression
through their poetry and narrative works. Though they use the European language to produce
their literary works, the cry for independence has reached to the climax, so strong and
effective, with the embodiment of the spirit of nationalism, gained worldwide acclaim.
Numerous notable African writers are Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Kofi Awoonor, Ngungi wa
 Thiongo (East Africas leading novelist), Okot p9Bitek, Nadine Gordimer, Dennis Crutus, Es9kia
Mphahlele, and Jacques Rabemananjara. In the contemporary times, African writers experience
new challenges with their new and sovereign government. They still use their literary works as a
vehicle in expressing their voices against their government with a constant theme of corruption.

• Chinua Achebe He was a Nigerian novelist, poet, critic, and professor and was honored as Grand
Prix de la Memoir of the 2019 edition of the Grand Prix of Literary Associations. His first novel
and masterpiece, <Things Fall Apart=, is the most widely read book in modern African literature. It
concerns the traditional Igbo life at the time of the advent of missionaries and the colonial
government in his homeland.
• Wole Soyinka He was the first black African to be awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize for
Literature. One of his famous works is his first important play <A Dance of the Forests= which
was written for the Nigerian independence celebrations. It parodies the emerging nation by
stripping it of romantic legend and by showing that the present is no more a golden age than it
was before.
• Kofi Awoonor He was a Ghanian novelist and poet who wrote <This Earth, My Brother=, a cross
between a novel and a poem. It was told on two levels each representing a distinct reality. The first
level is a standard narrative which details a day in the life of an attorney named Amamu. The second
level is a symbol-laden mystical journey filled with biblical and literary allusions. These portions of
the text deal with the new nation of Ghana, which is represented by a baby on a dunghill. The
dunghill is a source of both rot and renewal, and in this way represents the foundations upon which
Ghana was built.
• Ngungi wa Thiong’o East Africa9s leading novelist, a Kenyan writer who wrote the famous novel
<Weep Not, Child=. It was the first major novel in English by an East African. It deals with the Mau-
Mau Uprising, a war in the British Kenya Colony (192031963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom
Army.
• Okot p’ Bitek He was a Ugandan poet, novelist, and social anthropologist who wrote the three
verse collections 3 Song of Lawino (1066), Song of Ocol (1970), and Two Songs (1971). He achieved
international recognition for Song of Lawino, a long poem dealing with the tribulations of a rural
African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wishes everything to be westernized. It
was followed by the husband9s reply, the Song of Ocol.
• Nadine Gordimer A South African writer and the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.
She wrote the joint winner of the Booker - McConnell Prize novel <The Conservationist=. The
story is a character study of a successful South African industrial executive and, by extension, a
critique of South Africa.
• Jacques Rabemananjara He was a Malagasy playwright and poet and one of Madagascar9s
most prominent writers. He wrote and published his play <Les dieux malgaches=, the first modern
Malagasy play in French. This play dealt with the pre-colonial past and with the coup that unseated
King Radama II in 1863.
• Es’kia Mphahlele He wrote the South African classic autobiography <Down Second Avenue=
about the story of a young man9s growth into adulthood with penetrating social criticism of
the conditions forced upon black South Africans by a system of institutionalized racial
segregation.
• Thomas Mofolo He was the greatest writer from the Sotho people in Africa. He created the first
Western-style novels in the Basotho language. His novel <Chaka= became a classic. It was a historical
novel about the story of the rise and fall of the Zulu king Shaka. Dennis P. Kunene translated the
novel from Sotho to English.
 Here are some representative literary texts from different African countries.
Chinua Achebe was an Igbo Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel
Things Fall Apart, often considered his masterpiece, is the most widely read book in modern
African literature.
Things Fall Apart (A Summary) By Chinua Achebe
As a young man, Okonkwo becomes one of the greatest wrestlers in the clan. Okonkwo
values strength and aggression, traits he believes are masculine, and his worst fear is to be
thought of as feminine or weak, like his father, Unoka. Okonkwo's wealth and status within
the tribe grow, and he becomes one of the greatest men in the land, with three wives and a
large stock of yams. He treats his family with a heavy hand, believing that the only emotion worth
showing is anger. Okonkwo is particularly worried about his eldest son, Nwoye, in whom he
sees signs of laziness reminiscent of Unoka. One day, the clan settles an argument with a
neighboring village by demanding the sacrifice of a virgin and a 15-year-old boy named
Ikemefuna, who lives with Okonkwo's family for the next three years. While living with
Okonkwo's family, Ikemefuna becomes very close to Nwoye, sharing folktales and encouraging
him to enjoy masculine tasks. Okonkwo approves of his influence on Nwoye and grows fond of
Ikemefuna himself. Ikemefuna soon starts to call Okonkwo <father.= After three years, when the
oldest man of the tribe, Ezeudu, informs Okonkwo that Ikemefuna must be killed, he advises him
not to participate in the killing, since <the boy calls you father.= Okonkwo ignores this advice,
fearing that others will find him weak or effeminate, and he proceeds to strike the killing blow
when they take Ikemefuna out to be killed the next day. Soon, Ezeudu passes away, and his
funeral celebration draws the entire clan. During the burial, Okonkwo's gun explodes, killing
Ezeudu's 16-year-old son. Having killed a fellow clansman, Okonkwo has no choice but to flee the
clan with his family. Because the crime is a <female,= or accidental, crime, they may return in
seven years. During their time in exile, Okonkwo and his family work hard to start a new farm in
Okonkwo's motherland, Mbanta. His mother's kinsmen treat them kindly, but Okonkwo is
extremely discouraged by the circumstances. He plans for the day he can return to his
rightful place in Umuofia. While he works in Mbanta, the white men begin to appear among
neighboring clans, causing stories to spread about their power and destruction. When they finally
arrive in Mbanta though, the clan is fascinated but finds their religion ridiculous. Nwoye, however,
is captivated by the hymn he hears on the first day, and soon joins the Christians to get away from
his father, who is outraged. When Okonkwo finally returns to Umuofia, the white men have
changed his clan as well. Mr. Brown, a white missionary who is popular for his patience and
understanding approach, has built a school and hospital, and many clan members are
enrolling their children in the school so that they can one day become clerks or teachers.
However, soon after Okonkwo's return, Mr. Brown leaves the country due to health reasons, and
Reverend Smith replaces him. Reverend Smith is uncompromising, encouraging acts among
the converted clan members that provoke the rest of the clan. When Enoch, a fanatical convert,
rips the mask off of one of the clan's masked egwugwu during a ceremony, the clan
retaliates by burning down the church. Reverend Smith reports this transgression, and the District
Commissioner tricks the clan's leaders into meeting with him before handcuffing them. The clan
leaders, including Okonkwo, suffer insults and beatings before they are released once the village
pays the fine. The morning after their release, the clan leaders speak of war before they
are interrupted by the arrival of court messengers. Full of hate, Okonkwo confronts the leader,
who says that the white man commands the meeting to stop. In a flash, Okonkwo strikes down
the messenger with his machete. Seeing that none of his clansmen support him in his violent
action, Okonkwo walks away and hangs himself. When the District Commissioner comes to fetch
Okonkwo the next day, the clansmen lead him to his hanging body instead, saying that they
cannot touch it, since it's an abomination for a man to take his own life. The District
Commissioner finds this custom interesting, making note of it for his book on Nigeria, which he
plans to title The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

George Moses Horton (1798 – 1884) is an African American poet who wrote
sentimental love poems and antislavery protests. He was one of the first
professional black writers in America

On Liberty and Slavery

by George Moses Horton

Alas! and am I born for this,

To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain!

How long have I in bondage lain,

And languished to be free!
Alas! and must I still complain4
Deprived of liberty.

Oh, Heaven! and is there no relief

This side the silent grave4
To soothe the pain4to quell the grief
And anguish of a slave?

Come Liberty, thou cheerful sound,

Roll through my ravished ears!
Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
And drive away my fears.

Say unto foul oppression, Cease:

Ye tyrants rage no more,
And let the joyful trump of peace,
Now bid the vassal soar.

Soar on the pinions of that dove

Which long has cooed for thee,
And breathed her notes from Afric9s grove,
 The sound of Liberty.
Oh, Liberty! thou golden prize,
So often sought by blood4
We crave thy sacred sun to rise,
The gift of nature9s God!

Bid Slavery hide her haggard face,

And barbarism fly:
I scorn to see the sad disgrace
In which enslaved I lie.
Dear Liberty! upon thy breast,
I languish to respire;
And like the Swan unto her nest,
I9d like to thy smiles retire.

Oh, blest asylum4heavenly balm!

Unto thy boughs I flee4
And in thy shades the storm shall calm,
With songs of Liberty