The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd Edition

10African Englishes and Creative Writing

EYAMBA G. BOKAMBA

1 Introduction

Research on the structure of African varieties of English (hereafter African Englishes, or AfrE) has made dramatic progress since the early 1970s, when it was difficult to find more than two or three article length studies on the topic. Currently there is a rich literature in different formats (e.g. books, chapters in books, and articles) that offers the reader informed analyses of these Englishes’ salient characteristics that are extracted primarily from the usual sources: newspapers, compositions by students, interviews, government publications, novelettes by amateur writers, advertisements, and magazines (Sey 1973; Jibril 1991; Singler 1991, 1997, Schmied 1991, 1997, 2006; Bamgboṣe, Banjo, & Thomas 1995; de Klerk 1997; Schneider 1997; Huber 1999; Higgins 2009). Thus far little attention appears to have been given to the examination of texts written by well‐established creative writers to ascertain the manner and the extent to which they “bend the English language” à la Chinua Achebe (1966b) to carry the weight of African cultures. This type of study is very important as a scholarly inquiry that could elucidate a major dimension of African Englishes resulting from multilingual creative writers who, like the proverbial poets, sometimes take license with the English language to convey stories and cultural meanings to their educated readership. Such intentional creations are bound to generate criticisms ...