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Introduction
You read “Behind Our Irises” by Tlotlo Tsamaase (pp. 42-51) and “Lekki Lekki” by Mame Bougouma Diene (pp. 75-89) in Africanfuturism: An Anthology. And you reflected on these stories in context with each other and other works from this unit as well as in context with your theoretical knowledge of Africanfuturism and Afrofuturism and other literary theories. Now is the time to share your response and engage in a discussion with your peers.
Instructions
Initial Post (300words)
Share your reflections on “Behind Our Irises” by Tlotlo Tsamaase (pp. 42-51) and “Lekki Lekki” by Mame Bougouma Diene (pp. 75-89) as guided by the associated reading prompts (restated below). You can share your reflections either in direct response to one of these prompts or as one that draws on elements of more than one prompt.
We have discovered several reoccurring themes and imagery within diverse Afrofuturist and Africanfuturist works, such as reimagining the past and imagining the future; science and ultra-advanced technology; Western vs non-Western perspective or mode of understanding the world; African-centered cultural/spiritual practices, beliefs, histories, mythologies; alienation and isolation; and inspiring change, among others. What themes, concepts, and/or imagery do these works draw on? How are they uniquely integrated and developed in each story?
Consider points of comparison and contrast between these specific works and/or with other works you have been exposed to in this unit, including those in other artistic modalities such as music and art (see examples listed below under “Additional Resources”). What are both the shared and distinct elements of these works? Discuss the themes, imagery, symbols, and any other features or concepts that stand out to you, and provide examples to illustrate your response.
Use your reading strategies to reflect on critical questions about the author, reader, text, and culture. Research any key details and/or passages to gain further insight or understanding into the cultural and/or historical references integrated into the work. What questions did you explore and what research helped you explore them or simply offer insight into particular aspects fo the stories?
Consider the literary theories that we’ve worked with throughout the class. Which one or two literary theories would make for the most interesting analysis of each of these works. Explain your response with illustrative examples from each story.
One Reply (200-300 words)
Read through the initial posts of your peers and select one post to respond to. Acknowledge your peer’s ideas and insight and add on to them with additional commentary, support, clarifying details, insightful context from your research, and/or a new or different perspective. Your reply can help to develop your peer’s post, clarify its ideas, and/or connect it to other reading or viewing material for the unit, such as any music videos, short stories, films, or theoretical articles (“Black to the Future,” “Africanfurturism Defined”).
Submission and Grading
Discussions are an important tool for interaction and development of a learning community. Your timely participation is essential. The attached rubric will be used to grade this assignment (please note the criteria for timeliness). To view the rubric, select the gear icon. If you’re using a mobile device, the rubrics can be found in the course navigation menu.
As mentioned, one important part of active, critical reading is asking questions. If you are reading well, your annotations and notes will probably be full of questions. Some of these might be simple inquiries of fact, the sort of thing that can be answered by asking your instructor or by doing some quick research. But ideally, many of your questions will be more complex and meaty than that, the sort of probing queries that may have multiple, complex, or even contradictory answers. These are the questions that will provoke you and your classmates to think still more critically about the literature you read. You need not worry (at least not at first) about finding answers to all of your questions. As you work more with the text, reflecting on and discussing it with your peers, writing about it, and making connections between other related information, stories, poems, and plays, you will begin to respond to the most important of the issues you’ve raised. And even if you never form a satisfactory answer to some questions, they will have served their purpose if they have made you think.
Questions about literature fall into one of four categories: questions about the text, about the author, about the cultural context of the work, and about the reader.
Read through the tabs below to learn about each category of questions.
Questions about the Text
Questions about the Author
Questions about the Cultural Context
Questions about the Reader
Questions about a text focus on issues such as genre, structure, language, and style. Queries regarding the text can sometimes, though not always, be answered with a deeper examination of the story, poem, or play at hand. You might ask about the presence of certain images-or about their absence, if you have reason to expect them and find that they are not there. Sometimes authors juxtapose images or language in startling or unexpected ways, and you might ask about the purpose and effect of such juxtaposition. You might wonder about the meanings of specific words in the context of the work. (This is especially true with older works of literature, as meanings evolve and change over time, and a word you know today might have had a very different definition in the past.) When looking at a poem, you might inquire about the purpose and effect of sound, rhythm, rhyme, and so forth. Your previous experiences are a big help here, including both your experiences of reading literature and your experiences in everyday life. You know from personal experience how you expect people to think and act in certain situations, and you can compare these expectations to the literature. What might motivate the characters or persons to think and act as they do? Your previous reading has likewise set up expectations for you. How does the text fulfill or frustrate these expectations? What other literature does this remind you of? What images seem arresting or unexpected? Where do the words seem particularly powerful, strange, or otherwise noteworthy?
When thinking about the connection between authors and the works they produce, two contradictory impulses come into play. One is the desire to ignore the biography of the author entirely and focus solely on the work at hand, and the other is to look closely at an author’s life to see what might have led him or her to write a particular poem, story, or play. It is easy to understand the first impulse. After all, we are not likely to be able to ask an author what is meant by a certain line in a play or whether an image in a story is supposed to be read symbolically. The work of literature is what we have before us, and it should stand or fall on its own merits. We cannot deny, however, that a writer’s life does affect that writer’s expression. An author’s age, gender, religious beliefs, family structure, and many other factors have an impact on everything from topic choice to word choice. Therefore, it is sometimes appropriate to ask questions about an author as we try to come to a better understanding of a piece of literature. It is crucial, however, that we remember that not everything an author writes is to be taken at surface value. For instance, if the narrator or principal character of a story is beaten or neglected by his parents, we should not jump to the conclusion that the author was an abused child. And if this character then goes on to justify his own actions by pointing to the abuse, we should also not assume that the author endorses this justification. In other words, we must distinguish between narrative voice and the actual author as well as between what is written and what is meant. This separation of biography and narrative is relatively easy with stories and plays that we know to be fiction; just because a character says something doesn’t necessarily mean the author believes it. Poetry is a little trickier, though, because it has the reputation of being straight from the heart. Not all poetry, however, is an accurate representation of the author’s thoughts or beliefs.
We are all creatures of a particular time and place, and nobody, no matter how unique and iconoclastic, is immune to the subtle and pervasive force of social history. Many appropriate questions about literature, then, involve the cultural context of the work. What was going on in history at the time a piece of literature was written? Were there wars or other forms of social disruption? What was the standard of living for most people in the author’s society? What was day-to-day life like? What were the typical religious beliefs and traditions? How was society organized in terms of power relations, work expectations, and educational possibilities? How about typical family structure? Did extended families live together? What were the expected gender roles inside (and outside) the family? All of these issues, and many more besides, have an impact on how authors see the world and how they respond to it in their writing. As you read and ask questions of literature, you have another cultural context to be concerned with: your own. How does being a resident of twenty-first-century America affect your reading and understanding? We are every bit as influenced by issues of history, culture, and lifestyle as were authors and readers of the past, but it is harder for us to see this, since the dominant way of living tends to seem “natural” or even “universal.” Indeed, one of the great benefits of reading literature is that it teaches us about history and helps us understand and appreciate diverse cultures, not the least of which is our own.
Except in the case of private diaries, all writing is intended to be read by somebody, and an intended audience can have a big influence on the composition of the writing in question. Think about the differences in tone and structure between a text message you send to a friend and a paper you write for a course, and you’ll get some idea of the impact of intended audience on a piece of writing. It is therefore worth considering a work’s originally intended readers as you seek to understand a piece more fully. Who were these intended readers? Were they actually the people who read the literature when it was first published? How are readers’ expectations fulfilled or disappointed by the structure and content of the literature? How did the original readers react? Was the work widely popular, or did only certain readers enjoy it? Did it have detractors as well? Was there any controversy over the work? Of course, in addition to the original readers of any work of literature, there are also contemporary readers, including yourself. It is often said that great literature stands the test of time and can cross cultures to speak to many different sorts of people, but your reaction to a work may be very different from that of its original audience, especially if you are far removed from the work by time or culture. In earlier centuries in Europe and America, nearly all educated people were very familiar with the Bible and with stories and myths from Greek and Roman antiquity. Writers, therefore, could assume such knowledge on the part of their readers and make liberal reference in their work to stories and characters from these sources. Today many readers are less familiar with these sources, and we often need the help of footnotes or other study aids to understand such references. So what might have been enjoyable and enlightening for the original readers of a work might sometimes be tedious or frustrating for later readers. If we are to read a work critically, we must keep both past and present audiences in mind.
