Читать книгу Ugandan Children's Literature and Its Implications for Cultural and Global Learning in TEFL - Stephanie Schaidt - Страница 24

The analysis of the texts that were chosen for integration in the extensive reading project will be preceded by an overview of the (pre-)colonial history of literature produced for and/or consumed by children in Uganda. Before the arrival of the Europeans in Uganda,1 young people in Uganda enjoyed texts that were oral in nature. They consisted of folktales, myths, songs, riddles and proverbs which were passed by word of mouth.2 Missionaries set up the first formal schools in the country in the end of the 19^th century and taught the children in Uganda how to read and write (Ssekamwa & Lugumba, 2001, p. 2). This marked the beginning of the consumption of written literature by children in Uganda.

Orature was denigrated by the colonisers; instead literature was read in Ugandan schools which was prescribed as suitable by the Europeans. Most of the books which were read and studied by young people in Uganda before independence were imported from Britain. Children in Uganda could not easily relate to these texts and were rather alienated by them. Emenyonu (1974, p. 47) remarks for the Nigerian context:

Before 1960 the Nigerian child read nothing but British literature, and he had to be left to figure out what was meant by Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square and the Thames. The poems he was forced to read and memorize talked about bleak and chilly mid-winter, snow flakes [sic], men who galloped by whenever the moon and stars are out, great ports and swarming cities, and of course the Pied Piper – subjects and images which conveyed no meaning and no feeling to the average Nigerian child in his natural environment.

In the colonial era, it was mainly missionaries who collected and wrote down African folktales and children’s stories. Rosetta Gage Bakerville, for example, published The King of the Snakes and Other Folk-Lore Stories from Uganda (1922) and The Flame Tree and other Folk-Lore Stories from Uganda (1925). These stories were, however, mainly addressed at a European readership and not specifically meant for children. Colonial stories of that type often presented Africa controversially; both as dark and dangerous but also as an exotic paradise, a place full of wildlife and adventure (Khorana, 1994, p. xiv). African people were frequently stereotyped and denigrated in this literature: “In children’s fiction, even adult Africans are portrayed as childish or as grotesque caricatures of human beings; they are irresponsible and fearful, and they take childish glee in trinkets and toys” (ibid., p. xviii). White characters, on the other hand, were usually presented as superior. When those books were brought to African countries and used in schools, the children who read these stories were not only alienated by them but also induced to think of their own culture as minor and themselves as ‘other’.

European publishers also started to publish for African children during that time. Many of these texts comprised “simply European literature in special school editions with vocabulary lists and questions” (Schmidt, 1981, p. 21). They carried “a strong moral message from an alien value system” (ibid.). European missionaries and teachers used them to ‘europeanise’ African children. The books were intended as tools to improve literacy on the continent and also as an instruction aid to teach children about Christianity (ibid., p. 23).

Publishing for children in African countries started after their independence, in the 1960s and 1970s

when a series of seminars and conferences were held throughout Africa to address the problems of colonial bias in school curricula and textbooks; to develop relevant classroom materials; to publish trade books with a suitable African content; to write in African languages; and to determine the role of national governments in promoting and assisting a children’s book industry. (Khorana, 1994, p. xxx)

During that time European publishing houses such as Oxford University Press, Heinemann and Macmillan set up offices in Uganda and published the first children’s texts by Ugandans. Nevertheless, even during that time children in Uganda mainly read texts that were imported from Western countries, as became clear in the interviews with writers who grew up in the country during that time:

 When I was growing up, most of the books were in English and were about white people, Enid Blyton and all those other books. (Baingana, 2014)3

 And the English stories the teacher used to read to us were not written by Ugandan writers. I cannot recall any story we read at school which was written by a Ugandan writer, not even by an African writer. We just heard stories such as Cinderella and so on. They were just Western stories. (Namukasa, 2014)4

 When I was young, I was reading stories from abroad. Cinderella, you know the classics from abroad. “Snow White”. And also stories of Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton. All of the books, I think, were from writers from abroad. Because that was what was there. (Ranzo, 2014)5

In the late 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, local publishing houses also started to emerge (e.g. Fountain Publishers, MK Publishers) and they put special emphasis on the publication of literature for young people. Today also literary NGOs (Strauhs, 2013) such as the Ugandan Women Writers’ Association, FEMRITE, (see Chapter 4.4.2) and the Uganda Children Writers and Illustrators Association (UCWIA)6 are building a platform for women writers and writers for young readers to contribute to the Ugandan literature scene.

Up to today, international organisations and also the Ugandan government have had a strong impact on the publishing industry in Uganda. They frequently commission writers of children’s literature to write about certain topics, e.g. HIV/AIDS, and so influence them in their writing. Moreover, they are involved in the distribution of books in the country. In the following, neo-imperialistic tendencies in African/Ugandan literature are explored, after which I will discuss postcolonial literature.