African Studies

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Browsing African Studies by Author "Barry, Cherno"

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    Discovering African Literature in the New Practical English and the Gambia English Language Textbooks
    (SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021) Barry, Cherno
    Once the African child is registered in school, at kindergarten or primary, he or she encounters an alien language, in a more formal setting and with a different approach. Much younger children spent a greater part of their time chanting nursery rhymes and songs. It is at primary school that children are introduced to the songs and rhymes. As the child discovers the written text, fables and folktales become the first form of literature they enjoy. By the end of the primary education, several texts, such as extracts of the translation of Charles Perrault’s collection of stories, are accessible to the child. The system of exploitation differ depending on the approach used but by the time the child arrives at secondary level, some knowledge of literary texts is already acquired in preparation for a more elaborate study of the text. In the English language textbooks however, most of the texts are extracts from complete works. The choice of an extract is quite a challenging experience (except the poems surely). Novels, plays, poems as well as news stories are created for a different public other than for pedagogical
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    Gambian Fiction: An Analytical Study
    (Africa World Press, 2013) Barry, Cherno
    Reflections on the singularity of Gambian Fiction in relations to other West African states with English as the official language have been made by several scholars and researchers. When African literature pierced through the silence to voice out the horrors of colonialism, engage in the search for identity, promote African cultural values and advocate for independence, the fervour in which this was carried out was not proportionate in every country. Colonial Gambia emerged within a shaky period in the history of the Senegambia region. From early to late 19th century, ethnic and religious wars were raging in the interior, the French and the British were arguing over the piece of stretched land meandering around the river, and the liberated Africans were being sent from Sierra Leone to settle in The Gambia. Bathurst was born and the colonial powers settled there. The Gambia will for long remain governed from Sierra Leone and so the Christian missionaries were the ones who had the most share in the colonial setup for propagating their laws and beliefs. Gambia’s resistance to colonialism took several forms but literature played a much lesser role. Could this be the reason why Gambian Fiction is not represented in anthologies and other literary fora? Early Gambian fiction took quite a different angle in relation to the realities of the times and only in the midst of another form of domination, the Senegambia confederation, would writers emerge strong and united for one purpose: liberate Gambia from Senegal. This chapter traces the itinerary of Gambian fiction and tries to define the stages and periods when the stories take a different tone and feeling. This chapter also introduces a comparative study with those of Anglophone Africa, especially West Africa
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    The Child in the Story: Depicting the Child in Selected Works of Gambian Authors
    (International Journal of African Studies, 2022) Barry, Cherno
    Issues affecting the common people or related to marginal lives constitute the greater part of the novellas and novels published in The Gambia. Several authors use the child as a hero and with the child, built themes around the school, travel, adventure, crime, city life, sexuality, and several other issues. Other themes touch on politics and socio-cultural issues. Many youths of colonial and post-independent Gambia would remember the didactic tales in the Aesop’s fables, the tales of Charles Perrault, the Fontaine tales, and other works of children literature. These are stories that consciously emphasizes role-model qualities to the intended child-reader. The coming of western education to West Africa and particularly to The Gambia brought with it the tales of the colonizers. Books such as the works of Charles Dickens (David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist), Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Adventures of Tow Sawyer) have been used for decades in the African schools. However, the socio-cultural realities of the African child were never captured in those tales. In this article, we intend to give an overview on how the child is depicted in the works of a selected works of Gambian writers. The school story, either set within or around the school, remained a dominant theme in the early works of Gambian writers, particularly in the early 20th Century. It is an environment where most children grow and develop and it is an appropriate setting where authors explore issues such as rural-urban migration, the education of the girl child, early marriage, and early pregnancy, as well as social-cultural practices such as female genital mutilation and violence against women, among others.