Journal of English Language and Literature Volume 3 No.3 February 2015 © TechMind Research, Society 196 | Page African Literature and Orality: A Reading of Ngugi wa Thiang’o’s Wizard of the Crow 2007 Mustapha Bala Ruma Department of English and French Umaru Musa Yar’adua University, Katsina, Nigeria mbrumah@yahoo.com Abstract- This paper explores the relationship between orality and written literature in Africa. The paper interrogates the transformation of oral narrative into written texts and vice-versa. The paper specifically focuses on how Ngugi appropriates oral-narrative techniques commonly employed in African traditional societies in shaping the narration of events in this monumental novel. In this regard, the paper focuses on how the oral tradition in Africa influences the plot structure of Wizard of the Crow. The paper also looks at how Ngugi uses multiple narrators some of whom are observers as well as participants in unfolding the drama in the novel. These narrators, some of whom are categorically defined and the not well- defined, recount and render events happening in the novel orally in the presence of a live audience and in the process also embellish the story as they deem fit thereby rendering different versions of the same event The paper concludes with the observation that in spite of its being presented in the written medium of the novel, Wizard of the Crow indeed has generic resemblance to an extended oral narrative. Keywords- Orality; Adaptation; Adoption; Embellishment; Performance; Trickster 1. INTRODUCTION Even a slight acquaintance with African literature written in the European languages will reveal its oral antecedents. This is not surprising since the writers of these texts are important members of their respective traditional societies. Consequently, whenever they choose to communicate their experiences to the world through the medium of literature, there is the lingering possibility that they will fall back on the rich repertoire of oral tradition that exist in their societies. Consequently, the African culture becomes a rich source for themes and motifs with which to structure and give a coherent shape to their experiences in the form of poetry, drama, and most especially the novel. There is no gainsaying that despite its European antecedents, the novel as a poetic medium has also come to occupy an important place in the African literary landscape. Indeed, the novel more than poetry and drama has, arguably, becomes a semiotic platform for interrogating African values, beliefs, and ideologies. It thus becomes a formidable tool for self-critique by many African writers that appropriate its performative dialectic especially in challenging social, political, and economic misdeeds of the people in general and tyrannical regimes in particular. It is very significant to note that in their attempts to perform this important social function, African writers using European languages often resort to the use of folkloric elements and indigenous storytelling modes in their texts. In some writers the appropriation of these oral elements invariably forms a sub-text of their narratives. Yet in other writers it is the main text, providing as it were, the momentum for propelling their narrative forward. One of the best example of writers that hinges their narratives on the African oral mode is the Kenyan writer and critic Ngugi wa Thiang’o. In virtually all his novels (A Grain of Wheat, 1967; Petals of Blood, 1977; Devil on the Cross, 1982; Matigari, 1989) orality is a visible textual presence, but nowhere is this more poignant than in his 2007 epic- novel Wizard of the Crow. It is important to remember that for decades Ngugi was one of the groups of writers including among others the late Ugandan poet Okot p’Bitek and the Nigerian critic Chinweizu that championed and assiduously campaigned for the existential immediacy of returning to the African languages as a medium for literary and poetic compositions. Today as always, the issue of language still remains the most contentious problem confronting modern African writers using European languages for their composition. On the one hand there is the irresistible desire to “decolonize” African literature by totally freeing it from what Ali Mazrui once described as “Euro-linguistic paradigm.” 1 On the other hand, there is the pragmatic necessity of reaching a global audience achievable largely through the medium of the colonial languages. This makes the attempts by these Afro-centric writers to completely sever their umbilical attachment with the English language 1 He says this in a 1999 lecture at Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria.