Ortez 1

Patrick Ortez

8 May 2017

Written Orality: Mabanckou and the African Tradition

Although much of Africa has maintained the oral tradition even into the modern era, the

pressures of the globalized world have pushed it increasingly toward written literature. Despite

the relative newness of writing to much of sub-Saharan Africa, its literature has already

developed a unique storytelling mode. As aspects of oral storytelling are deeply embedded in

their cultures, African writers such as Alain Mabanckou contribute to the literary body through

their hybridization of oral and written elements.

One example of Mabanckous hybridization is his use of classical epithets for

characterization. According to Walter J. Ongs studies1 of oral and written cultures, it is a long-

standing characteristic of oral literature to characterize individuals according to one primary

characteristic (Ong 38). These aggregative characters, such as clever Odysseus and wise

Nestor, he argues, are easier to remember than the complex characters that are recorded in

writing and thus are better suited to oral traditions in which all stories must be committed to

memory (Ong 38). While much of western oral literature focused on characters that epitomized a

single personality trait, much of African oral literature focused on characters epitomizing the

qualities of a single animal. In his novel Memoirs of a Porcupine, Mabanckou plays off of the

belief that each character has an animal double (Mabanckou, Memoirs fourth cover). However,

Mabanckou does not simply depict each character in terms of their animal double but rather

features the animal double as a parallel to the main character and develops the main character of

1
Ongs studies primarily examine Greek oral and written literature. Use of these studies is to better draw
distinctions between oral and written literatures. This is not to say that African literature is in essence the same as
Greek literature or that African literature is in any way behind Western literature.
 Ortez 2

the novel through the perception of his animal double. Early in the novel, the porcupine narrator

calls himself one of the harmful doublesthe liveliest, scariest kind of double and by the

nature of being a double, he begins to describe the human main character of the novel as well

(Mabanckou, Memoirs 7). The continually evolving dynamic between the man and his animal

double is not only interesting as conflict between two characters but also as conflict within a

single character expressed between two separate entities. The struggle between man and his

double is also his struggle with himself and the person he ought to or fears that he will be. By

enacting this mode of differentiation, Mabanckou creates a complex character not through

individual action but through the main characters very being, before the western notion of

characterization begins and before the human main character is even introduced, and thus all

further action creates increasingly elaborate characters (partly characterizing the actor and

reciprocally characterizing their double) not available to conventional literature. By developing

the story in both African and western modes, Mabanckou transcends the limitations of either

literature.

Another instance of Alain Mabanckous hybridization of oral and written literature is

evident in his manipulation of grammar. Through all of both Broken Glass and Memoirs of a

Porcupine, Mabanckou never uses a full stop. The latter novel begins, I wasnt present at

Kibandis birth, not like some doubles, peaceful doubles theyre called, who are born the same

day as the child, and watch them grow, their masters never see them, they intervene only when

necessary, when their initiate falls ill, for example, or has a jinx put on them (Mabanckou,

Memoirs 1). While this serves a literary purpose, drawing the readers eyes forward in an

extended instance of asyndeton, and thus creating continuous acceleration in the action

appropriate for the setting the author is trying to convey, this characteristic is also more
 Ortez 3

representative of the oral storytelling experience. Ong describes oral thought structure as

additive rather than subordinate (Ong 36), meaning that a series of thoughts is connected in

such a way that each is its own standalone thought as opposed to a complex web of primary

thoughts and secondary thoughts that rely on the primary thoughts for relations of time or other

details. Mabanckou evokes this oral storytelling aspect through his use of commas not by

creating an endless chain of additives, but by removing all subordinate structures. By removing

all final punctuation, Mabanckou creates a network of phrases in which few have any ordinal

relation to another, each equal to and in little way temporally related to the phrase preceding and

following it. This ultimately has the same effect as additive structures, a network of thoughts

leading into the next and completed by the time the next thought begins, yet without those

structures themselves. In this way, Mabanckou employs both written literatures lack of additives

and oral literatures lack of subordinates to create his own structural system more closely

resembling the flow of his thought than any punctuated work.

An additional feature of Mabanckous work is his incorporation of fantastical elements

into his writing. In his interview with Binwavanga Wainaina, Mabanckou, discussing his memoir

Demain jaurai vingt ans, states that the best way for [him] to [write a memoir] was to add a lot

of fiction. [He] thought of it as writing a novel in which [his] mother, father, and uncle were the

characters. [He] put a lot of magical, surreal ideas in it (Mabanckou, Interview). Similar to the

hyperbolic feats associated with classical (primarily oral) literature, particularly epic poetry,

Mabanckou integrates magical elements within his semi-historical narrative. This statements

power lies in its indication of a freedom to alter stories as one wishes in oral-influenced cultures.

Not only is the exact truth relatively unimportant, but truth altogether is secondary to the telling

of the story. Mabanckou thinks of himself not as the narrator of a pre-existing story but as the
 Ortez 4

creator of a story based on another pre-existing story. He values the ability to tell a good story,

and thus his own ability as a storyteller, above the transfer of information, which in all cases

entails his ability as a historian, but in the particular case of an autobiography also entails his

own narrative permanence. This usage of magical realism, a genre common to African literature

in which supernatural occurrences permeate and are completely normal within an otherwise

realistic story, empowers Mabanckou to craft a story which fully belongs to both the mystical

oral and believability-bound written traditions. The second source of power within Mabanckous

imagined retelling is that his novel is autobiographical. This means that his alteration of the story

manipulates the readers perceptions of him as an author as well as those around him directly and

overtly. That is, Mabanckou deliberately creates a veil of illusion around the story of his

childhood. By stating himself as an unreliable narrator, he recognizes the fictive within the non-

fiction genre and paradoxically establishes himself as a more reliable narrator than one who

claims to record events without bias. This combination of illusion and honestly empowers

Mabanckou to tell his story with neither the burden of proof nor the inherency of fiction.

However, this is also unusual because Mabanckou has written autobiographically. Facing the

long-standing African griot tradition, which tells stories as records of the works of famous

individuals, recording ones own life experiences is a bold step for any African author (as he is

claiming his own fame). Thus, the inherent nature of Mabanckous epic memoir already marks it

as hybridization of two different genres.

While Mabanckou is an excellent example of African literature, Mabanckou points out

himself that every writer who belongs to an underrepresented group is expected to convey the

entire range of experiences pertaining to that group, but he cannot possibly be representative of

all African writers (Mabanckou, A Conversation). One feature prominent in African and
 Ortez 5

African-influenced literature that is largely absent from the works of Mabanckou is

experimentation with the sounds of words themselves. Many modern African writers incorporate

sound into their poetry in ways not commonly seen in pre-colonial poetry, usually focused on

accurately representing the dialects of English as it is spoken by African peoples. Kamau

Brathwaite works to incorporate the sound of the Jamaican nation-language into his poetry to

accurately represent the dialect of English that he claims is its own distinct language (Clarke 1).

Louise Bennett asks the question, Yuh gwine kill all English dialect/Or jus Jamaica one?

(Bernstein 12) and asserts that:

Yuh wi haffe kill de Lancashire

De Yorkshire, de Cockney

De broad Scotch an de Irish brogue

Before yuh start to kill me! (Bernstein 12)

She, along with many writers, makes the point that the English language in practice is vastly

different from the English language as it is written. There are many dialects of spoken English

and many accents that accompany them, yet we prefer to write as though all English-speakers

speak the same English. Especially in the inherently auditory field of poetry, the sounds of words

themselves are critical to the writing.

Interestingly, Mabanckou chooses to avoid this aspect of language entirely. The elements

which he manipulates are restricted to the compositional (i.e. story and character) and the written

(specifically grammar and punctuation). Although he manipulates writing in a way that is more

authentic to oral storytelling, he elects not to integrate sound into his writing. This choice is

perhaps the biggest leap he makes away from the oral tradition, as without more information, his

stories cannot be read aloud in a way that would recreate the experience of Mabanckous own
 Ortez 6

telling. Thus, his stories, while adhering to oral thought, are undeniably written works, as if to

testify that African writing is every bit as independent from oral tradition as western writing

though Africa need not abandon its oral tradition to prove it. African writing is every bit as

developed as the West, and Africa is no less African for it. Thus, Mabanckou, along with many

other African writers, in their interaction with Africas historical oral cultures, occupy a narrow

yet powerful niche in the post-colonial literary world and contribute both unique works and

unique worldviews as they live within the margins of both oral and written literature.
 Ortez 7

Works Cited

Bernstein, Charles. Poetics of the Americas. Sibyl, 2011. PDF file.

Clarke, Richard L.W. Edward Kamau Brathwaite History of the Voice (1979). R.L.W.

Clarke, n.d. PDF file.

Mabanckou, Alain. A Conversation with Alain Mabanckou and Rokiatou Soumar. University

of Oklahoma. Gould Hall, Norman, OK. 7 Apr. 2016. Interview with Q&A.

Mabanckou, Alain. Interview by Binwavanga Wainaina. Bomb Magazine 112 (2010). Web. 6

May 2016.

Mabanckou, Alain. Memoirs of a Porcupine. Berkeley: Soft Skull Press, 2012. Print.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Routledge,

2002. PDF file.