Emma Dawson recently edited an anthology of short fiction from English Speaking Cameroon, The Spirit Machine and other stories. She shares her experiences and motivations with Palapala magazine.
Why edit an anthology of short-fiction from English Speaking Cameroon? What is it about the Cameroonian experience that interested you you?
The simple answer to this question is interest; personal interest but also the interest shown by the Anglophone Cameroonians to participate. On a personal level, one of the subjects of my first degree was French so I already had an interest in a country that was English and French speaking – in terms of the languages that I could understand that is – so I was curious what this would offer linguistically as well as culturally. Once the call for the short stories went out I realised that there was interest, serious interest. A year previous I had met John Nkengasong at The Oxford Conference in the UK, we had many conversations and often in the two languages, and we talked about Cameroon, its people and its literature; John was my inspiration to compile the anthology and the response from further Anglophone Cameroonians only supported my initial thoughts that it was an exciting project to be carrying out.
Cameroon is the first of a prospected eight country anthology series so to work with authors who were so motivated and proud of their Anglophone writing for the first anthology was incredibly rewarding. The anthology project aims to explore if we are ‘beyond the postcolonial’ and if so, what is it to ‘beyond the postcolonial’, what does it smell, taste and feel like? I will return to this later in the interview…
In the introduction to the collection, you talk about making a trip to Cameroon. How did this experience instruct your approach to editing these works? How important was it for you to meet the faces behind the words and what role did it play in the realization of the project?
From the outset the anthology project which is covering eight countries worldwide initially, is about ‘listening’ and thus I (and the project) are ‘instructed’ from the beginning by what happens. I travel to the country to meet with writers and to ‘listen’ so in a sense the finished product is the tangible manifestation of that ‘listening’, I suppose that the stories are also in a crude sense ‘data’. It is therefore essential to go and meet the faces behind the words and this isn’t the realisation of the project, but rather it is the project per se.
The promotion of the project and the call for submissions were trumpeted through the 5th annual conference of ACWA (Anglophone Cameroonian Writers Association) in Yaoundé and it was really well attended. I listened to Prof Ambanasom’s paper which proved to be a fantastic account of the progress of Anglophone writing over the years and I met with many poets, authors, critics of writing in English in Cameroon. I did feel that when I came to write the critical introduction to the anthology I had more sensitivity to the issues that have played their part in the history of Anglophone Cameroonian writing; many of these issues are difficult, often political and culturally sensitive and thus problematic. I spoke and listened at length with people, I digitally recorded most of what I learned as well as researching journals and key publications; all of which helped me to write what I hope is a balanced and truthful account of the developments of World Englishes literature in Cameroon. It was essential to be there and I would not have done it any other way.
Based on what you heard during your visit and the subsequent editing of these stories, where does the English spoken/written in Cameroon fit into this whole model of ‘Englishes’?
I can’t help answer this question with a smile, as I remember my first morning waking up in Cameroon – late that is, I woke up late, and was unsure of whether I could still get breakfast downstairs at the hotel I was staying at. I picked up the phone and rang reception to ask, I paused, then stuttered – I thought to myself do I speak French or English – and then said, Désolée Madame mais je ne sais pas si je devrais vous parler en Français ou en Anglais… the response was: ‘On parle Français ici’. So the answer was clear and I continued to ask about breakfast in French.
From very early on in my time in Cameroon I was struck by the role, use, place, identity of Cameroonian English and I can’t help to concede that these thoughts must have been impacted and shaped by the fact that I spent time in Nigeria before and after the visit to Yaoundé; Nigeria, where the role and indeed ‘English’ of the place is different again.
In the introduction to each of the anthologies I put forward my theory of World Englishes literary production and I contrast this to the notion of the linguistic production and use of English around the world, to illustrate this I cite the model of Kachru (1982) which is a model of the spread of English around the world. Kachru’s model remains one of several base models from which we understand the linguistic phenomenon that is ‘World Englishes’. For Kachru, the Englishes of the world can be divided into ‘The Inner, Outer and Expanding circles’ and these three roughly correspond to the concepts of English as a native language (ENL), English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) respectively. The ‘Inner circle’ includes the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The ‘Outer circle’ includes nations such as: India, Kenya, Malaysia, Singapore and the ‘Expanding circle’ includes nations such as: China, Egypt, Israel, Japan.
According therefore to this model, Cameroonian English(es) belong to the ‘Outer Circle’ just as Nigeria’s Englishes do but since Anglophone Cameroonians remain a minority within a nation which is predominantly Francophone this makes the anthology from Cameroon different from those which will follow since they will showcase literature in an English which is widely spoken and for the most part recognised as a strong contender on the national linguistic playing field.
Are there any stories in this collection that addressed themes about Cameroonian society that you were unfamiliar with prior to your reading the work?
This question is a little tricky because I’m unsure of what is meant by ‘the work’, is a recognised body of Anglophone Cameroonian writing? If so, is it possible to neatly articulate what these themes have been until now?
Maybe it is better that I return to the premise of the anthology project as a whole, which is to explore what it is (if indeed we are there) to be ‘beyond the postcolonial’, to be ‘post’ postcolonial. With this in mind, I think that it would be fair to say that the stories featured in the anthology do something different from what has come before. There are stories that deal with themes that are not, shall we say, directly linked to being a postcolonial nation or the legacy of colonisation. The stories are about living, about surviving this world, about hoping and aspiring, about dealing with grief, about personal journeys. But it is not simply the content or the themes which are being advocated as ‘new’, genre and styles which have not been extensively considered previously are emerging, for example in the Cameroonian anthology there is a sci-fi, futuristic genre of story and I am reading scripts from other World Englishes literature producing countries which are exploring crime writing for example. Personally, I believe we are moving beyond the postcolonial but I rarely see any attempt in conferences and the like which looks to say how we are or indeed what moving beyond the postcolonial looks like. This collection of anthologies aims to offer something to the debate of being beyond the postcolonial, and so far along this project’s road I am seeing more and more evidence in terms of subject matter and genre which says that we are not where we were in these matters, ten or fifteen years ago, we are going somewhere else - this itself is absolutely fascinating to discover and document.
Emma Dawson (Ph.D University of Nottingham)
Emma works at the intersection of postcolonial studies, pedagogy and the emergent field of World Englishes literature. She has published a number of academic articles on World Englishes literature and her doctoral study addressed the teaching of World Englishes literature in schools in England, the publication from this study is the Read Around series launched in April 2008 (CCC Press, Nottingham, UK). She is also currently editing anthologies of short stories from Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya (forthcoming, New Ventures, 2008/9), the first of these anthologies was published in July 2009: The Spirit Machine and Other New Short Stories From Cameroon. She is currently in post at Keele University.
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