Negritude - Nadine Gordimer's Major Novels

Name: Vishva Gajjar

Roll no.: 33

Paper: 11 (The Postcolonial Literature)

Submit to: English Department (MKBU)

NEGRITUDE - NADINE GORDIMER'S MAJOR NOVELS

Negritude was both a literary and ideological movement led by French-speaking black writers and intellectuals from France’s colonies in Africa and the Caribbean in the 1930s. The movement is marked by its rejection of European colonization and its role in the African diaspora, pride in “blackness” and traditional African values and culture, mixed with an undercurrent of Marxist ideals. Negritude was born from a shared experience of discrimination and oppression and an attempt to dispel stereotypes and create a new black consciousness.

The movement drew its inspiration from the Harlem Renaissance, which was beginning its decline. The Harlem Renaissance, which was alternatively called the “New Negro Renaissance,” fostered black artists and leaders who promoted a sense of pride and advocacy in the black community, and a refusal to submit to injustices. But as the glory days of the Harlem Renaissance came to an end, many African American intellectuals of the period moved to France, seeking a haven against racism and segregation. Among these artists were Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, and Claude McKay, who Sengalese poet and politician Léopold Sedar Senghor praised as the spiritual founder of Negritude.

The movement’s founders, Aime Cesaire, Senghor, and Léon-Gontran Damas, met while studying in Paris in 1931 and began to publish the first journal devoted to Negritude, L’Étudiant noir (The Black Student), in 1934.

The term “Negritude” was coined by Cesaire in his ‘Notebook of a Return to the Native Land’, (1939) and it means, in his words, “The simple recognition of the fact that one is black, the acceptance of this fact and of our destiny as blacks, of our history and culture.” Even in its beginnings Negritude was truly an international movement—it drew inspiration from the flowering of African American culture brought about by the Harlem Renaissance and found a home in the canon of French literature.

In Nadine Gordimer's sympathetic assessment of the black situation and the black people, the spirit of negritude gets emphatically revealed. In her novels, she presents Negro characters as noble, more sensitive, more given to the warmth of life. In the white and the black confrontation, Nadine Gordimer seems to take the side of the black, as she believes in the black as being unjustly treated by the white. Nadine Gordimer seems to plead for herself in Toby's and Steven's case, in the novel A World of Strangers. She has identified herself so naturally with the South African world that her version of the black life does not suffer from any European bias or prejudiced misinterpretation. Though a white writer, her presentation of racial discrimination nowhere falls short of sincere authenticity.

·       A World of Strangers :

Toby Hood comes from England to South Africa on assignment for his family's publishing house. He divides his time between the townships and white high society, he feels concerned about the black world of Johannesburg. He makes friends with Steven Sitole, his kindred black bachelor friend, similarly apolitical. Steven Sitole is destined to play a major part in Toby's African experience. Toby's relationship with Steven throughout the novel is a puzzling one. Steven tries to assert his separate identity in the novel. He talks with Toby about racial politics, serious art, about Tolstoy. On the other hand, fascinatedly watching the organ; movement of black dancers a t a party of Steven's, Toby registers for his own part only the absence of the same capacity in himself. He understands for the first time, as he puts it, "the fear, the sense of loss there can be under a white skin." In this connection Stephen Cling man (1986:53) says: "The possible converse, it appears, of a moment of white "Negritude', is quite literally one of self -denigration." As far as the assumptions of the 1950s are concerned, the novel offers its interracial socializing. For example, Toby remarks on the pitfalls of a white liberalism in which, 'it became 'an inevitable fashion' to mix with blacks, or even to have a 'pet African' whose name one could drop in company'. Some of the more glaring incongruities of this behavior are well documented in the novel. At one interracial party the white hostess feels so relieved at the way in which she has been 'accepted' by her guests that she remarks to Sam and Steven black men, 'I'm going to see if our black brothers in the kitchen cant rustle up some tinned soup for us'.

Toby has a counterpart in the black world because of his friendship with Steven, his best friend. Toby has never really had any social commitment, Steven, however, has rejected his. Having experienced, as a black man, only bitter frustration in all quarters, Steven instead finds, solace in reckless living, in a personal refusal to be beaten, in a personal refusal to care. He is 'sick of feeling half a man': "I don't want to be bothered with black men's troubles."

Toby's encounters with the African community began with a visit from Anna Louw, a Legal Aid lawyer. Anna Louw's marriage to an Indian has been broken up by the pressures of apartheid, and lives in a much harder world than the liberals. Yet, for all that, the novel shows a deep admire lion for her courage and clarity, and her unceasing attempt ever to widen the frontier zone and make it more genuinely habitable. As a black girl,' Anna asserts her separate identity in the novel. She is a disillusioned ex-communist. She became a social activist. She had made a trip to Russia in 1950, but she had not remained in the chronic slate of exhaustion, which prevented any new commitment. In short A World of Strangers is full of typical scenes and presents a great variety of South African types: among them She 'liberal, the Black intellectuals.

·       Occasion for Loving :

Nadine Gordimer's presentation of Negro characters in her novels as noble, more sensitive is quite truly reflected in the novel Occasion for Loving. In the novel, a white female character gets attracted towards a black man because of his noble qualities. The novel focuses on a cross-racial affair between the black artist and the young white English woman. Ann Davis is an opportunistic girl, who has come to South Africa with her husband Boaz. She gets attracted towards Gideon Shibalo, who was an African painter, and teacher with 'the moody lace of a man who pleases everybody but himself. Gideon takes her to the boxing matches and to other colorful affairs, and to parties at the homes of his friends, both white and black. Gideon was the man whose painting had attracted attention overseas and won him a scholarship to work in Italy. He was known and welcomed everywhere. Ann takes pride in his interest in her, recognizes and welcomes her sexual power, and likes showing other men that she finds a black man interesting, he had his own status and dignity in the society. Gideon has no contact with [he African musical heritage but he tries to acquire a lot of knowledge about it by asking the seminal questions to Boaz, who works on the African musical heritage. He had painted Ann's several portraits very beautifully. These paintings refer also to the creative energy she inspires in him. She is so much interested in the picture that she is frequently drawn to look at it, though she finds 'no surface likeness to provide reassurance', though "she knew i t was the likeness of what he found her to be', Gideon glorifies of everything i.e. African tradition and culture, African musical heritage etc. A brilliant dancer, Ann is increasingly drawn to Gideon through an attraction described as having 'the rhythm of a dance'. While describing their interracial relationship, Gideon remarks, 'every contact with whites was touched with intimacy was always easier —to have a love-affair than a friendship'. Throughout the novel Gideon Shibalo is presented as a tolerant, intellectual painter, who becomes very sensitive after the failure of their love relationship.

·       A Sport of Nature :

In A Sport of Nature, Gordimer describes the total dedication of blacks to the Liberation Movement. Whaila Kgomani, a black revolutionary, was a noble African. In the novel, a white Jewish girl, Hillela gets attracted towards Whaila because of his noble qualities. He is repeatedly described as godlike, 'the disguised god from the sea', 'the obsidian god from the waves'. He first meets Hillela in the sea, appearing from the waves to bring news of an assassination to Arnold, the commander in exile. Due to his inspiration for the revolutionary activities, Hillela undergoes a transformation, Hillela, constantly questions Whaila about his plans for South Africa.

When Hillela marries him, she seeks to find ' a sign in her marriage. She refuses merely to accept their different skin colors. Whaila is surprised to see the change in her mind. He is a very sensitive man. When she shows keen interest in his work, he tries to acknowledge his identity, he says: 'What am I to you, that you transform yourself?' Her love for Whaila leads her to become interested in his revolutionary work.

·       My Son's Story:

In the novel My Son's Story, Gordimer portrays a character of colored school teacher who later becomes a revolutionary activist. Here a young white women named Hannah Plowman gets attracted towards a colored man because of his noble qualities. Sonny is the 'pride of his people as he is the first person in his family to gain formal education. Initially he is not interested in joining the black struggle. Put, later on he participates in the-rally and he is banned from teaching. He leads a hectic life as a revolutionary. Amongst his several admires, Hannah is one of them. Sonny and Hannah first become acquainted with each other during his prison term when she writes encouraging letters to him. Their love for the cause draws them closer. She admires the courage of the prisoners. To Hannah the struggle against injustice is of prime importance. At the end of the novel, when Hannah leaves Sonny, not out of feeling of anger but simply because of her passion to serve the needy Africans, Sonny accepts her departure easily because he likes her temperament, her urge in working for the oppressed Africans. He is large-hearted man. As a colored man, his courage and hope for his people are remarkable which asserts his identity. His prominence as an orator and a revolutionary leader. He is, by all accounts, a good man who lives by his political convictions.

If we talk about other writers: Birago Diop from Senegal, whose poems explore the mystique of African life; David Diop, writer of revolutionary protest poetry; Jacques Rabemananjara, whose poems and plays glorify the history and culture of Madagascar; Cameroonians Mongo Beti and Ferdinand Oyono, who wrote anti-colonialist novels; and the Congolese poet Tchicaya U Tam’si, whose extremely personal poetry does not neglect the sufferings of the African peoples. The movement largely faded in the early 1960s when its political and cultural objectives had been achieved in most African countries.