AYI KWEI ARMAH''S
FRAGMENTS OF AN ANGUISHED AFRICAN SOUL
The
Ghanaian-born writer, Ayi Kwei Armah,
who has been living in Senegal supposedly in exile, wrote a famous fictional work he entitled Fragments. It is one of the earliest anti-racist work to emerge from the second-generation of African Writers who had the great privilege to be published by Heineman of London under the African Writers Series.
The Hero, a
ghanaian who studied in an American University, returns home to discover that his mother and siblings expect him to be, like his fellow ghanaian whom he met on the plane home, an apist of the whiteman and a devourer of the heritage which his people had laboured for over the years.
His mother realises that her son is an unconventional ''been-to'', but easily recovers from the shock; there is hope that though he returned home with just books and a guitar,instead of clothes and jewelry for his mother and sister, and a cargoed car for himself, he may yet secure a job in a
government establishment and become a cargo promoter.
The great tragedy of the educated African of the early 1940s-60s was that they became an anti-climax of the expectations of their people because rather than settle down to renegotiate the dilemma of their much abused people, they settled for the spoils which working in Accra or Lagos could provide, and they exceeded a million times the excesses of the white masters from whom they wrested control of the resources of their land and people.
The hero of Fragments refuses to accept the corruption that had overridden his country. He is unperturbed about material acquisition and is unwilling to secure a job by any improper means. His mother, experienced in the lore of the new Ghanaian society is understandably miffed by her son''s total lack of cooperation, so is his sister who complains constantly of people who do not know how to get along.
When our hero, whose name is better discovered in the actual text, eventually gets a job after a number of frustrating attempts, he embarks on yet a more pernicious struggle to maintain his sanity in a government broadcast company that completely abandons its historical duty to recreate the great dream of a proud Africa, but concede instead its time and resources to government propaganda.
At the height of his virtual cerebral fragmentation, he had only his aged mother and South-American girl friend to count on for understanding.
Armah''s use of English is memorably poetic with his internally-felt sense of alienation reveberating in every page with masculine force.
It is piece to be read not only for its acerbic indictment of the African elite but also for its vivid presentation of an anguished soul.