Indigenization of Language in the African Francophone Novel: A New Literary Canon

Postcolonial novels written by those colonized are recently achieving a wide international readership. Vakunta (French and English, Defense Language Institute, Monterey, CA) looks at the difficulties of transmitting African cultures through the French language. He notes ways in which authors adapt French to evoke African oral traditions as well as cultural assumptions. Through the use of native cadences and terms, they "indigenize" French in order to express their individual backgrounds. Vakunta focuses on novels by three men from different areas of Francophone Africa: Nazi Boni, Ahmadou Kourouma, and Patrice Nganang. These provide examples of the ways in which African experience is interwoven with the European language. Vakunta also examines the problems of translators into other languages who may not have an understanding of the base culture. This study adds much to the international discussion of postcolonial literature. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Peter W. Vakunta is a professor of French and English at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. He has taught literature and literary theory courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Vakunta has been a practicing translator/interpreter for over fifteen years. He is a novelist, storyteller, poet, and essayist. His scholarly articles have appeared in Meta, The Entrepreneur, Translation Review, Research in African Literature (RAL), Journal of African Literature Association (JALA) and Journal of Midwest Modern Language Association (JMMLA).