Pedagogy Oct 2023

Teaching Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard as Part of a Decolonial Literature Syllabus

Alexander Fyfe

Abstract

Abstract This essay argues that The Palm-Wine Drinkard ([1952] 2014), a tale of a quest through the African bush by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, does important decolonial work and is therefore an excellent candidate for inclusion on a literature syllabus that aims to introduce students to decolonial thinking. After introducing Tutuola's work and considering some of the issues at stake for a decolonial pedagogy, it argues that Drinkard provides an active reading experience that creates powerful opportunities in the classroom to challenge students’ assumptions about how colonialism was experienced by colonized populations, the valences of the human, and uses of the English language. In so doing, the essay highlights potential teachable moments in the text that may be useful to instructors who wish to adopt a decolonial approach in their literature courses.

Journal
Pedagogy
Published
2023-10-01
DOI
10.1215/15314200-10640175
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
decolonial rhetorics writing pedagogy teacher development
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References (14)

  1. Achebe (2016)
    Arrow of God
  2. Falola (2000)
    Culture, Politics, and Money among the Yoruba
  3. Falola (2008)
    A History of Nigeria
     ↗
  4. Lindfors (1975)
    Critical Perspectives on Amos Tutuola
  5. Mbembe (2003)
    Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos Tutuola
    Research in African Literatures  ↗
Show all 14 →
  1. Ngugi wa Thiong'o (2005)
    Petals of Blood
  2. Nyamnjoh (2017)
    Drinking from the Cosmic Gourd: How Amos Tutuola Can Change Our Minds
     ↗
  3. Nyamnjoh (2020)
    Amos Tutuola as a Quest Hero for Endogenous Africa: Actively Anglicising the Yoruba Langu…
    Acta Academica: Critical Views on Society, Culture and Politics  ↗
  4. Omelsky (2018)
    The Creaturely Modernism of Amos Tutuola
    Cultural Critique  ↗
  5. Saint Lily , and ShringarpureBhakti. 2020 “African Literature Is a Count…
  6. Sides Kirk . 2020. “A Truly Decolonial Curriculum Means Treating Student…
  7. Soyinka (2002)
    Death and the King's Horseman
  8. Tutuola (2014)
    The Palm-Wine Drinkard
  9. Wynter (2003)
    Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, after Man, It…
    CR: The New Centennial Review  ↗
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