Pedagogy Oct 2023

Teaching Amos Tutuola's <i>The Palm-Wine Drinkard</i> 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
Open Access
Closed
Topics
race and writing multilingual writers

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

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No references match articles in this index.

Also cites 6 works outside this index ↓
  1. Falola (2008)
    A History of Nigeria
     ↗
  2. Mbembe (2003)
    Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos Tutuola
    Research in African Literatures  ↗
  3. Nyamnjoh (2017)
    Drinking from the Cosmic Gourd: How Amos Tutuola Can Change Our Minds
     ↗
  4. 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  ↗
  5. Omelsky (2018)
    The Creaturely Modernism of Amos Tutuola
    Cultural Critique  ↗
  6. 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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