Panel: Life Writing and the Colonial and Postcolonial “Native
Intellectual”
Copanelists: Udamu Kalu and Ghirrmai Negash
The art of biographic writing is steadily assuming a prominent place in Nigerian body of letters. The search for role models has been elusive in many areas of life following prolonged military rule, the mismanagement of governmental affairs, and a decline of African values. Emerging new leaders believe that a place can be created, at least in history, as a favorably disposed history now is not likely to change in the near future. Traditional rulers, businessmen and women, and even technocrats have been emulating them. Many have been attempting to record their own life histories in their own words, in a persistent desire to show to their compatriots how far they have helped to shape and advance the destiny of their people and age. And that is the problem, in an all-comers-game, without rules, where ego prevails and self-justification can make the materials both insipid and sociological documents. It has been variously argued that biography is literature; it ought to pursue its dual mandate of entertainment and education.
Dan Chima Amadi is a Lecturer in English in the Directorate of General Studies at the Federal University of Technology in Owerri, Nigeria. He is the author of the novels Wait Till Tomorrow (1994), Secrets Are Wavering Flames (1994), and The Barber’s Shop (2003), and the biographies Bishop G. M. P. Okoye: His Life, His Times (1995), and The Life and Works of Med H. I. Uzoewulu (co-authored, 1996)