Poetries from Niger Delta Announcing Triumph of Humanity over Butchering War

“Blood diamonds” is a popular terminology these days. Mother Nature has gifted Africa with significant volume of natural wealth. However, mostly because of the incompetent sociopolitical leadership ruling over the continent, the region has remained one of the most underdeveloped zones across the planet. The continent experiences high level of poverty, illiteracy is high among the young folks; malnutrition is somewhat like epidemic among children. In short, the region and the indigenous community are subjected to severe economic exploitation occurring across ages.

The “blood diamonds” or “conflict diamonds” along with the ever raging Niger Delta Conflict is making life hell for the region’s entire civilian society. There is a huge deposit of mineral oil across Western Africa and since the early 1990s a severely blood-spilling conflict is going over the region to gain control of this flourishing fuel trade. Till date, the conflict has claimed countless number of lives and hundreds and thousands of folks have been forced to evacuate their homes. In the midst of this spine-chilling reality, NigerDelta poetry is flourishing like never before. The wise believe there is an inherent yet subtle connection between creativity and adversity.

A bunch of profusely talented poets and writers from the region is steadily captivating lovers of poetry and literature through their dedicated work overcoming all difficulties that life has gifted them with.  These literary geniuses are keen sociopolitical observers and thus, they portray the reality of the contemporary society through their works. The fraternity of famous West African poet is busy revealing a different Africa to their reader base, spread across all the four corners of the world. Thanks to the dedicated works of these geniuses, severe economic exploitation going across the region is revealed to the global community.

Prior to the rise to stardom of these African literary geniuses, the world knew only about the unbelievable wilderness and primitive way of life existing in the continent. Now, the topic of African culture and literature is equally relevant among the global intellectual community.

African Diaspora Literature & the Shifting Social, Political, Cultural Norms

African community has been subjected to migration, thanks to flourishing slave trade, since the historic ages. During their forced migration, the Diaspora community maintained its age-old tradition of oral storytelling in their new homes across the foreign lands. The themes of the stories naturally revolved around their native land, abandoned homes and indigenous cultures. This tradition kept itself alive in spite of unbelievable adversities.

 At a later stage, this culture exhibited itself in form of slave narratives. This genre of literature became exceptionally popular across the society dominated by whites. In fact, these slave narratives were the first batch of literature that was ever published by the African Diaspora authors. The range of literature provided firsthand accounts of life under slavery and exposed the brutality and vulnerability that slaves used to face in the hands of so-called civilized society.

However, the range of literature also exhibits the indomitable dignity that at least some of the men and women of black community possessed even in that unbelievably oppressive situation. It is this sense of dignity that enabled those folks to scribe their life’s experiences in words for the future generations to know. In course of time, life changed somewhat for better for these people living in foreign lands. Gradually, the Diaspora community had to wage incessant struggle to gain freedom and equality in their adopted countries. As such, the age of conflict for this people to gain recognition and respect continued for long, stretching across centuries.

This entire period of struggle actually facilitated the growth and maturity of the Diaspora literature of Africa. The genre of literature obviously reflects the changing social norms and the shifting cultural and political realities with the advent of the new age. Interestingly, the fraternity of authors did not lose its inherent bonding with the unique cultural heritage that was inherited from Africa by sheer birthright.