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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The writer and the environment: the example of Ken Saro-Wiwa |
Author: | Teilanyo, Diri |
Year: | 2008 |
Periodical: | Okike: an African Journal of New Writing |
Issue: | 49 |
Pages: | 48-63 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Nigeria |
Subjects: | literature political action |
About person: | K.B. Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995) |
Abstract: | Ken Saro-Wiwa was both a writer and an environmentalist, campaigning against the degradation of the lands and waters in the oil-producing Ogoni area in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria and for the environmental and minority rights of the Ogoni people. The relationship between Saro-Wiwa the environmental crusader or minority rights activist, and Saro-Wiwa, the literary artist, is explored in the present article. Analysis of the subject and style of Saro-Wiwa's prose fiction and poetry indicates that Saro-Wiwa as an artist was one and the same person as Saro-Wiwa the environmental and minority rights campaigner. His political actions were only an extension or a different dimension of a crusade he had been waging in his literature. His literary campaign was a prelude and an impetus to his political action. The author concludes with two questions for debate: How potent can literature ever be as an instrument of sociopolitical engineering? Should a professional literary artist ever be involved in political action and risk his life in the way Saro-Wiwa did? Bibliogr. [ASC Leiden abstract] |