What is the Point of Literature?

In this article Diana Santiago, Ugandan singer, song writer, music trainer and cultural practitioner, explores the societal importance of literature.

From the early 2000s up until 2018, there was a surge of literary activity in East Africa. An outpouring that tamed our literary hankerings and reassured the visibility of the literary community.

Everywhere you turned your head, there was a literary event; a book reading, a conference, a workshop, a festival, a book review, dialogues and so forth.

Like all literature from every other continent, our literature has historically had a notable commitment to shaping our society. We read to listen to and participate in discussions that shot guns in our minds and unsettled us on our seats. Those dialogues caused us to rethink and reevaluate our views and opinions and actions.

We joined conversations that reflected on our social realities, jumpstarting our brains with literary works that resonated with our situations and inclinations. Our society evolved in conversation with our literature.

The work that influenced our discussions was written between the 1960s and the late 1990s and a few from the 2000s, which was the colonial and post-colonial era. The writers are known as the literary giants of Africa.

These writers were the product of their time. Their works have given us a timestamp of a point in history, a bridge between then and now. Through their eyes and words, we have been able to walk in their shoes and inhabit their lives.

Fast-forward, and a lot has changed. Literary spaces are shrinking at breakneck speed. Especially the physical ones. Thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic that forbade all forms of physical fellowship, which robbed artists of their engagement.

But the important question I want to ask is: who are the writers of this current age?

Who is archiving the stories of today? Who is shaping the discourse in society as the clock continues to tick away?

What are they writing about?

What are the themes and topics that this age will be remembered for?

The works of Peter Abrahams, Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Okot p’ Bitek, to mention but a few, responded to the pressing societal muddles of their time.

Everywhere you turned your head, there was a literary event; a book reading, a conference, a workshop, a festival, a book review, dialogues and so forth.

Their engagement with words was influenced first by the message they wanted to put across, they didn’t worry about how much money they would to be paid. It was more about the message they wanted to communicate and the impact they wanted to create.

This grit eventually opened doors and opportunities for them.

Every writer knows that writing a good piece, takes a lot of work and time. But no-one today, seems to have any time.

Who is paying for the time writers spend in producing a good body of work?

And how much are they paying?

What is a writer’s bargaining power?

What influences the projects we take on?

In that case, what is the point of literature?

Are we writing for society, or for ourselves?

Today, social media seems to have created a desperate need for people to demonstrate that they matter. People write to stay in the game. Has this affected the quality of our output?

Today, we have an influx of scholars and writers, more than ever before. Many have brilliant things to say. But who is listening to them? How do we find the authentic spaces and platforms where their work can be found? And are we too fractured as societies to shape ourselves in conversation with our literature?

The value of literature now is not the same as it was back in the day. You could argue that it is a case of ‘old is Gold’, but, let us borrow from Professor Katy Shaw’s analogy of a sportsman and a writer. Why is a sportsperson paid higher than a writer today?

Perhaps, it’s a case of familiarity breeding contempt, that readers revere writers of old rather than the current. Or is it that the current players lack the passion, the grit, the discipline and radicalism that characterized our predecessors?

Could it be complacency on the part of writers? Do they have too little time to focus on great work? Or has literature truly lost its value?

What is the usefulness of literature anyway, if we have to debate about its worth?

I do not know the answers. But I strongly believe that the power still lies with us; to build consensus for action across continent and make literature what it can be.

The stories we write, the questions we ask, the activities we engage in, all contribute to writing history for this era. We do not have to have it all figured out.

Words are a force. They spark reformations and movements. They will be here when we are long gone.

Not to overstate the importance of literature, but in the case of chicken and egg, literature would be the farmer ensuring continuity of the cycle for both.

Literature is the mirror on the wall of the world. The one we turn to, to (re)align our steps. It is the invisible hyphen that connects the past, the present and the future.

Picture our world right now. Now ask: how is your work impacting it?

50 years down the road, how will your work be viewed.

Why are you engaging with literature the way you do now.

What is in it for you?

Diana Santiago is the Team Lead at the Kujieleza Wall, a non-for-profit initiative she started in 2019 as a safe space for free creative expression in West Nile, Uganda As a forward-thinking entity, the Kujieleza Wall researches, documents and archives the past and present of the West Nile culture contributing to creating formative resources for this generation and the next.

The International Literature Exchange is a partnership project by National Centre for Writing and British Council, supported by Arts Council England.

What is the Point of Literature?

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