For an African writing in English is not without its serious setbacks. He often finds himself describing situations or modes of thought which have no direct equivalent in the English way of life. Caught in that situation he can do one of two things. He can try and contain what he wants to say within the limits of conventional English or he can try to push back those limits to accommodate his ideas … I submit that those who can do the work of extending the frontiers of English so as to accommodate African thought-patterns must do it through their mastery of English and not out of innocence.

The primary challenge African writers face is the lack of support. In the English-speaking world, authors have access to numerous opportunities to connect with peers and professionals, develop their craft, and manage their writing careers.

The issue of which language is most appropriate for expressing an authentic African experience in creative African writing is a polemic one. Opinions are divided on what can best express African Literature and what African Literature is. This essay makes a synopsis of the views of the various schools of thought on both subjects before taking a position. It maintains that the medium of African literary expression, in the particular circumstance, French, faces the challenges of globalization and liberalization so much so that it has passed from its derogatory status of colonial master's language/Foreign or European Language in colonial African Literature to sarcastic but more acceptable inherited or imported language in postcolonial Francophone African Literature. The present trend, in postmodern African creative writing of French Expression, shows a marked evolution and transformation ...

Why, we may ask, should an African writer, or any writer, become so obsessed by taking from his mother-tongue to enrich other tongues? Why should he see it as his particular mission? We never asked ourselves: how can we enrich our languages? How can we 'prey' on the rich humanist and democratic heritage in the struggles of other peoples in other times and other places to enrich our own? Why not have Balzac, Tolstoy, Sholokov, Brecht, Lu Hsun, Pablo Neruda, H.C. Anderson, Kim Chi Ha, Marx, Lenin, Albert Einstein, Galileo, Aeschylus, Aristotle and Plato in African languages? And why not create literary monuments in our own languages?...No these questions were not asked. What seemed to worry us more was this: after all the literary gymnastics of preying on our languages to add life and vigour to English and other foreign languages, would the result be accepted as good English or good French? Will the owner of the language criticise our usage?

The European missionary believed too much in his mission of conquest not to communicate it in the languages most readily available to the people: the African writer believes too much in 'African literature' to write it in those ethnic, divisive and underdeveloped languages of the peasantry!

For Wa Ngugi and Beach, the English metaphysical empire, refers to ‘an empire of language and literature that would outlive the actual British empire’ (p19). The crowning of English language (and to a lesser extent the other colonial languages) as the medium to transmit and transmute African literary expression, according to Wa Ngugi was (and I agree with him) inaugurated in 1962 at the “African Writers of English Expression” conference that convened at Makerere University, in Uganda. Even the title of the conference already suggests that the quality and depth of African literary tradition will be determined in English, leading to the erasure of earlier literature in African languages. What a waste! What a wasted and a missed opportunity to break away from colonial linguistic capture!

[about writing science fiction with an African sensibility] You have to reinvent the language. You have to craft some bizarre amalgam of the sensibility you're trying to bring and a science fiction sensibility... you're grafting two things together that did not grow together, and it's difficult to do that successfully.

When we understand the archive in these relational terms, we’ll then begin to see that there is a fundamental problem and an ontological injustice in our complicitous silence and tacit acceptance of English or any of the European languages as the inevitable medium to transmit African writing across our linguistic differences. Perhaps then we can begin to have a sense of urgency and deliberateness about how we narrate and share our stories with the world and the urgency to produce loads and loads of data about how we see and imagine the world that is opening itself to us.

I think it is important when approaching the conversation around sexual education in Africa to use things that we have used to communicate as Africans.

Filipino writers who write in English should be at an advantage in terms of connecting with international readers, but the irony is that their work isn't really known to the rest of the world. As for me, writing in Tagalog has never been a real option. It's too complex. Just because I can speak the language (somewhat) doesn't mean that I can write in Tagalog with any eloquence or authority.

What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism and the writer who says Africa cannot do without European languages?

As a Black, non-Anglophone Haitian woman writer, I write about my personal world in my own languages (Creole and French) in order to move toward other people. With no concern for what a prospective Anglophone editor might think of my texts. Furthermore, the published book no longer belongs to me, and translated, my hold on it loosens even further. And my writings, stemming from my lived experience and my aesthetic and social vision for a more beautiful and just world, are presented to readers who are not always acquainted with my reality. It’s the same for other writers who, like me, are translated into English or other languages. Our words become conduits, bridges, walkways that transport meaning. It is to be hoped that these writings reach new readers in their full integrity and without distortion in a form conducive to candid and fruitful encounters. Respecting the diverse roots of creativity.

I’m never afraid when I write. I’m sometimes nervous after my books are published, by which time it’s too late to censor myself. When you write boldly, you get mixed reactions and I assume it will be the same with this novel. Not just because of its content, but because of the way I’ve written it. Much of what we’ve talked about may be overlooked by readers who want more to happen in an African novel, but I don’t write to accommodate their needs. Also, whenever you write about privileged Africans, someone somewhere will be upset with you.

Why can't a writer use writing as a painter uses paint? I try to. When I wrote The Tree of Man I felt I couldn't write about simple, illiterate people in a perfectly literate way; but in my present novel the language is more sophisticated. I think perhaps I have clarified my style quite a lot over the years. I find it a great help to hear the language going on around me; not that what I write, the narrative, is idiomatic Australian, but the whole work has a balance and rhythm which is influenced by what is going on around you. When you first write the narrative it might be unconscious, but when you come to work it over you do it more consciously. It gives what I am writing a greater feeling of reality.