Interviewed by Dr. Pierre Fandio (Groupe de Recherche sur l’Imaginaire de l’Afrique et de la Diaspora, GRIAD - University of Buea, Cameroon)
Anglophone Cameroon Literature is there to awaken us from our usual torpor. It testifies to the undiminished intellectual life of the homeland. Every homeland – as you’ll recall – always needs a voice in writing and print; and Anglophone literature, created, in the service of Humanity, shuns, the concerns of the fragmentary, neo-colonial elite and deals with the experiences of the marginalized in Cameroonian society ; workers, the urban and rural masses - Bate Besong.
The author of ten plays and five collection of poems, Bate Besong is, without doubt, one of the most representative and regular writers of what might be referred to as the second generation of the emergent Cameroonian literature in English. He was born in Nigeria of Cameroonian parents and did his Secondary and University education in Wole Soyinka’s country where several anthologies and literary works, as well as distinguished literary and academic bodies readily regard him as a Nigerian. He has been a Lecturer in the English Department of the University of Buea since the mid-nineties, and is well known for his uncompromising stance and incisive statements, which have earned him both friends and foes.
He is a very popular figure amongst the educated Anglophone youths but cannot be tolerated by a majority of the Anglophone intelligentsia. A dreaded polemist whom some observers do not hesitate to compare to Mongo Beti, the author of Obasinjom Warrior with Poems after Detention is ultimately the emblematic figure of a Cameroonian literature in English; a literature which is in search of its imprint and which is at the same time piercing and incisive, tender and soothing, and controversial. He was interviewed by Pierre Fandio.
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A French language version of this interview appeared in Africultures (n°60 - septembre 2004) under the title: « La littérature anglophone camerounaise à la croisée des chemins », entrevue avec Bate Besong.
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