Bate Besong

An Artist's Responsibility (A Profile of the Work of Bate Besong)

By Alfred Matumamboh (First Published in West Africa (London), 1997

A correspondent profiles the work of Cameroonian playwright Bate Besong and explores his sense of responsibility as an artist to his society.

NGUGI WAS THIONG'O the East African Marxist author, argues that every writer is a writer in politics, but what distinguishes one writer from another is whose side of the political game he belongs to – the oppressor or the oppressed.  Bate Besong is a writer who unabashedly identifies with the underprivileged of society against the exploiting ruling class.  He holds the big wigs in society responsible for the miserable condition of the masses of the people.  He writes to sharpen the public’s consciousness of its socio-politico-economic reality.

BB Profile in the Encyclopedia of African Literature

Culled fromSimon Gikandi (ed.). Encyclopedia of African Literature. New York, NY : Routledge, 2003. pp. 61-62. ISBN 0-415-23019-5

Besong, Bate, Poet (b. 1954, Cameroon)

A PhD in English and literary studies from the University of Calabar (Nigeria), the Cameroonian writer Bate Besong is primarily known as a poet. He has published several collections of poetry, including Polyphemus Detainee and Other Skills (1980), The Banquet (1994), The Grain of Bobe Ngom Jua (1985), and Just Above Cameroon (1998). He has also published important plays including The Most Cruel Death of the Talkative Zombie (1987), and Beasts of No Nation (1990).

Just Above Cameroon

By Bate Besong

First Published in the ALA Bulletin (USA), Vol 27. Summer 2001 Nº3, pages 39-41

(For Alexandre Biyidi-Awala a.k.a Mongo Beti Eza Boto 1932-2001, waggoner of Les Deux Mères de Guillanume IsmaelDzewatama, futur camionneur)

Your history huts are made
of wild flower and sycamore a steel fort, defying:
Stop, Inquirer, look back and wonder…
who can dare the brazen symmetry
of Akometam mansecomb?
so long as the remembers
he’ll not: find the bottomless histories
of dungeons only;
so long as the remembers
he’ll not: find the bottomless histories
of dungeons only;

Dr. Bate Besong: Chief Inoni Ephraim’s Constituency – and – Vision will Never go Beyond Bakingili.

Published in The Heron, Nº. 0086, Friday December 17-24-2004

Bate Besong is the most paradoxical Anglophone Cameroonian writer today… he is also a political activist and a staunch advocate of the Southern Cameroon crusade. B.B., as he is fondly called by his admirers in this brief chat last Wednesday with Ezieh Christopher Andu x-rays the recent cabinet appointed by President Biya. Excerpts.

BB: A Dramaturgy of the Oppressed Workers

By Professor Ada Ugah (Sunday Chronicle January 6, 1991)

The art of writing is essentially a revolt against the existing status quo. Imbued with visionary fervour, the literary artist seeks to negate the existential stasis in which he finds himself by temporalizing his dreams and aspirations.

Thus the writer’s private fears and frustrations assume a societal dimension by act of identification by the readers of such author’s work. This act of identification is even more immediate in a dramatic rendition. It is this feeling of total and engaging identification that readers and viewers of Bate Besong’s latest play are immersed with when confronted with the dramatic portrayal of unitary Cameroon’s national question.

Nationhood in Dramaturgy: Marginality and Commitment in Victor Epie Ngome’s “What God has Put Asunder”

By Bate Besong

Abstract of a BB article in the critical anthology, "Figures de l’histoire et imaginaire au Cameroun" a co-publication of the Universities of Buea and Franche - Comté of Besançon, France, which will be published in early 2005

V. E. Ngome’s What God Has Put Asunder (1992) can be considered as a successful attempt at producing valuable information about Cameroonian society and, also helping to bring about change since it records the history of the colonial, imperialist intervention on the individual psyche and society at large.