The Stranglehold of English Lit was very interesting to me. In my life I’ve read a lot of Jane Austen’s book and they are always about the same thing. Rich or poor women try to figure out how to stay or become rich. They are always proper and they usually go to balls and tea parties. People in Africa had to read these books in school. These stories had nothing to do with Africa and that’s what Felix Mnthali is trying to say. He’s mad that Africans are forced to read English books in school when the problems in the book are very different from the problems actually happening in Africa. African’s aren’t trying to figure out how they can find a rich guy to marry. They don’t sit around at tea parties and go to balls. Most work very hard to put a meal on the table. In the poem Felix Mnthali talks about how history mocked “the victims of branding irons and sugar-plantations that made Jane Austen’s people wealthy beyond compare!”(Mnthali) This shows that the people of Africa were slaves, working hard and having a terrible time. The people in the Jane Austen books got rich off the Africans while they had a great life. Then, the Africans had to read about the great existence of the British people who got rich off of the Africans. This is very interesting to me.
I don’t think that anyone should be forced to learn and English or read English literature when it has nothing to do with their cultures. I agree with Felix. I think that people should be able to keep their own cultures. They shouldn’t be pushed into a new one. This is an issue that I’m actually really interested it. Language, traditions, and cultures are very important and when someone tried to take them away I would be mad just like Felix Mnthali is.
I really enjoyed the poem. I think what Felix is saying is very true. I would recommend this poem to anyone interested in poems and the African tradition. I would love to read another poem from Felix Mnthali in the future.
You make a great point about how important it is to learn about your own culture and read the literature from that culture. How complicated that this! In the US education system, we have children from so many cultures in the classrooms. Funnily enough, if you look at early American authors, they are all British. Now, being American means lots of different cultures in one place. It's all so complicated now!
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