Greetings. In recognition of Black History month, I'll put forward a program of intellectual study based solely on African texts.
Harvard Universal Classics originally known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature compiled and edited by former Harvard University President Charles W. Eliot and first published in 1909. Eliot proposed that 15-minutes a day spent reading part of the texts in his five-foot shelf would enable one gain a liberal education.
A well known rival is the Great Books program proposed by Adler J. Motimer.
Could we create a great books program that is centred on African learning and renaissance?
This idea has plagued my mind since the wave of revisiting the global culture vis a vis education in the wake of black lives matter. Certain schools in the western world have been pushed to revise their curriculum and adopt a more diverse range of topics and reading material. My thoughts immediately jumped to the Harvard Classics as a basis. The 51 volumes include texts from Homer, Darwin, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin. Coincidentally there's no writing from Africa.
What volumes should be constituted?
As the first volume is solely dedicated to Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, I thought of no less a character than Nelson Mandela. Where Franklin proved himself industrious as an innovator, politician and orator, Mandela is the father of the peaceful demonstration in Africa; and a skilled orator as well. The first Volume is dedicated solely to him.
Volume II should cover the ancient texts from Egypt (Ptah Hotep, Kagmeni) what is commonly known as the Wisdom texts. The Epic of Sundiata would also fall in this category, along with Book II of Herodotus' Histories, which covers ancient Egypt.
Volume III-V and VII will mainly entertain fictional literature in the shapes of poetry, plays, and novels - both classics and modern. In here one should be well versed with the works of wa Thiong'o, Achebe, Soyinka, Rotimi, Ruganda, and Abrahams. There are works from female writers including Adichie, Ogot, Nansubuga Makumbi and Mengiste.
Volume VI covers the epic poems of Okot p'Bitek, Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol. In homeric style, he compares the cultures of Africa and Europe, advocating for Africans not to abandon the ways of their forebearers.
Volumes VIII-X will cover famous biographies, speeches and essays. There's a mix of the revolutionary fervour of Cabral, Soyinka, the left-wing rhetoric of Lumumba and the thoughts of the aristocrat Selassie. Biographies include the lives of Kenyatta, Nkrumah and Lumumba.
Volume XI is dedicated to selected lectures made by some famous African intellectuals. The Reith Lectures of Mazrui and Soyinka are instant classics available on the BBC website. All Nobel Prize speeches by African laureates are included in this collection.
It wouldn't be a text on African thought without a section dedicated to anti-colonial thought. Volume XII is dedicated to that purpose, incorporating the works of wa Thiong'o, Nkrumah and p'Bitek.
Volume XIII is dedicated to history. The texts chosen are those of Mazrui, Ogot, Kiwanuka and Karugire. Kaggwa's Empisa chronicles the customs of the Baganda from the earliest times. Studies of ancient Ethiopia and the Kingdom of Asante are also included here.
Afrocentrism forms the basis of Volume XIV. These texts include the writings of Molefi K Asante, Ivan Van Sertima, Cheik Anta Diop, and the one of the few Caucasian authors in these volumes, Martin Bernal. Given the controversy surrounding Afrocentrism, I've seen it fit to include two texts provide a counterargument; the books are by Berlinablau and Mary Lefkowitz.
In the modern world Africans have spread across several continents. On the American continent Africans have been inhabitants, and mostly treated as second class citizens, for the better part of four centuries. Therefore, Volume XV is dedicated to works of some African Americans of note. The texts here are from Frederick Douglass, WEB Du Bois, Booker T Washington, Thurgood Marshall, Barack & Michelle Obama, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
The final Volume is purely in recognition of this blog's origins in the realm of Economics. As such Volume XVI covers some texts of Black Economists, including William A Lewis (the only black recipient of a Nobel Prize in Economics), Thomas Sowell, Loury, Harris and Wallace.
Below I propose Isabirye's 16-volumes of the Great Books of Africa, and in Eliot's tradition I believe spending 15 minutes a day immersed in one of these texts can drive one towards an Afrocentric awakening.
Volume I - Nelson Mandela; Long Walk to Freedom, 1993 Nobel Prize Lecture, Prison Letters, Ten Years of Democracy (2004 Steve Biko Memorial Lecture)
Volume II - Ancient Texts: The Instructions of Ptah Hotep, The Instructions of Kagemni, The Instruction of Amenemope, The Book of Coming Forth By Day, Kebra Nagast, Fetha Nagast, The Epic of Sundiata, Herodotus Histories Book II: Egypt
Volume III - Poetry: Kunene's Emperor Shaka the Great, Senghor's Ethiopiques, Okigbo's Labyrinths, Bakare Gbadamosi. Yoruba Poetry, Romanus N. Egudu's Igbo Traditional Verse, Mazisi Kunene's Zulu Poems
Volume IV - Plays: Soyinka's Trials of Brother Jero, The Lion and the Jewel, Kongi's Harvest; Ruganda's The Burdens, Austin Bukenya's The Bride, Rotimi's The Gods Are Not To Blame
Volume V - Novels: Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God; wa Thiongo's Weep Not Child; Abraham's Mine Boy, Emecheta's Bride Price; Grace Ogot's The Other Woman, Land Without Thunder, Amadi's The Concubine, Kwei Armah's The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Tamia Moore's Murder in the Cassava Patch, RRR Dhlomo's An African Tragedy: A Novel in English by a Zulu Writer, Thomas Mofolo's Chaka: An Historical Romance.
Volume VI - Okot p'Bitek's epic poetry: Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol
Volume VII - Modern Novels: Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, Obioma's An Orchestra of Minorities, Dangarembga's This Mournable Body, Mengiste's The Shadow King, Nansubuga Makumbi's Kintu
Volume VIII - Biographies: Nkrumah's The Autobiography, Luthuli's Let My People Go, Maathai's Unbowed, Soyinka's Ake, Oginga Odinga's Not Yet Uhuru: The Autobiography of Oginga Odinga, Tom Mboya's Freedom and After
Volume IX - Speeches: Thomas Sankara Speaks, Lumumba's May Our People Triumph, Oliver Tambo Speaks, Selassie's Selected Speeches, Cabral's Unity and Struggle, Tutu's Hope and Suffering
Volume X - Essays and Letters: Nyerere's Ujaama, Biko's I Write What I Like, p'Bitek's Artist the Ruler, Archbishop Kiwanuka's Pastoral Letter (November 1961)
Volume XII - Anti-colonial literature: wa Thiongo's Decolonising the Mind, Nkrumah's Neo-Colonialism, p'Bitek's African Religions in Western Scholarship
Volume XIII - History: Mazrui's The Africans, BA Ogot's History of the Southern Luo, Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya, Kiwanuka's A History of Buganda, Karugire's Political History of Uganda, Kaggwa's Empisa, Sergew Selassie's Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History, John Kofi Fynn's Asante and Its Neighbours, 1700-1807
Volume XIV - Afrocentrism: Molefi Asante's Afrocentric Ideas, Anta Diop's The African Origin of Civilisation, Van Sertima's They Came Before Columbus, Van Sertima's Egypt Revisited, Bernal's Black Athena, Berlinablau's Heresy in the University, Lefkowitz' Black Athena Revisited, Not Out of Africa
Volume XV - African Americans: Frederick Douglass' The Narrative, Washington's Up From Slavery, Washington's Building Character, Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois' The Negro, King's Strength To Love, King's Why We Can't Wait, Malcolm X' Autobiography, Obama's Dreams from My Father, Michelle Obama's Becoming, Toni Morrison Beloved, Condolezza Rice's A Memoir, Thurgood Marshall's Supreme Justice: Speeches and Writings, Gates Jr.'s The Signifying Monkey, Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain
Volume XVI - Black Economists: WA Lewis' The Theory of Economic Growth, WA Lewis' Development Planning, Sowell's Basic Economics, Sowell's Race and Economics, Glenn Loury's The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, Lincoln Harris' The Negro as a Capitalist, Wallace's Black Women in the Labour Force.
Ceteris. Paribus.
Sources
Kirsch, A., (2001). "The 'Five-foot Shelf' Reconsidered," Harvard Magazine, Volume 103, No.2. Nov-Dec 2001.
Dr. Eliot, C.W. An Ongoing Review and Discussion of the Harvard Classics.
Adler, M. J. (Ed.). (1952). The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World (Vol. 2). Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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