Arthur Edgar E Smith writes about his journey through American Literature: “My interest in America started over thirty years ago when I was very young. The U.S.I.S.
library in Freetown which became a transit point in my long journey back home in the
east from the Prince of Wales School in the west was always at the centre of it all. It
afforded me rest. But it also provided me a welcome and pleasing introduction to the
highly readable, markedly illustrated and boldly printed American texts and magazines
on varying subjects like literature, culture, economics, mass communications, and
science and technology with America already conquering space with its exploration of
the moon and other planets.”
Arthur Edgar E Smith writes about his journey through American Literature: “My interest in America started over thirty years ago when I was very young. The U.S.I.S.
library in Freetown which became a transit point in my long journey back home in the
east from the Prince of Wales School in the west was always at the centre of it all. It
afforded me rest. But it also provided me a welcome and pleasing introduction to the
highly readable, markedly illustrated and boldly printed American texts and magazines
on varying subjects like literature, culture, economics, mass communications, and
science and technology with America already conquering space with its exploration of
the moon and other planets.”My house got littered with numerous copies of American magazines such as TOPIC,
INSIGHTS, DIALOGUE and V.O.A. PROGRAMME GUIDE. Books on North
American geography added supplementary materials to my texts which I studied with
interest and insight up to 6Th form broadening my familiarity with America even before
visiting it.
My knowledge of a widening area of American culture, which includes my infusion with
jazz, blues and soul music through the V.O.A. where Sierra Leonean Ted Roberts and
Liberian Yvonne Barclay held sway got extended and intensified. The Peace Corps also
aided much in my education both at the Prince of Wales School as well as at the Albert
Academy where I did my 6th form. At the Prince of Wales, a government premiere
school, I profited from American Peace corps teachers in Math and Geography. At Albert
Academy, founded by the American United Methodist church there were more overt
American presence in resources and tutors who were largely American trained, this added
to the Peace Corps presence in the library and in the teaching of logic. This librarian was
herself quite a resource in that library which added a stock of very useful and interesting
books to my repertoire.
But really my reading appetite started growing when I was in primary school and joined
the newly created Sierra Leone Library Board thus adding a wide diet of literature to my
home reading which was supported by an American collection of poems, stories, extracts
from novels and short biographies of discoverers and explorers. I could also remember
reading copies of Washington Irving’s THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW and quite
a good number of other writers. But at the Sierra Leone Library Board I read with delight
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER by Mark Twain. I couldn’t fully remember
whether I followed it through to THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. I
may well have had my penchant for reading given much verve as I read volumes like
that stocked at home by my father containing classic American works like those of
James Fennimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe. I read their novels as well as short stories with gusto. I
started acquiring novels from the various bookshops thriving in Freetown then, often at
auctions. Amongst the many I acquired and read were novels by Henry James, Ernest
Hemingway, F Scott-Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer,
Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Flannery O’Connor, John Updike, Bernard Malamud
and James Baldwin. I also invested in quite a number of anthologies of American short
stories. It was a thrill to read American fictional works. Then on to Fourah Bay College I
added a diet of American poets including Robert Frost whose ‘Mending Wall’ and
‘Road Not Taken’ totally enraptured me with their simple but touching charm. Other poets
like William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Carl Sandburg, TS Eliot, E.E. Cummings
and Ezra Pound came in towards the end of college when I had a deep immersion into
American drama through Arthur Miller’s THE CRUCIBLE and DEATH OF A
SALESMAN
That led me on to exploring his other plays as well as those of Tennessee-Williams,
Eugene O’Neill and going on to reading English modernist playwrights such as Harold
Pinter, John Osborne and Arnold Wesker.
The totality of literature, especially American I got exposed to was phenomenal. So when
on moving from Milton Margai College of Education to Fourah Bay College, upon being
assigned to teach American Literature though without ever undergoing any course in it, it
was not a totally daunting task. I prepared to face it with determination to measure up as
an authority. My preparation for a class in American Literature starts off with background
work exploring my student’s grasp of the American Psyche, their ethos backed with a
brief historical as well as geographical sketch. My introductory lectures now follow that
through by tracing how American literature developed with accent placed on the
influence of religious and philosophical tenets such as Puritanism and transcendentalism
and the centrality of this native urge for freedom, democracy and adventure and the
pursuit of the legendary American dream.
Apart from Modern literature, this is the only course offered in the English unit which
surveys all the major genres in one semester. Though quite a daunting task, I prepare the
minds of the students to face it head-on in spite of the acute dearth of materials. This I try
to alleviate thus encouraging them not to avoid reading the texts themselves which may
well be their easiest option otherwise. Reading assignments, written essay assignments,
class discussions/seminars as well as lectures sustain the course which is offered at both
final general and honors levels.
The texts at final general level are limited to:
• 6 novels:
o Nathaniel Hawthorne’s SCARLET LETTER
o Mark Twain’s THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
o Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY
o Ernest Hemingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES
o John Steinbeck’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH
o Richard Wright’s BLACK BOY
• 4 plays:
o Eugene O’ Neil’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
o Tennessee Williams’ A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
o Arthur Miller’s THE DEATH OF A SALESMAN
o Lorraine Hansbery’s A RAISIN IN THE SUN
• 6 poets: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Langston
Hughes and Amiri Baraka. ( To enable them to access all the poems, I select them
from the various anthologies and collections cut and paste into five or so leaflets
which are then reproduced which they appreciably support.)
A more expansive selection is offered at Honours 11 level where the course has more
credit hours per week and durates for two semesters.
The following novels are added to those at General level:
• Herman Melville’s BILLY BUDD
• Tony Morrison’s SULA
• Alice Walker’s COLOUR PURPLE
• Ralph Ellison’s INVISIBLE MAN
• James Baldwin’s GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN
There is need to add more plays to even them out with the other genres. I have therefore
added THE GLASS MENAGERIE by Tennessee Williams to George Albee’s WHO
AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. Adding another play by Miller possibly THE
CRUCIBLE and one by Amiri Baraka might be a step in the right direction. I think one or
two contemporary plays might recommend themselves.
In poetry the earlier mentioned poets are studied more intensively with Wallace Stevens,
Sylvia Plath, Claude McKay, Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez added. Much more
interest in American literature has been developed over these 6 years that I have been at
F.B.C. teaching American literature. This is most evident in more enthusiastic response
from students in class, more extensive as well as intensive reading of the texts and more
long essays written in that area now.
It was very heart-warming renewing relations with a country that has been at the heart of
my education. This was when I was given the opportunity of being the first person to
initiate a literary evening in the reopened Martin Luther King library at the embassy after
the war. This was a lecture I gave on the African American writer Langston Hughes. That
marked the celebrations for Black History Month in 2005 and was repeated for 2006
celebrations.
Other areas of interest include:
• BOOK DEVELOPMENT – campaigning for greater access and provision of
libraries nationally, encouraging the establishment of a network of bookshops and
other means of distribution, stimulating the development and maintenance of
structures for a thriving publishing industry and encouraging the development of
Sierra Leone literature and documenting it along with studies of individual efforts
as well as trends.
• SURVEYING AFRICAN LITERATURE
• SURVEYING AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
• TRACING THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM
ENGLISH LITERATURE ON TO ITS EMERGENCE TODAY AS THE MOST
VIBRANT LITERATURE NOW INFLUENCING RATHER THAN BEING
INFLUENCED. The trend of literature influencing the development of other
literatures will be widely examined starting from the influences borne on English
literature by Greek, Roman, Italian and French literature. THEN that same
English literature producing an international literature in English from its former
colonies now kept together in a commonwealth, particularly India, Australia, New
Zealand, Canada, Africa and the Caribbean.
• Some urgent attention needs to be given the study of ENGLISH as a second
language in Sierra Leone. More resources and better motivated tutors are urgently
needed to rescue English from its endangered position.
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