Interviewing African Writers

Abstract

The published interview with working writers, both in journals and in anthologies, is an example of what can be termed both metatext and paratext. Though frequently cited in academic research, the literary interview nevertheless remains largely uninvestigated for its aims, content, strategies and critical exploitation, and in the emergent field of Western scholarship in African literatures and given the problems of cultural dissemination in Africa itself, it is apparent that the production and role of literary interviews, while important in practice, are particularly open to question.

Within the context of African literature in particular, the aim of this paper is to open up discussion in both literary and sociolinguistic terms of (i) the interviewer's intention and the interviewee's response; (ii) strategies involved in transcribing, editing and publication, including discussion of the relative status of the oral interview in printed form and the interviewer's and/or interviewee's ’right’ to alter the original interview; and (iii) the academic and general use, and abuse, of published and unpublished interviews.