by Okot p’Bitek

Among Africa’s most celebrated poets, Okot p’Bitek is also among the continent’s most idiosyncratic writers. Between his birth in 1931 and his death in 1982, p’Bitek was a choirboy, a soccer player, an anthropologist, director of Uganda’s national cultural center, and a teacher, in addition to his more famous roles as poet and essayist. p’Bitek is also unusual for the degree to which he rejected the European influence on Africa. He rejected the Christian faith of his parents in the early 1960s, and wrote his most famous works in his native Acoli rather than in English. His essays ruthlessly critique Africans who have fallen under the spell of such European ideas as Christianity or socialism. His scholarly work provides a deeply sympathetic defense of Acoli culture. Both of...