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 these purposes are achieved as well in his poems—especially in “Song of Lawino”—which attempt to voice the beliefs and concerns of traditional Acoli culture.
The Acoli. Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol provides vivid records of the pre-1970s life and customs of the Acoli. Far less numerous than the Buganda or Banyoro peoples, the Acoli reside in the elevated grasslands of northwest Uganda.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 5,871 words (approx. 20 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol Access Pass.
