• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
UT Shield
Ransom Center Magazine
  • Sections
    • View All Articles
    • Art
    • Authors
    • Books + Manuscripts
    • Conservation
    • Digital Collections
    • Exhibitions + Events
    • Film
    • Literature
    • Photography
    • Research + Teaching
    • Theatre + Performing Arts

October 14, 2010, Filed Under: Exhibitions + Events

Charles R. Larson on African literature

Charles R. Larson. Photo by Roberta Rubenstein.
Charles R. Larson. Photo by Roberta Rubenstein.
Tonight, Charles R. Larson of American University speaks about his collection of African, African American, and Native American literature, acquired by the Harry Ransom Center> in 2009. Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas at Austin emeritus professor of English, hosts the conversation. Here Larson shares how he became interested in African literature and began collecting.

This collection of books and manuscripts would not exist if I had not gone to Nigeria in 1962 as a Peace Corps volunteer. Prior to my departure, I had earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in American literature and written my thesis on William Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy. I fully intended to return to the United States and pursue a Ph.D. in American literature. Fortunately, the summer before my departure for Nigeria, I read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard.

Nigeria totally altered my worldview, mostly by showing me the failure of my earlier education. Not only did I begin reading emerging works by African writers, but I realized that in the many American literature courses that I had taken, I had never read a work by a minority writer. I began ordering books from the United States and reading Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and other African American writers. How ironic that the man who directed my M.A. thesis and taught the American literature survey course I took never mentioned a single African American writer, yet he was an African American. After I returned to the United States, I discovered that he had one of the most extensive private collections of African American literature, but he obviously never felt comfortable enough to assign any of those writers in his own courses.

How fortunate that the school where I taught English in Eastern Nigeria was a scant few miles from Ogidi, the village where Achebe grew up and the setting of his celebrated novel. I was aware of Ogidi’s proximity to my own village and was even told that Achebe visited his family there from time to time, but I made no attempt to meet him until several years later. Equally important, however, was Onitsha, the Igbo center of business and culture, a dozen miles from where I lived. It was there that I purchased many of the original titles by the Onitsha pamphleteers and had my first true sense of what was already becoming a major school of African writing. In Onitsha at the CMS Bookstore, I also purchased Achebe’s third novel, Arrow of God, soon after it was published.

Nigeria changed my scholarly life. When I returned home I was determined to see that works by African writers were reprinted in American editions, and in the spring of the 1965 academic year, I taught my first course in African literature. The rest is history.

About Alicia Dietrich

Dietrich edited the biannual print newsletter Ransom Edition and monthly email newsletter eNews; promoted exhibitions and public programs; produced press releases; and worked with media.

Primary Sidebar

Print Edition

Ransom Center Magazine Spring 2025

Search

Recent Posts

  • Fellowships Awarded to 46 scholars
  • Benjamin Gross Appointed Associate Director of Research Services at the Harry Ransom Center
  • Celebrating Gabriel García Márquez’s Global Journey: Q&A with the Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia
  • De Macondo al Mundo. Una celebración del recorrido global de Gabriel García Márquez
  • Lorne Michaels Lands at the Ransom Center
  • Literature and Change: Flair Symposium 2024
  • Mark Sainsbury on W. S. Merwin
  • Nancy Cunard in the Studio
  • Visualizing the Environment: Ansel Adams and His Legacy
  • Freedom to Write, Freedom to Read: The Story of PEN
  • Milton in Phoenix
  • “Into the Emptiness” by Frederick Seidel

Archive

Footer

© Harry Ransom Center 2025
Site Policies
Web Accessibility
Web Privacy

UT Home | Emergency Information | Site Policies | Web Accessibility | Web Privacy | Adobe Reader

© The University of Texas at Austin 2025