Interviews are complete in and of themselves, in that they contain supplementary information about the interviewer and interviewee, information that lies in what the questions assume and what the answers ignore; together with the actual interview they may illuminate a larger meaning to the exercise. In this sense, interviews, as a body of literature, present themselves for analysis, for careful “reading.” Hence qualifications may seem forced, but the risk may be excused as the following aims only to give a background note leading to the interview in question. 

Professor Sankawulo agreed straightaway, despite his very pressed schedule (writing, conducting writing workshops, and his availability for speaking engagements). The interview had been conceived on the basis of three installments. To assure a conversational approach and tenor, the three questions of the first installment were intended as a launch mat ( if you would) for the interview; their response, it was thought, would open the way for other interesting questions relevant to a developing theme in mind. Circumstances changed the plan, and, as the publication deadline drew near, an additional seven questions were generated. The ten questions were e-mailed at once to the interviewee. We trust that readers would infer the main theme from reading and thinking about the interview as a whole, its title notwithstanding. Care has been taken to annotate where the interviewer saw fit. 

This is the first installment of what is hoped will be a collection of interviews, statements of Liberian artists on their work and its place and future in Liberia. Liberia’s emergence as a viable state seems to demand such statements, needless to say, from an important and yet marginalized group.

We, therefore, invite Liberian artists of all stripes¹ to add to this collage of personal, critical, and philosophical views. We make this invitation public with the awareness that others could rush a similar book to press, as it appears to be the case in Griffiths and Singler’s.² If that were to happen, Liberia’s literary future would still be the better for it. In this spirit, we are willing—and do encourage—collaboration with well-meaning researchers and writers. Contacts can be made through Annaird Naxela .

Thanks to Professor Sankawulo for his tireless work in an otherwise undervalued calling. Thanks, too, to Stephanie Horton, for courage and confidence in Liberia’s literary flowering.
          — Annaird Naxela

WILTON SANKAWULO: Literature is very important for any society, especially developing ones. Through literature people record, analyze, and assess their progress. Such processes enable them to understand and resolve the problems they must contend with, and use the right measures to attain those goals they have fashioned for themselves.

Liberia’s development has faltered through the years because very little attention has been given to the creation of a respectable body of national literature. The development of our literature before the civil war of 1989 and up to now has been left to the initiatives of our writers alone. We have no book or magazine publishers in Liberia, no grants or training programs for our artists. Consequently, Liberian writers must do their own publishing, usually abroad, and market their works. 

Before the civil war, the Liberian press was not free, except during the Tolbert administration. One result of this situation was that the press became chiefly a medium for glorifying politicians and portraying a national image that had no relation whatsoever to the nation’s actual accomplishments. The book Growth Without Development published by Northwestern economists in the sixties sheds light on this problem.

Had the press been free to tell the truth about the country, I think Liberia would be one of the most developed countries in Africa, and the civil war could have been prevented. When Tolbert introduced press freedom in the seventies, it was widely abused because of technical and professional problems. No writer is perfect, nor can ever be perfect since knowledge grows from day to day, but I sincerely believe that a writer, whether a journalist, essayist, novelist or what have you, should have complete mastery of their medium of expression, which is language. This is especially important for us who write in a second language.

In the eighties, G. Henry Andrews and I took issue with the Liberian press for language problems and logical loopholes. What a writer says is as important as how it is said. Unfortunately, some of our writers overlooked language and ran into needless difficulty with the authorities because of inaccurate reportage. For example, the following headline appeared in one of our papers: “Businessmen Complain Finance Ministry.” The editor of the paper defended this grammatical fault by saying that it was permissible in journalism to economize words in a headline. He gave as an example the heading, “The President Departs the Country.” But “complain” is intransitive, whereas “depart” is transitive and intransitive. Economy of language is an important guideline for writing, but it should never be achieved at the expense of grammar.

What is more serious was the tendency of the press to make unsubstantiated allegations and capitalize on issues that destabilized the country and put people at loggerheads:  What they did not know was not true; opinions they did not like or agree with were not valid; what they did not like was not good, and anyone who liked it was condemned. I don’t want this interview to be a classroom exercise, but having lived through all our wars, I believe that unprofessional reporting constituted a significant part of the causes related to national confusion. Of course, many of our journalists and writers did not have any training in the field; some were only high school graduates. But doing a job for which one lacks the necessary competence is indefensible. 

Another consequence of press suppression in Liberia was that Liberian writers did not tackle the problems of the country for fear of offending the authorities. Many of our writers suffered gravely for writing their frank opinions about national issues. In this post-war era, the question of training our writers and providing publishing institutions for their production is imperative. Our universities must establish presses. The purpose of a university is not only to grant degrees but also to make knowledge available by publication.

Only writers can help us understand ourselves, our potential, and the practical means we can adopt to build what President Tolbert called "a wholesome functioning society." If the contributions of our writers continues to be sidelined, we will be building in order to destroy again what we have built. Ninety-nine percent of the textbooks used in our schools are foreign-authored. Consequently, our children get a foreign education, and they do not hesitate to take up arms to destroy their own country. The best writers we have should be recruited to produce materials of good quality that can either replace or supplement the foreign textbooks. Liberian writers are producing books but most of them live in exile. The temptation they face is dwelling exclusively on the symptoms of our problems rather than their underlying causes. It is not enough to simply delineate the incalculable harms we have done to ourselves but to also identify their underlying causes; otherwise, we’ll only be postponing the solution of our problems. The time has come for us to do so because no nation can make meaningful progress without a body of national literature.  

ANNAIRD NAXELA: In your allegory, The Marriage of Wisdom, coup d'état—and possibly outright civil war—is diverted by the Princess's quick thinking. How might her reaction relate to Liberia now and in the future? 

WILTON SANKAWULO: The main theme of The Marriage of Wisdom³ is that wisdom plays a crucial role in life. This story shows that Africans of the traditional society are not simple-minded as it is widely supposed. They valued and celebrated wisdom as the most important tool that makes life work. Of course the drama in the story has a political overtone, but its main point is that wisdom is the most valuable thing in life.

In my collection titled The Marriage of Wisdom, there is a tale called The Marriage of Beauty; where the marriage of wisdom succeeded, the marriage of beauty failed. In The Marriage of Wisdom, the Queen saves the life of her husband, the King, because of her wisdom, whereas in The Marriage of Beauty, a girl marries a man for his beauty only to discover to her amazement that she had married a dragon. The story is saying that if wisdom is applied to the problems of everyday living, whether they be political, economic, or religious, these problems can be resolved or brought under control. We in Africa will experience peace, stability, and progress if we put greater emphasis on traditional wisdom in tackling our social and political problems.  

ANNAIRD NAXELA:  Can you think of other examples of this kind of diversion in Liberian literature?  

WILTON SANKAWULO: I venture to say that except for those who write history, our writers are chiefly concerned with our cultural heritage. Beginning with myself, I wrote Liberian folktales because they are not only interesting, they also portray our patterns of culture and traditional values extremely well. Studying them enables us to understand ourselves and chart the best course to our destiny.

I have collected over fifty folk tales which are published in one volume titled Great Tales of Liberia; these tales are not only entertaining, they are quite informative as moral stories. Other Liberian writers such as Bai T. Moore, Roland Tombekai Dempster, E. Tuimu Reeves, S. Jangaba M. Johnson, Patricia Wesley, and Robert Brown portray the Liberian experience in a lyrical manner. 

Many Liberians do not think much of our folklore. There was a time when writing our folk tales or about village life was considered frivolous in Liberia. But folklore is superior to modern literature; in fact, it gave birth to it. It contains the ideas that people live by, their concept of the universe and destiny, and so on. For example, Dempster’s Mystic Reformation of Gondolia is a powerful satire that uses the Vai folklorist hero, Blama, who materializes when a person engages in corruption and punishes the person. Bai T. Moore's poetry and fiction are based on traditional life. His Ebony Dust, Murder in the Cassava Patch, and The Money Doubler take us to our roots. There is much pleasure in reading about our traditional societies. 

ANNAIRD NAXELA: Perhaps midway than never: How do you define “Liberian literature?” 

WILTON SANKAWULO: To me literature is but literature. Liberian literature could be defined as a record of the traditional and contemporary life of the Liberian people. Our writers attempt to describe Liberian life, the ideas we live by, and the traditional institutions that govern our society, such as the Poro and the Sande.  Presently our writers are attempting to analyze our modern society. I would suggest that they help us descend into ourselves to discover those beliefs and values that originate with us, modernize them, so that they may be reflected in how we live. We can safely maintain our national character and still modernize as people have done in Asia, Israel, Ghana, and Nigeria. I think one major cause of our civil war is our failure to understand and accept ourselves.

ANNAIRD NAXELA: Is a writer of Liberian literature defined by Liberian nationality?⁴ 

WILTON SANKAWULO: I believe that Liberian literature should be defined as that body of national literature Liberians have produced. If an American writes a novel about Liberia, it is ideally American literature because he or she is looking at issues from the American point of view. You will note that much of British literature is set in other countries. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is set in Denmark; Graham Greene’s Journey Without Maps is set in Liberia; his The Comedian is about Haiti, and his The Quiet American is about Vietnam. All this literature is British. Americans, too, write about foreign countries. Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa is an example.    

ANNAIRD NAXELA: What, for you, are the thematic concerns of Liberian writers now? And do these concerns differ from those in Liberia’s past? 

WILTON SANKAWULO: Before the civil war Liberian writers were concerned about the great questions of life: “Where did I come from?” “Why am I here?” “Who am I?” “Where am I going?” We’ve had metaphysical poets like Edwin Barclay and Roland Dempster, and great thinkers such as Edward Blyden who tried to answer these questions; many of them were influenced by European thinkers of the 19th century.

Bai T. Moore⁵ led the literary movement that made the Liberian experience a focus for Liberian literature. Before Bai T. Moore, our writers were preoccupied with modern life as seen in the west, but Bai T. Moore made village life a respectable subject for literature. This tradition was pursued by many African writers including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and many other Nigerian writers; Ngugi wa’ Thi’ongo of Kenya, and so on. The missionaries made us ashamed of ourselves, but African culture emerged as something to be proud of after independence. Today’s Liberian writers are still concerned about the eternal questions of life, but they are now focusing on the great catastrophes the nation has sustained, namely the military coup and the civil war.  

ANNAIRD NAXELA: The title of your latest novel, Sundown at Dawn⁶, seems to be a metaphor for the Republic of Liberia. It seems, as with the protagonist, Liberia too held great promise? 

WILTON SANKAWULO: Yes, Liberia is a rich country, but it has broken down because of selfishness. I chose the title Sundown at Dawn⁷ to symbolize the availability of the requisite means for the development of Liberia—this is the dawn—but this means has been neglected or misused—this is the sundown. Unless we put the national interest first, our country is in danger of annihilation. If the national interest isn’t served, nobody’s interest can be well served. People who consider their personal interests more important than that of the nation will continue to exploit it to the disadvantage of the people. 

ANNAIRD NAXELA: It seems to me that Liberian literature presents opportunities for understanding what has happened in Liberia since her inception. If so, what questions do you suggest readers should pose in their reading of Liberian literature? 

WILTON SANKAWULO: Since the founding of the nation, no systematic effort⁸ has been made to develop its literature. Because the press was suppressed to protect the interests of those that governed, writers did not focus on the problems of the country. It is only recently that Liberian writers are beginning to tell the true story of Liberia, to call a spade a spade. Of course the damage has already been done, but this new breed of writers is raising questions we should all be concerned with: What really brought about the collapse and disintegration of our society? How can we resolve the underlying causes of our country’s tragedy? The tendency to shift blame for the Liberian tragedy is great. But if our own children take up arms and kill us, shifting blame will not help.

The Liberian tragedy is symptomatic of the failure of our society to respond to the legitimate needs and aspirations of the people. The only realistic approach to the problem is beginning a new social order that can address this problem; it is a challenge for all Liberians. We need to forge reconciliation among ourselves and tackle the development of our country with determination. Each Liberian should do his or her part to the best of their ability. This is the question readers of Liberian literature want answered at this juncture in our history.  

ANNAIRD NAXELA: Given your experience as a veteran Liberian writer, what are some of the themes that concern you most at this point in your writing career? 

WILTON SANKAWULO: When I first began writing, my chief concern was to compile the rich folktales of the Liberian people in order to encourage our people to explore and appreciate their cultural heritage, which contains ideas of justice, social relations, government, economy, and the like. These ideas may not be developed, but they provide a basic foundation on which we could build a modern state.

Our departure from our roots is a major contributing factor to the collapse of our society. We need to do what Westerners have done; they dug into their past and developed those concepts and policies that characterized their societies through the ages and developed them, resulting in the evolution of the progressive social orders they have built for themselves. Our blind adoption of alien cultures and ideologies accounts for the social upheavals in Africa today. This is one message I want my writing to convey.

We muster the courage to examine our society critically. No society is perfect; humanity is always challenged to find better ways of doing things. It is my observation that Liberians are intolerant of criticism even if it is well meant. Of course our critics have their limitations, but good criticism should always be welcome; otherwise, we will continue repeating the same mistakes over and over.

Posterity will never forgive us if we continue failing to build a solid foundation for the progress of the nation. Improving the quality of our life begins with self-examination. In most cases the answers to our problems are known to us but we refuse to acknowledge them because they require change that may conflict with our personal interests. We should realize—and I repeat—that nobody’s interest can be well served if the interest of the nation as a whole is ignored. For example, although we are all members of the same race, we segregate one another in Liberia. Again, we think other nations should be responsible for the development of Liberia. When you become president of Liberia, the people want to know if you have outside connections to bring in money to develop the country. What we fail to know is that nobody will ever give us anything for nothing; unless we take the driver’s seat in the development of our country, noting will happen. There must be accountability in government; each Liberian should determine to be somebody in life and work towards a practical goal. We are not very loyal to our country; we’d rather take all its resources to other countries and live there to enjoy them.  Discovering ourselves as well as analyzing and assessing our experience are the major thematic concerns I have as a writer. 

ANNAIRD NAXELA: What advice would you give to aspiring Liberian writers? 

WILTON SANKAWULO: I have been disappointed in the writer’s clubs we often organize in Liberia. They usually do everything else but produce books. As a group I think Liberian writers should pool their resources together to perfect the quality of their works and publish. Whenever I make this suggestion, critics blame me for not establishing a publishing industry after being in the writing profession so long. But writing is more than enough challenge for any one person. As James Baldwin said, “if you want to do it you cannot do many other things.”         

The only practical approach to the problem of publishing in Liberia is team work. Our writers must work together to achieve this goal. If you write a book about New York, it is mostly the people of New York that read that book. Our works as Liberian writers will not find a home unless we build our own publishing industry. If we the writers must individually do our own writing, publishing, and marketing, the quality and quantity of Liberian literature will never improve substantially. Thus, my advice to Liberian writers is, come together as a group and help each other to improve your writing styles. You are in competition with all writers—there is no substitute for the best technique.

To aspiring Liberian writers, I say write. Once you get an adequate knowledge of grammar and syntax, write. Don’t wait to write the perfect sentence to start with. You can always go back to what you have written and correct language problems; experienced writers, editors and English teachers can help you with revisions, but you must first put something on paper. There is no conceivable obstacle to writing; age has nothing to do with it. The best writers are not necessarily those with Ph.D.s  From my experience, the more education you get the more difficulty you tend to experience in being a productive writer.

My next piece of advice is, be true to yourself. If you write what people expect of you, you will sooner or later find yourself in confusion. Writing is not simply putting words on paper, but trying to tell the truth as you understand it. Our country has broken down because people were more interested in what they could get out of it than what they could put into it. To reverse this trend, Liberian writers should muster the courage to tell the truth. They should not fall in the trap of the myopic who only shifts blame. The truth is not pleasant but it alone is the source of human redemption.       

1. Sankawulo’s thinking, for now, on nationality and literature to question five may be helpful here.

2. The editors claim that while working on an extensive annotated version of Walter’s book, another scholar, who had once been in contact with them, rushed his version of the same book to press, with only an introduction, meager compare to their approach. See Walters, Joseph Jeffrey. Guanya Pau. Ed. Gareth Griffiths and John Victor Singler. (Ontario: Broadview, 2004), p. 10.

3. A collection of stories shares the title, The Marriage of Wisdom, which was published (Monrovia: Herald Publishing Inc.) in 1981.

4. We will continue to pursue this question in other interviews—given its complexity.

5. This shift in narrative focus may account for the inclusion of Moore’s story Murder in the Cassava Patch in a seemingly bilateral anthology (Liberia and West Germany), in which the narratives of her German counterparts appear to be focused more on Africa as a whole, and at times the geographic area encompassing Liberia. See Liberian Writing: Liberian as seen by her own writers as well as German authors (Tübingen, Erdmann) 1970. (As used, “writers” and “authors” are curious.)

6. See also a review by Robert H. Brown [Review Untitled.] Liberian Studies Journal. 30.2 (2005):111-117.

7. Sankawulo, Wilton. Sundown at Dawn: A Liberian Odyssey. Houston: Dusty Spark Publishing, 2004.

8. Cursory in critical scope, S. Henry Cordor’s and K. Moses Nagbe’s bibliographical compilation and textual summaries are exceptions for an otherwise fair assessment. Towards the Study of Liberian Literature: An Anthology of Critical Essays on the Literature of Liberia, edited by Cordor, is impressive for compiling critical views of a number of other Liberian writers, across genres and administrative districts in Liberia.