African Literature and its triple heritage

My African cliche of the day is an answer to Thomas Jefferson.

To you who thought that blacks are a people without poetry, I would have liked to be there in 1784 to tell you that black Ethiopians wrote poems before your ancestors, in the British islands, learned from the Romans the Latin alphabet. And poetic tradition is so deeply rooted today among Kiswahili-speaking peoples in East Africa that newspapers receive letters and poems from readers almost daily.

You need to know Mr. Jefferson, that there is more than sadness and joy in African literature, more than tragedy and comedy. To paraphrase and complete the words of the excellent Sierra Leonese poet and diplomat, Davidson Abioseh Nicol:

You are not a country, Africa You are a concept [...]

You are not a concept, Africa You are a glimpse of the infinite.