Title: THE BEAUTIFUL ONES ARE NOT YET BORN
Author: Ayi Kwei Armah.
Pages: 183
Publisher: Africa Writers Series – Heinemann
Personal Rating: 4/5
Ayi Kwei Armah’s debut novel, The Beautiful Ones are not Yet Born, (like An Enemy of the People and A man of the People) is one on the most misquoted titles in literature.
The novel is generally a satirical attack on Kwame Nkurumah’s government meant to bring out the image of the neocolony Ghana, a society bent on self-destruction and crippled by its historical experiences, dominion, capitulation and betrayal.
Unlike many African writers, Armah was not there to dislodge the colonial jagons of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Chinua Achebe, Meja Mwangi, and many more who mostly used Geography, communications with spirits and traditional settings to develop their stories, Armah shows originality since he goes way beyond African moral expectations of decency by using a vulgar language which is seen as a therapeutic tool to show his disappointment with the decadence that had taken roots in Ghana.
His language is crafted to be extremely provoking and shocking for a purpose. A tool that most writers acknowledge as a perfect weapon of his time.
Armah brings out the direction most African countries took immediately after attaining independence and had to feed a group of insatiable, inept and corrupt leaders who he uses tough words to describe.
CORRUPTION
Here is one of the excerpt when the
narrator talks of the boxes that are placed at strategic
points all over the city to serve not only as containers for
waste matter, but as symbols of cleanliness:
“In the end not many of the boxes were put out,
though there was a lot said about the large amount of
money paid for them. The few provided, however,
had not been ignored. People used them well, so that
it took no time at all for them to get full. People still
used them, and they overflowed with banana peels
and mango seeds and thoroughly sucked-out oranges
and the chaff of sugarcane and most of the thick
brown wrapping from a hundred balls of kenkey.
People did not have to go up to the boxes any more.
From a distance they aimed their rubbish at the
growing heap, and a good amount of juicy offal hit
the face and sides of the box before finding a final
resting place upon the heap. As yet the box was still
visible above it all, though the writing upon it could
no longer be read”.
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