My English, My Literature: Owning Our African Englishes and Literatures

Despite this era of World Englishes, the question of whose language African novelists use and, hence, whose literature they produce remains. It is not uncommon for readers of African literature to assume that what they read from Africa is a translation from African indigenous languages, but who owns the English language that African authors use in their writing? Are these authors using a borrowed language, or is the English they use their own? And whose culture is expressed in the writing? Using Margaret Ogola’s novel entitled The River and the Source within the World Englishes paradigm, this current work proposes that the English Ogola and other African authors use are entirely their own and the cultures they express fully African.