Preserving Our Literary Heritage

Sankofa
(Extract of an interview with Eric M. Phillips on his book: ‘Know Thyself A – Z,’ March 2014, Georgetown, Guyana. Phillips is a civil rights and cultural activist who has visited over forty African countries. He is preparing to release two collections of poetry.)
PP: There are various approaches to a book. For this book, ‘Know Thyself A to Z’ by Eric Phillips, I would like to start at the end, and you Eric, would understand why I am doing this. Let’s go all the way to Timbuktu, a place that was misrepresented in various ways for a long, long time. 

What attracted me to Timbuktu was what is written in this book about that place. And I’d like to quote from page 50: ‘In its Golden Age, the town’s numerous Islamic scholars and extensive trading network made possible an important book trade’ and further down the page, the historian, Leo Africanus said ‘there is a great demand for books, and more profit is made from the trade in books than in any other line of business’.
What a statement! What a Golden Age for learning and books!
Now let’s talk about your book, ‘Know Thyself A –Z’ – this one is the first in a series of four books. In the foreword, you introduced the book by saying this book is dedicated to ‘self-knowledge and self-healing, seeking truth, seeking understanding…seeking justice’ – quite a lot you are attempting. But let’s go back to Timbuktu and remove the dark scales from our eyes in order that we see the issue from A to Z.

EP: When we were growing up, if someone said you were from Timbuktu, it was an insult; it meant that you were from some never-never land

PP: Behind God’s back…

EP: Yes, and a land which was mythical and horrible but in reality Timbuktu which really exists in Mala, West Africa, was a centre of learning for a long period of time and indeed there are over 700,000 manuscripts written in Arabic in all types of subjects – science, math, law, etc. – but we were taught that Timbuktu was a bad thing and a bad place when in reality it was the centre of learning. It was the centre of Islamic learning and when you go through the history of Timbuktu, you would be fascinated. For example, one of the Kings, Mansa Musa, when he went to Egypt, he had 60,000 labourers, each carrying three kilogrammes of gold – the largest shipment of gold. But the real story was about the culture of learning, universities existed there, scholars were attracted from all over the world to come to Timbuktu, that centre of learning, and learning then was currency. And as you just quoted trading in books was more profitable than trading in other valuable commodities like salt and gold.

PP: So now we have dispelled some of the dark clouds hanging over Timbuktu by use of this book which is why such publications are important, bringing elucidation and questioning the text. Years ago, we grew up accepting what was written, what was peddled to us, but new findings are causing us to rethink our position on many things. Just the other day Prof Clem Seecharan declared that he is in a position now to add disclaimers to many things he had written. He is in the position to rewrite his opinions on many issues because of new findings.

EP: Yes, lots of new things are being unearthed; they were there, existing, but buried. Now due to new technologies and scholars’ quest for knowledge, new things are coming to light and people are rethinking previous beliefs.

PP: Back to your book again where you quoted Marcus Garvey: ‘a people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots’. Why we need to be grounded?
EP: If we don’t know who we are, if we don’t have knowledge of our past, our culture, we can’t really love ourselves because we are misinformed and if you can’t love yourself you can’t love others and you can’t appreciate other cultures.
PP: I hear you….
EP: So if you understand yourself, if you are so grounded, you will have better self-esteem therefore you could look at other peoples’ culture, other peoples’ achievements and say this is humanity – we are the same.

PP: But something happened and changed all of that – it is called slavery…

EP: Yes, there was a purposeful attempt to make Africans seem inhuman, that they had no real culture, that they needed to be saved. So during slavery, there was a period of misinformation that was funded by the private sector and the government so as to justify chattel slavery.
PP: And because of this misinformation, Africa was called the Dark Continent. Referring to your foreword again, you wrote, ‘[S]lavery stole Africa’s light and replaced it with darkness.’ And this book will throw some light on that subject. So please open Africa to us…. (to be continued)
(Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oral)
Written By Petamber Persaud

SHARE THIS ARTICLE :
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All our printed editions are available online
emblem3
Subscribe to the Guyana Chronicle.
Sign up to receive news and updates.
We respect your privacy.