SOURCE: “Exile in Denver,” in Denver Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 2, Fall, 1986, pp. 120-54.

In the following essay, Chapman, Mphahlele's former colleague at the University of Denver, discusses the intellectual atmosphere at the University during the author's time there.

As a young South African teacher, Es'kia Mphahlele (pronounced Emfak-KLAY-leh) was jailed briefly, in 1952, for leading opposition to the Bantu Education Act that established academic apartheid. Dismissed from teaching in government schools, he worked as a reporter and editor, then in 1957 began a twenty-year exile that stationed him and his family in various African countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, and Zambia, in Paris for two years, and finally in the United States. He studied and taught at the University of Denver during 1966–68 and 1970–74 before accepting a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania which, in 1982, awarded him an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters. During his exile Mphahlele became the acknowledged voice worldwide...