SOURCE: Okoh, Nkem. “Writing African Oral Literature: A Reading of Okot p'Bitek's Song of Lawino.” Bridges: An African Journal of English Studies, no. 5 (1993): 35-53.

In the following essay, Okoh regards Song of Lawino as an experimental oral piece.

Introduction

Literature is both a multifaceted phenomenon and a potentially powerful mode of communication. It is thus significant that our title echoes three (writing, speaking, reading) of the four basic communication skills. It is of even greater significance that two of our terms, namely “oral” and “writing”, apparently present a problem, indeed a commonly discussed conundrum.

Students and scholars of oral literature have often been confronted with the question Can literature be oral? They themselves have posed such questions as what is the relationship between the oral and written modes? Can oral literature be written? While some discussion of the written/oral dichotomy will be entered into and some features...