The Dilemma Tale and the Continuities of African Oral Tradition in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson And Kwaw Ansah’s Heritage Africa

Abstract

This study explores the dilemma tale as a narrative technique used in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson (1990) and Kwaw Ansah’s Heritage Africa (1988) to examine the meaning of legacy or historical past to the African and the African American. This comparative exploration comes against the backdrop that there has been a search for an alternative narrative style in African-related poetics and the use of dilemma tale as an African oral literary element has been a resourceful option. This way of locating African tradition places it in transition which ultimately engenders a dialogic surrounding the continuities of African tradition. Tradition is explained in this work as the conventions and practices held communally among a particular group of people. Situated within the broader context of orality and dwelling on the dilemma tale as the analytical tool, this study therefore argues that August Wilson and Kwaw Ansah use the dilemma tale as a narrative style in The Piano Lesson and Heritage Africa respectively, and that this narrative style helps both writers to frame the dialogic surrounding what historical past or legacy means to the African and the African American. The conclusion is that in a complex society like the African and African American societies, historical past has a divergent interpretation. The dilemma tale therefore serves as the narrating tool to narrate this complexity which ultimately helps to redefine the alternative path for these societies to gesture into their future by suggesting a reconnection to the centre—Africa. This study has implications for the comparative study of the intersection between orality, and African and African American studies.