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Transcription: [00:00:15]
[[flute and drums]][[birds chirping]]

[00:00:26]
{SPEAKER name="Vernon February"}
We as creative artists, as teachers of literature, and as scholars, should keep on being what Sinclair Drake, the Sociologist, calls cultural relativists and the primitivists, relentless social critics,


[00:00:41]
where we can jostle people out of their sleep, we must keep on hammering through our literature, through our art, through our teaching so that one day, we can make, at least for ourselves.

[00:00:52]
This world a little bit viable and livable.

[00:00:56]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Professor Vernon February, commenting on role black writers should play in today's world.

[00:01:01]
Professor February is our guest on the literary corner, Black Writers of the World, a series of analysis and interpretations of black world literature.

[00:01:11]
Professor February is a poet and teaches literature at the University of Amsterdam in Holland.

[00:01:17]
Our interview with him is conducted by one of our regular analysts, Professor Daniel Kunene, chairman of the University of Wisconsin's Department of African Languages and Literature.

[00:01:28]
They discuss Creole Literature and Professor February's works.

[00:01:32]
[[flute and drums]] [[slow chanting]]

[00:01:37]
{SPEAKER name="Daniel Kunene"} You've done a lot of research into Creole literature, both in West Africa and in Suriname, haven't you?

[00:01:45]
{SPEAKER name="Vernon February"} Uh-hum [[affirmative]]
{SPEAKER name="Daniel Kunene"} What, what set you on this course?

[00:01:48]
{SPEAKER name="Vernon February"}
Well, it was very interesting. After I had first done what we know in Holland, as a doctoral in literature, I started working for the Africa Studies Center in Holland.

[00:01:58]
Now, this is a research institute, where all of us at one stage or another and so on, spend at least one year in Africa. And at that stage, we are a team of Anthropologists who were doing work among the Mende