African writer has temporary home at MU

from the Columbia Tribune

Novelist uses past to advocate change.

By ABRAHAM MAHSHIE of the Tribune’s staff

With a pistol pointed at his chest by the security minister of his tiny West African country, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo had to decide whether losing his life for being a journalist was the best way to help the people of Equatorial Guinea, who remain impoverished despite tremendous oil and gas resources.

"Donato," as he is called by those who know him, secretly fled Equatorial Guinea with a single suitcase, first to neighboring Gabon. When he heard that Guinea expatriates were being kidnapped and transferred in sacks back to prison by security officials, he escaped to Spain in 1994 to write and teach. For the past three years, he has been the University of Missouri- Columbia writer-in-residence at the Afro-Romance Institute, a part of the romance languages department.

"He doesn’t get the recognition he deserves," said Michael Ugarte, an MU professor of Spanish who was instrumental in bringing him to Missouri after the African studies program where he was teaching in Spain was eliminated. "He’s a gold mine of information on the entire continent of Africa."

Ugarte solicited funds from a range of departments, including romance languages, journalism, minority affairs and arts and science, to hire Donato for one semester in 2005. The writer’s presence in the classroom was so powerful and influential to graduate students and faculty that he has been re-hired each year since then.

"We say he invented what is now ‘Guinean literature,’ " said Cecilia Saenz-Roby, a doctoral candidate in Spanish, who was in his first class.

Donato, 56, published the first anthology of literature from Equatorial Guinea, a Spanish colony until it gained independence in 1968. Dictators have governed the land since then. The latest is Teodoro Obiang, who took power in 1979 and holds the reins of a country the size of Maryland with a population of 500,000.

In addition to publishing the anthology, Donato has written critically acclaimed novels in Spanish based on the African colonial experience. Yesterday, the romance languages department celebrated two milestones: the publication in Spain of Donato’s most recent work, "The Subway," and the English translation by Ugarte of Donato’s 1987 novel "Shadows of Your Black Memory."

"The Subway" is a novel about a young Cameroon man’s plight to realize the "European Dream" by escaping destitution in his home country. But he faces discrimination and loss of identity in Europe as an illegal worker, a theme that parallels the plight of many Mexicans and other Hispanics who seek the American Dream.

"A citizen who raises his voice to say he cannot even live in the 21st century is imprisoned, tortured and, many times, is killed," said Donato, speaking in Spanish. "This combination of poverty - induced poverty - because, I insist, there is not a single poor African country. It is induced by dictators. This is the combination that obliges us to leave our countries in search of liberty and prosperity elsewhere."

Equatorial Guinea’s per capita gross domestic product is more than $50,000 - higher than that of the United States - but its people live on less than $3 a day as the nation’s wealth resides with the ruler. Nonetheless, the United States imports some of the 400,000 barrels of oil a day that Equatorial Guinea produces. The profits from this oil windfall are banked in Washington, D.C., Donato said, under the names of Obiang and his family. Donato says this example is not unique to his country; it is the plight of most African countries.

"What can someone like me do - someone who has no power but that of the written word?" he asked. "I describe the reality, and I want this reality to be analyzed, studied by society to see if there can be a seed that can bring about a change in our lives, in our mentalities."

Donato also is entwined in the refugee struggle. His wife and two young children have been denied visas to visit him in this country for the past three years, though he visits them every summer and winter break.

Donato can obtain Spanish citizenship for himself and his family, but he said he would consider himself a "traitor" to his identity and ideals if he did that. Instead, he remains persona non grata in Equatorial Guinea and an African refugee in Spain, a kind of limbo like that experienced by characters in his novels.

In the home state of Mark Twain and T.S. Elliott, Donato said, he hopes to complete the third part of a trilogy during his teaching years at MU. With the translation of "Shadows," he opens the second part of the trilogy to an English-speaking audience for the first time.