The Griot: The Rhetorical Impetus of African American Fiction

By Eric Atkinson

Abstract:

The paper addresses the West African oral concept of griot, as it utilizes nommo, a Bantu term that denotes the magical power of words to cause change, as a critical African American lexical lens. In the broadest definition, a griot is culture in the sense that through the collecting and disseminating of stories, genealogies, histories, songs and rituals, a griot creates a shared community, a shared culture. The written discourse of African American literature and the oral definition of griot have now been placed together on the culture’s fiction. A griot passes on community values and traditions orally in the traditional sense, but now through the written word: the book itself bears the griot tradition because it educates, entertains and performs the ritual of culture creation by engaging the reader in the teller/listener dynamic that fashions unity and harmony from chaos. Essentially, through fictive narratives, African American authors construct social harmony through metaknowledge: they are simultaneously commenting, constructing, creating and criticizing African American discourses from an emphasis of West African philosophical tropes. Culturally literate readers become part of the story’s construction from the culturally contextual clues placed throughout the narrative.
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