What is a Afro-Asian Literature?

a term for novels or writing such as poems written by people from mixed African-Arab ethnicity, or African-
Asian ethnicity. In modern times, as a part of world literature, Afro-Asian literature is a separate segment
of writing [in English] of experiences in African and Asia to further cultural understanding and world
peace.
 Afro Asian literature mirrors not only the customs and traditions of African and Asian countries but
also their philosophy of life which as a whole are deeply and predominately contemplative and
hauntingly sweet.
 Afro-Asian literature is the reflection of the storm and stress of developing nations seeking a
place under the sun and how this literature effects the history and culture of a nation.
 In a simpler thought, Afro-asian literature refers to the literary output of the various countries and
cultures in Africa and Asia. This includes their oral traditions and from the first to the
contemporary written and/or published prose and poetry.

Once Upon a Time by Nadine Gordimer:

Summary
The narrator, a writer, receives a letter from a man asking her to contribute a story to an anthology for
children. When she declines, explaining that she doesn’t write for children, this man insists that all writers
should write a children’s story. The narrator doesn’t feel like “ought to” write anything. She then recalls the
events of the previous night.
In the middle of the night, the narrator is awaken by the sound of footsteps on creaking floorboards. Her
heart racing, the narrator strains to hear if the footsteps are approaching her bedroom. She already feels
like the victim of a crime—she doesn’t have a gun for self-defense or security bars on her windows, but
she’s just as fearful as the people who do. She recalls violent crimes that recently happened near her
house.
The narrator soon realizes that the creaking sound isn’t from an intruder. Thousands of miles below her
home’s foundation is a series of mines, and occasionally the hollowed-out rock walls collapse and crash
down to the earth below, causing the narrator’s house to shift and groan in response. She imagines that
the mines are either out of use or that they’re now a gravesite for all the miners—probably migrant
workers—down below. Unable to fall back asleep, the narrator resolves to tell herself a bedtime story.
Her story begins with a man and a woman who are happily married. They have a little boy whom they
love dearly, a trustworthy housemaid, a skilled gardener, a pool that’s safely fenced in to prevent the
little boy from falling in and drowning, a Neighborhood Watch sign to deter intruders, and all sorts of
prudent insurance policies. Even though the family is insured against things like floods and fires, they
aren’t insured against riots, which are currently raging outside the city. To comfort his anxious wife—and
because he knows how violent the riots are—the husband installs electronic gates at the front of the
house. The little boy is mesmerized by the speaker system, which allows visitors to communicate with
someone inside. He and his friends use it as a walkie-talkie.
When burglaries begin happening in the family’s suburb, the couple installs security bars on the doors
and windows as well as an alarm system. The little boy’s cat sometimes sets off the alarm, and the
neighbors’ alarms are often set off by rodents or pets, too. The shrill sirens become so commonplace that
they begin to sound more like cicadas or frogs humming in the background. Intruders often time their
robberies for when the alarms are going off so that their comings and goings won’t be heard.
Over time, unemployed black people begin looking for work in the suburbs. The woman wants to send
food out to them, but her husband and the housemaid firmly caution her against it, insisting that the
people outside are criminals. The family decides to make the wall in their garden even higher. However,
the robberies continue throughout the neighborhood at all times of day and night. One day, watching the
little boy’s cat deftly scaling the wall of the house, the husband and wife decide to affix some sort of
security system to the walls, too. A stroll around the neighborhood reveals all sorts of options: lances,
spikes, and concrete walls studded with shards of broken glass. Meanwhile, the little boy happily runs
along with his dog.
The couple settles on the most threatening security system of them all: a series of metal coils notched
with razor blades that ascend the house’s exterior walls. Once an intruder begins to climb through the
coils, there is no way out—the jagged metal will rip the intruder to shreds no matter which way they move.
The security system, which looks fit for a concentration camp, comes from a security called Dragon
Teeth. The next day, workmen install the coils on the couple’s house, and the metal shines aggressively
in the sun. The man assures his wife that it will weather over time, but his wife reminds him that the metal
is weather-proof. They hope the cat is smart enough to not scale the wall.
That night, the woman reads her son the story of Sleeping Beauty, wherein the brave Prince must fight
his way through a dense thicket of thorns in order to save Sleeping Beauty. The next day, the little boy
pretends to be the Prince and decides that the metal coils encasing the house will be the thorns he must
climb. But the second he wiggles his way into a metal coil, the blades pierce his skin, and he writhes and
screams in pain, ensnaring himself deeper and deeper into the wire. The housemaid and gardener come
running, and the gardener tears up his hands trying to rescue the boy. The husband and wife run out in a
panic as the house alarm—likely set off by the cat—begins to blare. Eventually, the little boy’s bleeding
body is removed with heavy equipment. The man, the woman, the housemaid, and the gardener are
beside themselves as they carry the boy’s remains into the house.
Analysis of Themes:
Storytelling
The story immediately introduces the theme of storytelling through the narrator’s occupation as a writer,
the fact that she’s narrating these events to the reader, and the man’s request that she contribute a short
story to an anthology. The narrator’s refusal to tell a certain kind of story—in this case, a children’s story
—begins to hint at the idea that people must be careful about the stories It seems that the narrator’s
choice to not protect her home from intruders is a conscious one. Clues throughout the story—plus
Gordimer’s own history—suggests that this story is set in apartheid-era South Africa, which was a time of
severe violence, racism, and white supremacy. Given this context, readers can reasonably assume that
the narrator—implied to be a white woman—is making a political and ethical decision not to insulate
herself from the non-white people who are moved to violence and criminality under such an oppressive
system. However, that doesn’t mean she’s not afraid of the very real threat of violence unfolding in her
own neighborhood, as she immediately assumes that she’s about to be killed or robbed.
they tell themselves.
Wealth Inequality and Fear
Set in the 1980s in apartheid South Africa, Nadine Gordimer’s “Once Upon a Time” shows how societies
with tremendous wealth inequality are doomed to fail. The story begins with an unnamed first-
person narrator who wakes up because of a noise in the night and believes that it’s a home invasion.
However, the noise is just the house creaking, and to keep herself company while she lays awake in fear,
the narrator tells a “bedtime story” of an unnamed family living in a segregated suburb. The central adult
characters of this story—“the man” and “the wife”—are constantly concerned about their personal
property, as there are break-ins throughout the neighborhood. The couple takes escalating measures to
protect their house and things: building physical walls, installing security systems, and even erecting a
lethal razor-wire fence. Both the frame story and the bedtime story are parables of inequality, showing the
(presumably white) narrator and suburban family living in wealth while constantly fearing the wrath of
those who have less. By showing how wealth inequality ruins even the lives of those who have
everything, since they spend their lives consumed by fear, Gordimer points to the profound injustice and
absurdity of societies whose resources are so unevenly shared.
Apartheid, Racism, and Property
“Once Upon a Time” is set during apartheid, a system of racial segregation and discrimination that was
the law in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. The story shows how white South Africans benefit
from and perpetuate white supremacy—even those like the (presumably white) narrator who are aware of
the profound injustice of apartheid but nonetheless enjoy a better life than black South Africans. Gordimer
focuses in particular on homeownership (the narrator, as well as the suburban husband and wife about
whom she tells a story, own homes in segregated neighborhoods) to call attention to how property
ownership—which was limited to white people starting in 1959—exacerbated inequality in apartheid
South Africa. To Gordimer, segregated suburbs like the one the couple inhabit are an embodiment of
colonialism, an attempt to consolidate white wealth through property ownership and to physically separate
white South Africans from the black suffering on which their wealth is built. By showing how personal
bigotry and structural segregation combine to perpetuate black suffering and white luxury, Gordimer
condemns the racism at the heart of South African society.

The story’s most explicit racism comes from the white suburban family who are terrified of black South
Africans and indifferent to their suffering. The couple worries frequently that the riots outside of the suburb
—in an area where “people of another colour [are] quartered”—will bleed into their own neighborhood.
The husband tries to make his wife feel better by assuring her that “these people” are not allowed into the
suburb and that there are “police and soldiers and tear gas and guns to keep them away.” In all of this
discussion, the couple shows a callous disregard for the suffering of those they’re keeping out, many of
whom are jobless and surrounded by violence in their neighborhoods. Gordimer even notes that police
 are shooting schoolchildren in black parts of town. This contrast between the suffering of black
neighborhoods and the luxurious lives of the white couple emphasizes the cruelty of the couple’s efforts to
keep others out. Furthermore, Gordimer lampoons the couple’s inability to see that their fear of black
South Africans is racist: on the gate outside the couple’s house hangs a warning sign featuring the
silhouette of a masked robber whose skin color isn’t visible. This last detail, Gordimer writes ironically,
“proved that the property owner was no racist”—but it’s obvious that the sign and the gate are aimed at
black people alone. This highlights the white couple’s refusal to see the obvious truth that their actions
and indifference towards black suffering are harmful and racist.
Weeks, Rachel. "Once Upon a Time Plot Summary." LitCharts LLC, June 26, 2020. Retrieved May
2, 2021. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/once-upon-a-time/summary.

ASSIGNMENT: The figure below is a Freytag Pyramid. A freytag pyramid is a dramatic structure the
shows the plot of a story: exposition, rising action, the climax or the turning point, the falling action and
lastly the denouement. Identify which specific event in the story is shows these. Submit this by Thursday
next week written in a whole piece of yellow paper.

climax /turning point

rising action

falling action

exposition denouement