The Healers (1979)
by Ayi Kwei Armah
“Sleep is natural,” the healer said, “even when it comes after unnatural disasters. But waking is even more natural. Healers are just awakeners of a people who have slept too long. The awakening is natural. Healing work is part of nature.”
The Healers tells a story of the conflict and regeneration focused on replacing toxic ignorance with the healing knowledge of African unity.
‘So there was a division among the healers. All understood Damfo when he asked: "Are we forgetting that for healers the meaning of the span of life takes in our whole people, throughout time, not just our single, separate lives here and now?" It was a hard question that was let pass. All understood Damfo, but almost all also sympathized with Nyaneba 's ultimate tiredness with the slowness of work.’
p. 308
‘Damfo was always opening his mind to a future that went far beyond single lifetimes, or even the lifetimes of single tribes and nations. The vision was terrifying even in its hopefulness, but with greater understanding the terror of his own impotence dissolved in the knowledge that if he worked well he would be part of the preparation for generations which would inherit the potency that should bring a people back together.’
p. 185
p. 308
‘Damfo was always opening his mind to a future that went far beyond single lifetimes, or even the lifetimes of single tribes and nations. The vision was terrifying even in its hopefulness, but with greater understanding the terror of his own impotence dissolved in the knowledge that if he worked well he would be part of the preparation for generations which would inherit the potency that should bring a people back together.’
p. 185
“[The healer] didn't do things to me," replied Jesiwa. "He never pushed me. The opposite was the way he treated me. Sometimes I was in a hurry to do something. He would urge me to hold back a bit and think of the thing I wanted to do, to make sure that was really what I needed to do. He never pushed me. And he never deceived me."
"You say he showed you things you hadn't known before," Densu said.
"Things I hadn't let myself see," Jesiwa corrected. "What I understood because of him I must have known before, because when I saw it clearly it never seemed strange. It seemed a natural part of myself, something I had known in myself all along but which I had somehow hidden from myself. He showed me I had many selves. He helped me see which self was deep, and which selves would merely float on the surface of a passing season and then disappear. You know, I had chosen the wrong self, one of the ephemeral selves, and set it up as myself."
I was afraid of my true self. I feared the disapproval of my relatives and friends. They wanted the ephemeral self to be myself. I listened to them, and grew deaf to my own needs. I lost the desire to listen to my own soul, and almost lost the ability. I wanted to be right in the eyes of others. So I did myself wrong. I suffered till I saw I had to change. Of course I was frightened when I saw what I had to do— to accept the desires of my own soul and to know they were not wrong just because others might disagree with them. I had to do what was natural to me, and leave others to do what was natural to them.”
p. 92
more on The Healers
Books
Wodajo, Tsegaye. Hope in the Midst of Despair: A Novelist’s Cures for Africa. Africa World Press, 2004.
Essays
Petrie, Paul R. “The Politics of Inspiration in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Healers.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 38, no. 4 (1997): 279–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.1997.10543181.
Wright, Derek. “Critical and Historical Fictions: Robert Fraser’s Reading of Ayi Kwei Armah’s ‘The Healers.’” English in Africa 15, no. 1 (1988): 71–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40238615.
Kinna Reads. The healers – Ayi Kwei Armah. (2015, October 20)
https://kinnareads.com/2010/11/15/the-healers-ayi-kwei-armah/
Kone, Klohinlwélé. “Medecine and Literature: A Reading of Disease in Ayi Kwei Armah’s the Healers”. Asian Research Journal of Arts & Social Sciences 15, no 4 (2021):95-108. https://doi.org/10.9734/arjass/2021/v15i430271.
Awosika, Olawale. "History and the novelist's design: a reading of Ayi Kwei Armah's The Healers." Education 130, no. 1 (2009): 62+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed September 7, 2024). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A207643762/AONE?u=anon~af333f10&sid=googleScholar&xid=0284c10f.
Nwahunanya, Chinyere. "The writer as physician: The therapeutic vision in Ayi Kwei Armah's The Healers", Neohelicon 22, no 2 (1995): 141-154, https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02129759
Asaah, Augustine and Tao Zou. “Towards Reconstructing Africa: Recuperation and Responsibility in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Healers”. Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde 59, no 2 (2022): 40-49. https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i2.13220.
“The Healers by Ayi Kwei Armah” Conscientization101, April 1, 2021. https://conscientization101.com/book/the-healers-by-ayi-kwei-armah/.
Wodajo, Tsegaye. Hope in the Midst of Despair: A Novelist’s Cures for Africa. Africa World Press, 2004.
Essays
Petrie, Paul R. “The Politics of Inspiration in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Healers.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 38, no. 4 (1997): 279–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.1997.10543181.
Wright, Derek. “Critical and Historical Fictions: Robert Fraser’s Reading of Ayi Kwei Armah’s ‘The Healers.’” English in Africa 15, no. 1 (1988): 71–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40238615.
Kinna Reads. The healers – Ayi Kwei Armah. (2015, October 20)
https://kinnareads.com/2010/11/15/the-healers-ayi-kwei-armah/
Kone, Klohinlwélé. “Medecine and Literature: A Reading of Disease in Ayi Kwei Armah’s the Healers”. Asian Research Journal of Arts & Social Sciences 15, no 4 (2021):95-108. https://doi.org/10.9734/arjass/2021/v15i430271.
Awosika, Olawale. "History and the novelist's design: a reading of Ayi Kwei Armah's The Healers." Education 130, no. 1 (2009): 62+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed September 7, 2024). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A207643762/AONE?u=anon~af333f10&sid=googleScholar&xid=0284c10f.
Nwahunanya, Chinyere. "The writer as physician: The therapeutic vision in Ayi Kwei Armah's The Healers", Neohelicon 22, no 2 (1995): 141-154, https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02129759
Asaah, Augustine and Tao Zou. “Towards Reconstructing Africa: Recuperation and Responsibility in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Healers”. Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde 59, no 2 (2022): 40-49. https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i2.13220.
“The Healers by Ayi Kwei Armah” Conscientization101, April 1, 2021. https://conscientization101.com/book/the-healers-by-ayi-kwei-armah/.