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Emmanuel Dongala Honored
Emmanuel Dongala, faculty member in chemistry and French at Simon's Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, has won the 2003 Fonlon-Nichols Award. The award is given annually to an African writer who has demonstrated excellence in creative writing in addition to contributing to the struggles for human rights and freedom of expression.
Dongala's works include Le feu des origines (1987, The Fire of Origins); Jazz et vin de palme (1982, Jazz and Palm Wine, which was banned in Congo as it satirized those in power); Les petits garcons naissent aussi des etoiles (1998, Boys Are Also Born from Stars); and Johnny Chien Mechant (2002, Johnny Bad Dog), which was shortlisted for the Prix Femina in France. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.
Born in 1941 to a Central African Republic mother and a Congolese father, Emmanuel Dongala studied chemistry, which he taught in France and at the University of Brazzaville (Congo), where he devised a cheap, fast, reliable method for the evaluation of toxic cyanogenic glucosides in cassava, the main food staple of the country. His research has been published in Discovery, European Polymer Journal, Journal of Fluorine Chemistry and Tetrahedron Letters. He became chairman of the Department of Chemistry in 1981 and was appointed Dean of Academic Affairs at the university in 1985.
He and his family escaped the civil war in 1997 to come to the United States, with the help of novelist Philip Roth, Bard College President Leon Botstein, Senator Edward M. Kennedy and President Clinton, among others. Dongala was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999.
Dongala says that he chose first to become a scientist because a free Africa needed men of science, but that "my job [became] as a writer to express the sadness, anger, and shame that so much wealth and opportunity has been wasted in Africa."
The Fonlon-Nichols Award was established in 1992 to honor Bernard Fonlon and Lee Nichols for their contributions to both African literature and freedom of expression. The award will be publicly presented at the annual conference of the African Literature Association, which will be held in March in Alexandria, Egypt. Previous awardees include Nobel Prize Winner Wole Soyinka in 2000, Nuruddin Farah in 2001, and Jack Mapanje in 2002.
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