Masks! Masks! Black mask red mask, you white-and-black masks Masks of the four points from which the Spirit blows In silence I salute you! Nor you the least, Lion-headed Ancestor You guard this place forbidden to all laughter of women, to all smiles that fade You distill this air of eternity in which I breathe the air of my Fathers. Masks of unmasked faces, stripped of the masks of illness and the lines of age You who have fashioned this portrait, this my face bent over the later of white paper In your own image, hear me! (Owomoyela 42). In the mid-60s, Nigeria replaced French West Africa as the largest producer and consumer of African literature, and literary production in English surpassed that in French. Large numbers of talented writers in Francophone Africa came to occupy important political and diplomatic posts and gave up creative writing. Furthermore, the tenets of Negritude seemed far less relevant after independence and as newly independent nations found themselves facing civil wars, military coups and corruption (Gerard 53).

They often recount the heroic exploits of ancestors