The Stranglehold of English Lit?

Reading Felix Mnthali's Stranglehold of English Lit. was a peculiar experience for me. I've read about half of Jane Austen's novels but this poem proposed an entirely different viewpoint of her work, one that never would have occurred to me were I left to my own devices. I read and appreciated Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Sense and Sensibility. They weren't my favorite books but I liked the stories and I enjoyed looking through the novels to a different time and a different way of life. I have never been presented with Jane Austen's novels as an evil thing. I've certainly run across students who don't like Jane Austen, who see her books as something to be endured for a grade, but Mnthali is the first person to propose to me that they are evil. It's difficult for me to come over to his perspective, because I've seen Austen's work as innocent for so long, but I can see the issue from Mnthali's point of view. I do see how English Literature has affected the young people of Malawi, and therefore hurt his country, but that doesn't mean I want to get rid of Jane Austen. I love the English language, and I love books written in it. I don't want to get rid of English Literature even if it has done a horrible disservice to Africa.

As a poem, the Stranglehold of English Lit. incorporates language that is more like shouting than metaphor, or image, or rhyme, or rhythm. That's not a bad thing; poems don't have to be pretty or pleasant. This is certainly not a pleasant poem, but Mnthali wasn't trying to write a greeting card, he was trying to change the world he occupies. It seems to me that Mnthali was attempting to get the young students around him to open their eyes, to not see English Literature through the eyes of a calf, but the eyes of a cow who has seen the slaughter house.

English is my first language and my ancestors are from Europe, so in some ways it was my people who invaded Africa, both literally and with literature. I am, however, an American, so I can side step Mnthali's anger to some extent by telling myself that it was not my country that invaded his and imposed it's culture on Malawi. This makes me wonder if this poem would be an even more uncomfortable read for my British friends.