Question 10
Comment on the relevance of history in The Song of the Women of my Land
Observation
This was not a popular question. Candidates who attempted this question could not relate the poem to oral history.
Candidates are expected to discuss the following:
- Identify the central theme of oral history as the store house of a people’s collective memory and how memory fades with time.
- The effect of time on memory: ‘Time chisels away bits of their memory’
- The value of oral history in the songs of the women: their songs helped them to deal with their difficult lives, cope with the hardship of their enslaved lives, ‘to celebrate their gains…’ and to store their experiences for future generations.
- Relationship between time and history: time obliterates the memory of their experiences
- Triumph of poetry over time: poetry restores the tunes, reactivates the memory of the women. relives their experiences and restores the history of the women of my land
Candidates’ performance was average.