[Kemi Seriki]

I couldn't help it but to share this passage from Chinua Achebe's new book titled The Education of a British-Protected Child. In this passage, Achebe discribed the sense of pride an average Nigerian possessed in the 60's. As he stated "Traveling as a Nigeria was exciting. People listen to us. Our money worth more than the dollar". He goes on to say, "When the driver of a bus in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia in 1961 asked what I was doing sitting in front of the bus, I told him nonchalantly that I was going to Victoria Falls". He continues, "In amazament he stooped lower and asked where I came from. I replied, even more casually, Nigeria, if you must know: and by the way, in Nigeria we sit where we like in the bus.'' To understand why the driver would question Achebe's sitting position on the bus is to understand the history of African America, the segregation in the 60's and Jim Crow law. We need to regain our sense of pride as Nigerians and Africans in the diaspora.  

 
 
Kemi Seriki 

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[Oluwatoyin Ade-Odutola]

Dear Professor Ken and Scientist Ikhide and others  Please is it true that Things Fall Apart is a historical novel? Is it based on history and can the representation of women in the novel be said to represent how Igbo women were in the 1800s? A student sent me this message in regard to her position on how Achebe chose to represent women in TFA. [The way Chinua Achebe chose to represent women in his novels, especially Things Fall Apart, has been one of the subjects of discussion in literary circles. Such scholars include; Biodun Jeyifo, Abiola Irele, Rhonda Cobham, and Kimberly Hiatt. Some are of the view that the writer does great textual injustice to whom and what Igbo women are in reality] When she got her paper back this is the comment from the Professor: [He [the Professor] pretty much accused me of calling Achebe a liar. He says[TFA] its a historical novel that was set in 100 years before it was written and as such was true at that time.] Meaning TFA has rings of truth in it? This was the student's conclusion: [Having said this much, one can conclusively say that Things Fall Apart, though a work of fiction, Achebe has narrated the story so vividly that it comes close to reality. In my opinion, it has strongly conveyed the message that Okonkwo is representative of the Igbo man and everyone else as a weakling. This is not exactly ‘true’ from my experience as an Igbo woman, having lived in Nigeria for the first 33 years of my life. The way Achebe has represented womanhood in the novel and the way I see it may be at odds but it allows for a healthy debate on the role of women in traditional societies. The structure of the novel and its plot bring to the fore one of the functions of literature; that of recreating reality in different ways] --- On Wed, 7/21/10, Kemi Seriki <ajok...@hotmail.com> wrote: I couldn't help it but to share this passage from Chinua Achebe's new book titled The Education of a British-Protected Child. In this passage, Achebe described the sense of pride an average Nigerian possessed in the 60's. As he stated "Traveling as a Nigeria was exciting. People listen to us. Our money worth more than the dollar". He goes on to say, "When the driver of a bus in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia in 1961 asked what I was doing sitting in front of the bus, I told him nonchalantly that I was going to Victoria Falls". He continues,

[toyin adepoju]

A very intelligent summation from the student.

Of course,it is a work of fiction.

It might be historical in that it is based on an effort to give flesh through imaginative narration,including fictional characters and plot, to an actual historical experience,but that does not make it true in the sense of being an accurate reflection of all particulars of the society it dealt with.Realist literary works are based on reconstructions of society at particular points in history.That does not mean,however,that Tolstoy's War and Peace,or Honore de Balzac's Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes trans. as  A Harlot High and Low or Achebe's Things Fall Apart,for example, are efforts to present literal truth.Whatever truth they demonstrate is more imaginative than literal  because, the writer  uses the historical context as a framework,whether the Napoleonic  Wars as used by Tolstoy,the financial and legal worlds and underworld of Paris as adapted by Balac or the African colonial experience by Achebe, as a guide to creating a fictive narrative,with characters partly  or wholly fictional.

I understand even history is described as demonstrative of personal attitudes and imaginative reconstruction on the part of the historian on account of the necessary selectivity of the human mind and the effort to bring alive an experience of some degree of remoteness from the writer and reader. 

Even while acknowledging  the imaginative and personalistic element in history writing,however,its goals are different from those of imaginative literature.The historian is more likely to aspire to an approximation of actual events while the novelist,as Jeyifo,describes literature,is more likely to aspire to the 'truthful lie' in which reality is processed through the imagination of the writer,to create something related to but not identical with reality.On those grounds,there might be no character in the novel who  corresponds to any actual person.No specific incident in the novel might ever have taken place.Achebe's treatment of his characters, in his freedom as a writer,might not correspond in all particulars,or even in the general image they project, to observable characters in Igbo society at any point in time.

On Achebe's treatment of his female characters I expect criticism on that subject should demonstrate the validity of the students perspective.The essays on that subject in Things Fall Apart:A Casebook ed by Isidore Okpewho could prove helpful.

If the student is to make a decisive case,they could do well to read up on and reflect on discussions of relationships between literature and factuality. Aristotle has an intriguing discussion on that in the Poetics,section 9, in relation to distinctions between probability and actuality,between history and poetry, which are relevant for literature as a whole.Aristotle presents literature in terms of the concept of mimesis,imitation,a concept explored further by  M.H Abrams in relation to conceptions of reflection in The Mirror and the Lamp.A famous work that explores the concept of mimesis in terms of how reality is depicted in Western literature is Eric Auerbach's Mimesis.

One could also compare the novel with historical and sociological treatments of similar subjects as those it deals with.

thanks

toyin

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[Okafor, Chinyere]

Thanks for bringing this up - women in Umuofia as women in Igbo or Africa.

A historical novel is fiction and cannot stand for reality. Is TFA a historical novel? What history? What real life characters are represented in that superb fiction? People may regard it as fiction or historical fiction, but it is an imaginative work from one person’s brain (in this chase a man). Non-fictional piece done in one Igbo community cannot stand for all Igbo communities because of the variety of gender arrangements, which Achebe alludes to in the novel – areas like Anita where men pound “fufu” for their wives and tribes where women own the children etc. – clearly telling the reader that his imaginative representation cannot stand for the diversity of communities in Igboland or Africa. If an Igbo woman says that she cannot recognize women of the fictional Umuofia in the world/community of her mother and grandmothers, then the professor should not dismiss her but try to reconsider his/her old reading of the text as history that fits all. S/he should also consider the portrayal of women by women writers from Achebe’s culture area.

 

 

Professor Chinyere G. Okafor, Ph.D

Department of Women's Studies & Religion

Wichita State University, Wichita, KS 67260, USA 

Phone: (316) 978-6264, fax (316) 978-3186
E-mail: chinyer...@wichita.edu

URL <http://soar.wichita.edu/dspace/handle/10057/1222>

<http://webs.wichita.edu/wmstudy/faculty.html><http://www.chiwrite.com/>

 

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Oluwatoyin Ade-Odutola [ko...@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2010 9:08 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series -Things Fall Apart again...

[kenneth harrow]

dear oluwatoyin
there are quick answers to your question, and then longer ones. i promise to try hard to be brief:
--TFA is a novel whose genre is historical realism. that is, it is set in the past and attempts to convey realistically what life was like then
--what most people forget is that genres are constructs, made of patterns of narratives or storytellings that structure the way we think about how to tell a story--it isn't simply a reflection of events
--it is also made up of words; achebe learned those words from others who spoke and wrote them before he was alive, and then he came along and modified them. so, he created a story of the past, but used ideas, words, thoughts, etc of those who influenced his own thinking and speaking. that included igbo elders whom he consulted about the past before writing the novel. he was working off the memories and voices of those who came before...as we all do. it included multiple discourses, which he learned and which influenced his own way of narrating the story
--so to ask, is he faithfully representing an igbo woman of today is to ignore all the above and assume that a novel is somehow only a mirror reflection of real life.
--lastly, taking ikhide's injunction that the readers'; response must be considered, it is fair to say that some will react to the novel and say that it fits, or doesn't fit, their experience. the teacher who castigated the student for finding readers who did not feel it fitted their experience strikes me as naive. readers are multiple, and so will their responses be
--lastly, what do we ask of a novel, in contrast to what we ask of history? maybe that it has a truth that is not conveyed in the same way that history does, that its truth is true to some vision, not to the lived experience as such, but the vision of it, the sense of it? you have to see that the "truth:" of Things Fall Apart is inseparable from its narrative, its discourses, its words. when achebe writes the proverb that tells us that proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten, he is not only "quoting" a proverb, he is using language, in a story, in such a way as to bring the speaker, the invcident, the relations, the people, the culture, the "truth" of his words, to life.'
if you ask, was that the way people spoke, you lose everything else, and especially the truth embedded in the particular words. you have to eat the words after chewing them; history texts try to avoid the act of chewing words, pretending they are invisible, that historical truth is transparent. but that is a deception. there are proverbs that can explain it all, but you have to be old to understand them because,
an old man (like me) can see sitting down what a young man cannot see standing up
if a lizard won't praise himself, who will?
ken

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Kenneth W. Harrow
Distinguished Professor of English
Michigan State University
har...@msu.edu
517 803-8839
fax 517 353 3755

[Mario Fenyo]

Dear Colleagues:

i am grateful for all the comments on Chinua Achebe, on his (or our) Things Fall Apart and on the dialectics of history and literature. I spent much of my life studying the relationship between history and great literature (i am a student of history by profession) and have published a number of essays on that subject. Nevertheless, i do not claim to be an expert on anything.

Some of my ideas on the subject are discussed in the last chapter of my Literature and Political Change, published by the American Philosophical Society many years ago. The motto of that chapter is taken from Anatole France, a rather popular author (e.g. "The Gods are Athirst"--about the Terror during the French Revolution) of fiction from the turn of the previous century. He writes: "History is more an art than a science, because it requires IMAGINATION."

Indeed, Achebe, like most great writers, has a high degree of sensitivity and intuition, which allow him to perceive or visualize and describe the past and the present more acutely and perhaps more acurately than most social scientists. PLease tell me that i am misguided, that i don't know what i am talking about. ... and i will listen and learn.

respectfully, mario


Dr. Mario D. Fenyo
President
Association of Third World Studies
c/o Department of History and Government
Bowie State University
Bowie, MD 20715
USA

________________________________

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Okafor, Chinyere
Sent: Thu 7/22/2010 1:55 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series -Things Fall Apart again...

Thanks for bringing this up - women in Umuofia as women in Igbo or Africa.

A historical novel is fiction and cannot stand for reality. Is TFA a historical novel? What history? What real life characters are represented in that superb fiction? People may regard it as fiction or historical fiction, but it is an imaginative work from one person's brain (in this chase a man). Non-fictional piece done in one Igbo community cannot stand for all Igbo communities because of the variety of gender arrangements, which Achebe alludes to in the novel - areas like Anita where men pound "fufu" for their wives and tribes where women own the children etc. - clearly telling the reader that his imaginative representation cannot stand for the diversity of communities in Igboland or Africa. If an Igbo woman says that she cannot recognize women of the fictional Umuofia in the world/community of her mother and grandmothers, then the professor should not dismiss her but try to reconsider his/her old reading of the text as history that fits all. S/he should also consider the portrayal of women by women writers from Achebe's culture area.

Professor Chinyere G. Okafor, Ph.D

Department of Women's Studies & Religion

Wichita State University, Wichita, KS 67260, USA

Phone: (316) 978-6264, fax (316) 978-3186
E-mail: chinyer...@wichita.edu

URL <http://soar.wichita.edu/dspace/handle/10057/1222 <http://soar.wichita.edu/dspace/handle/10057/1222> >

<http://webs.wichita.edu/wmstudy/faculty.html <http://webs.wichita.edu/wmstudy/faculty.html> ><http://www.chiwrite.com/ <http://www.chiwrite.com/> >

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Achebe’s portrayal of Igbo women folk in TFA is in my opinion narrow.
Apart from the priestess of Agbala who was presented from a position
of strength, other female characters were cast in the male
chauvinists’ notion of the “weaker sex”, whose roles were limited to
that of domestic servants and sex objects. This was not and still not
the reality in Igbo land.

In the traditional Igbo society, The women folk, either as
umunwayi(wives) or Umuada(Daughters) occupied and still occupy
influential positions in the decision making hierarchy, this important
role was not highlighted in TFA, even the role of Matriarchs as
custodians of ofo(symbol of authority) in cases of serious disputes
among the men folk was not presented.

The above would not be surprising when one takes into consideration
the fact that when TFA was written, Achebe was “marooned” in Radio
Nigeria as a Producer and shared cold beer with his friends at elite
club houses after work, with may be occasional short trips to
Ogidi(his home town), which was not enough to adequately understand
the cultural setting in which the events he chronicled in TFA
occurred. This point would become clearer when the age at which Achebe
left home (for high school and college) is also taken into
consideration.

This problem also manifests in present day African writings,
especially literary criticisms, most of which emanate from the
Diaspora community. When the works of these writers are viewed
critically, one would notice inadequate understanding, due largely to
absence from the homeland, of the issues they write on, the advent of
Internet technology notwithstanding.

Chidi Anthony Opara

“The best way to serve God is to serve humanity”.

On Jul 22, 9:52 pm, "Mario Fenyo" <MFe...@bowiestate.edu> wrote:
> Dear Colleagues:
>
> i am grateful for all the comments on Chinua Achebe, on his (or our) Things Fall Apart and on the dialectics of history and literature.    I spent much of my life studying the relationship between history and great literature  (i am a student of history by profession)  and have published a number of essays on that subject.   Nevertheless, i do not claim to be an expert on anything.
>
> Some of my ideas on the subject are discussed in the last chapter of my Literature and Political Change, published by the American Philosophical Society many years ago.  The motto of that chapter is taken from Anatole France, a rather popular author  (e.g. "The Gods are Athirst"--about the Terror during the French Revolution) of fiction from the turn of the previous century.   He writes:   "History is more an art than a science, because it requires IMAGINATION."  
>
> Indeed, Achebe, like most great writers, has a high degree of sensitivity and intuition, which allow him to perceive or visualize and describe the past and the present more acutely and perhaps more acurately than most social scientists.  PLease tell me that i am misguided, that i don't know what i am talking about. ... and i will listen and learn.
>
> respectfully,  mario
>
> Dr. Mario D. Fenyo
> President
> Association of Third World Studies
> c/o Department of History and Government
> Bowie State University
> Bowie, MD 20715
> USA
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Okafor, Chinyere
> Sent: Thu 7/22/2010 1:55 PM
> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series -Things Fall Apart again...
>
> Thanks for bringing this up - women in Umuofia as women in Igbo or Africa.
>
> A historical novel is fiction and cannot stand for reality. Is TFA a historical novel? What history? What real life characters are represented in that superb fiction? People may regard it as fiction or historical fiction, but it is an imaginative work from one person's brain (in this chase a man). Non-fictional piece done in one Igbo community cannot stand for all Igbo communities because of the variety of gender arrangements, which Achebe alludes to in the novel - areas like Anita where men pound "fufu" for their wives and tribes where women own the children etc. - clearly telling the reader that his imaginative representation cannot stand for the diversity of communities in Igboland or Africa. If an Igbo woman says that she cannot recognize women of the fictional Umuofia in the world/community of her mother and grandmothers, then the professor should not dismiss her but try to reconsider his/her old reading of the text as history that fits all. S/he should also consider the portrayal of women by women writers from Achebe's culture area.
>
> Professor Chinyere G. Okafor, Ph.D
>
> Department of Women's Studies & Religion
>
> Wichita State University, Wichita, KS 67260, USA  
>
> Phone: (316) 978-6264, fax (316) 978-3186

> E-mail: chinyere.oka...@wichita.edu

>
> URL <http://soar.wichita.edu/dspace/handle/10057/1222<http://soar.wichita.edu/dspace/handle/10057/1222> >
>
> <http://webs.wichita.edu/wmstudy/faculty.html<http://webs.wichita.edu/wmstudy/faculty.html> ><http://www.chiwrite.com/<http://www.chiwrite.com/> >
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Oluwatoyin Ade-Odutola [ko...@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2010 9:08 AM
> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series -Things Fall Apart again...
>
> Dear Professor Ken and Scientist Ikhide and others
>
>  Please is it true that Things Fall Apart is a historical novel? Is it based on history and can the representation of women in the novel be said to represent how Igbo women were in the 1800s?
> A student sent me this message in regard to her position on how Achebe chose to represent women in TFA.
> [ The way Chinua Achebe chose to represent women in his novels, especially Things Fall Apart, has been one of the subjects of discussion in literary circles. Such scholars include; Biodun Jeyifo, Abiola Irele, Rhonda Cobham, and Kimberly Hiatt. Some are of the view that the writer does great textual injustice to whom and what Igbo women are in reality]
>
> When she got her paper back this is the comment from the Professor:
>
> [ He [the Professor] pretty much accused me of calling Achebe a liar. He says[TFA] its a historical novel that was set in 100 years before it was written and as such was true at that time.] Meaning TFA has rings of truth in it?
>
> This was the student's conclusion:
>
> [Having said this much, one can conclusively say that Things Fall Apart, though a work of fiction, Achebe has narrated the story so vividly that it comes close to reality. In my opinion, it has strongly conveyed the message that Okonkwo is representative of the Igbo man and everyone else as a weakling. This is not exactly 'true' from my experience as an Igbo woman, having lived in Nigeria for the first 33 years of my life. The way Achebe has represented womanhood in the novel and the way I see it may be at odds but it allows for a healthy debate on the role of women in traditional societies. The structure of the novel and its plot bring to the fore one of the functions of literature; that of recreating reality in different ways]
>

> --- On Wed, 7/21/10, Kemi Seriki <ajokot...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>         I couldn't help it but to share this passage from Chinua Achebe's new book titled The Education of a British-Protected Child. In this passage, Achebe described the sense of pride an average Nigerian possessed in the 60's. As he stated "Traveling as a Nigeria was exciting. People listen to us. Our money worth more than the dollar". He goes on to say, "When the driver of a bus in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia in 1961 asked what I was doing sitting in front of the bus, I told him nonchalantly that I was going to Victoria Falls". He continues,
>
> --
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>  winmail.dat
> 15KViewDownload

[kenneth harrow]

i agree with chidi that the depiction of women in TFA was narrow,
with the exception of the chapter where one wife tells the tale of
the tortoise, and with the exception of the priestess.
i do not agree that faithfulness to "traditional igbo society" is the
issue; i believe fidelity to some notion of reality has nothing to do
with literary value or truth, and in this case chidi is generalizing
that all villages in the late 19th c were marked by women's roles
that would be identical.
aside from that, it is more than of interest to note that women did
not portray women in african literature for a dozen years after TFA
was written, more or less. in francophone lit, it was still longer.
my favorite remark on women in TFA was by lemuel johnson, one of the
foremost commentators on african literature ever. lem said at an ala
conf, and wrote it later, that "we," the readers, did not follow the
women into the menstrual huts in TFA, or in any other african lit at the time.
women's spaces were not only places from which men were excluded,
they were not the subject of african lit.
we saw the world, and read the world, entirely through men's eyes.
it took nwapa, emecheta, aidoo, to break that monovision. now they
are called the Mothers of African Literature, rightly. they gave us a
different vision of the world, of gendered society, from that of the Fathers.
ken

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Kenneth W. Harrow

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

"i agree with chidi that the depiction of women in TFA was narrow,
with the exception of the chapter where one wife tells the tale of
the tortoise, and with the exception of the priestess.
i do not agree that faithfulness to "traditional igbo society" is the
issue; i believe fidelity to some notion of reality has nothing to do
with literary value or truth, and in this case chidi is generalizing
that all villages in the late 19th c were marked by women's roles
that would be identical".

------------Ken Harrow

Ken,

If we agree that literature should mirror life, it follows then that
even fictional works like TFA should be faithful to the realities on
the ground. TFA as you have agreed with me failed in an aspect of this
important requirement. I did not make "faithfulness to traditional
Igbo society" the issue in my post, I was only using that reference to
buttress my position on the narrowness of portrayal of women in the
novel.

On what you called my generalization of the role of women in Igbo
land, I would like you to know that key aspects of Igbo culture like
the role of women, is general.

Chidi Anthony Opara

"The best way to serve God is to serve humanity".

> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Ikhide]

“i agree with chidi that the depiction of women in TFA was narrow, with the

exception of the chapter where one wife  tells the tale of the tortoise, and

with the exception of the priestess.”
Kenn,
I am at a loss as to what your statement above means. Is it any narrower than
the stereotypical fiction of swash buckling women in the West ordering around
male wusses? Indeed in that sense, is it not a less stereotypical portrayal? 
And what if the truth is that women indeed had a narrowly defined role in
Okonkwo's clan, should we broaden it to fit what is politically acceptable? Have
you read Buchi Emecheta’s novels? Does she invite you to draw conclusions based
on her lived life and the testimony in her novels? And why would any researcher
worth his or her salt draw conclusions about a people’s way of life based on
just one novel? And what are we talking about anyway? Political correctness
threatens to distort the lived life. What we would like to see is different from
what happened. As for the bit about women being empowered and owning chieftaincy
titles etc, some of that is true and Achebe has addressed the issues in some of
his books (with mixed success because rather than focus on his work he was
trying to be sensitive to accusations of misogyny). What is true is that the
fate of the vast majority of women and children in today's Nigeria makes their
fate in TFA heavenly. We invest in mimicry and say all the right things about
women empowerment, blah, blah, blah. But the truth stares us in the face. Today
in Nigeria, many of our women and children are mostly second-class citizens in a
country dominated by powerful male jerks that have bastardized a cultural past
and turned it into the patriarchy from hell.  Just like their “institutions of
higher learning,” “democracy,” and other perversions of mimicry, they clothe
aberrations in the power of empty words. Bullsh*t.

The notion that Achebe has to travel the length and breadth of igboland in order
to write the definitive epic on women empowerment is silly. He has written a
story based on a rich slice of Igbo life; he has not drawn any conclusions. It
is up to you the reader to draw your own conclusions. Why should that now
translate into an acceptable criticism of his work? It is one thing to say that
his world view is narrow; it is another thing to suggest that his depictions are
false.  Haba. I am not an expert on these things but as a reader I am baffled.
And by the way, we can’t have it both ways; should fiction document the lived
history? Or is fiction free to distort life? We are back to that argument again.
We must be wary of being ambushed by the fiction that denies our humanity, or
that italicizes us into "the other." I shake my head when I read African (and
Western) thinkers describing TFA as an Igbo novel, whatever that means. It would
never occur to them to describe a John Updike tome in such a limiting fashion.
Because John Updike is human and Chinua Achebe is, well, the other. TFA is of
course more than an "Igbo" or "African" novel. It is a novel about our humanity
and how we adapt (or don't) adapt to change. If you deny that definition, you
are really in essence robbing me of the universality of my humanity. I keep
saying this: I was at a function where Professor John Larson described Things
Fall Apart as a great African novel. Why is it just a great African novel? It is
a great novel, no ifs, no buts about it.
The compartmentalization of our humanity continues and it is relentless, despite
loud protestations. Jerry Guo of Newsweek recently did a semi-illiterate
interview of Chinua Achebe (Chinua Achebe on Nigeria’s Future, Newsweek, July 5,
2010). Sample blurb:

“Although best known for his 1958 masterpiece, Things Fall Apart, about a simple
yam farmer in tribal Nigeria, novelist Chinua Achebe is still writing about
Africa a full half century later. The 79-year-old author and social critic spoke
with NEWSWEEK’s Jerry Guo about recent developments in his home country and
politics on the continent.”
It is news to me that Things Fall Apart is "about a simple yam farmer in tribal
Nigeria." We are in the year 2010 and TFA is being described in such a hideous
fashion.
It gets worse: Below are sample questions asked of Achebe:
Why do you think Nigeria has such a bad reputation?
So how did notoriously corrupt African states like Nigeria become that way while
others such as Botswana and Ghana went down a different path?
There’s been an uptick in ethnic violence between the Christians and Muslims in
nigeria. are you afraid of radical islam taking root there and spreading?
The interrogation is so bad, it masks the usual clarity of Chinua Achebe's
thinking. The questions force the responses to be pedestrian and that is too
bad. Once more Newsweek misses a grand opportunity to encourage new thinking,
shed new light on persistent challenges. There is nothing new here from Achebe
that many of us have not previously engaged and I do not blame Achebe. There are
too many things to worry about.

I think about Professor Achebe a lot. If I was a dictator, I would compel his
rich muse to share his thoughts on life here in America. It is interesting how
he is now living the life of exile that Okonkwo suffered in TFA. I figure by now
that Achebe has been out of Nigeria now for the better part of three decades.
Man, what would I not pay to read that book. The same also goes for most of our
writers who write obsessively about Nigeria's issues - from the cold distance of
the West. I do not disparage them; Africa is a personal obsession for me and I
have lived in America way longer than I lived in Africa. It is a mystery, this
relentless obsession. But then I worry about the distortion of history. We are
writing with the benefit of a memory that is bearing the burden of
forgetfulness. In the meantime, we are ignoring the history that bustles around
us even as we are part of it. The result is that America's notion of history is
still relentlessly Eurocentric. It is their HIStory really. Sanitized history. 
Again, back to that silly interview: Think of your favorite great white author,
anyone of Achebe's stature and imagine him/her being taken through the indignity
of this absurd interview. For one thing, the questions would have been
researched and fielded by a senior ranking editor, not just a wretched stringer
who does not know how to read books. And can you imagine the author responding
to questions so parochial, they belong in medieval times? It is not just
disrespectful, it is an outrage. The real questions are: Why do they persist in
treating us like this? Why are things the way they are?
Read the rest of the wretched interview here:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/05/a-man-of-the-people.html
What is sad is that on balance, the West has treated our giants like the giants
that they are. I cannot say the same for Africa. Be well, Ken
-       Ikhide

[kenneth harrow]

chidi
i don't agree that literature mirrors life; i
think literature create discourses which, at
times, give us the impression they are mirroring
life (when in the realist mode, of course): the
more they give us that impression, the more they
hide the fact that they are constructing, not
mirroring, a portrait of life. in that regard
some theorists regard realism as fundamentally a
conservative genre in that it always winds up
reaffirming the premises on which it begins.
this is an interesting point to be debated.
on the second point, i have no experience with
which to dispute your claim that " key aspects of

Igbo culture like the role of women, is general."

i really want to ask, is this so true? aren't
there differences in regions, among villages, and
even within the same towns or villages? what are
the "key aspects"? who gets to decide? from whose
point of view? for instance, the key aspects we
see in TFA are not the same as those in Women Are
Different, or Joys of Motherhood. not at all. or
take So Long a Letter--doesn't begin to share the
view of "key aspects" in say Xala.
my examples are literature--pretty poor basis for
arguing this question. but not only am i asking
about regional or local differences now, but even
more in the past when people were less in touch with each other.
ken

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Ken,

You may not know, but it is a fact that TFA was based on the cultural
setting in Ogidi and environs, which are parts of Igboland. Key
aspects of Igbo culture include, but not limited to roles to be played
by the men folk(Umunna), Umunwanyi(wives), Umuokorobia(youths) and
Umuada(daughters).

As to who determined what the key aspects were, the answer was some
how provided in my first post in which I made reference to hierachy of
decision making. Decisions ran through the gamut of hierachies before
they were ratified by the Council of Elders(Ofo holders). This is not
to say that there would not be slight variations from one community to
another.

Ken, I would like to respect your viewpoint, if you say you do not
agree that literature mirrors life, I however do not agree with you.
As a Poet, I do not operate in the void.

You also wrongly stated that in the past, people are less in touch
with each other. There may not be cars, ships, aeroplanes and
Internet, but there were very active traditonal fora for interactions
like marriage ceremonies, funerals, wrestling and dance competitions,
inter-community trading, etc.

Lastly, in your earlier post you wondered why female African writers
did not portray women better after Achebe. My take on this is that
writers are human and writing like every other human endervour has its
own politics. The politics of publishing before the advent of
Internet, even now, albeit to a lesser extent, would not permit most
writers to disagree with the viewpoints of writers before them no
matter how erroneous, who had grown so influential that they as
Editorial Consultants to publishing houses, determined who got
published and promoted. What is the use writing without being
published and promoted?

Chidi Anthony Opara

"Away with arts for arts' sake!"

[kenneth harrow]

dear chidi
a couple of observations
"who determines the key values"--i didn't mean,
who were the ultimate arbiters, but who is to
say, which of us, of the readers, of the critics,
of the experts, etc, what constitutes a key
value. i don't want to get too theoretical here,
but i will simply state my agreement with
althusser that we respond to interpellations, to
being called, by the institutions of society, and
in our hearing and responding, to our recognizing
of what is being called out, we affirm the
existence of values. it isn't individuals or
councils who do that; it is institutions to which people respond.

secondly, i still believe that communication
between peoples, everywhere on earth, was less
frequent and direct in the past; that that was
why different dialects of a given language arose
and were much much more common in the past. when
modern transport, media, tv, radio, newspapers,
schooling, etc came about, the borders between
this village and that were increasingly passed,
and our local ways/accents began to be lost. even
in my brief lifetime, there used to be real
accents in new york, real borough accents, which
we kids used to make fun of. who ever heard of a
brooklyn accent any more? a jersey accent? and in
italy, in the early 20th c even, one would say
that between villages mutual comprehension was
difficult. the plethora of languages in africa is
to be explained by that phenomenon, along with
the fact that languages have been spoken longer in africa than elsewhere.

lastly, i hope i did not give the impression that
women did not portray women effectively or well
after achebe! i was trying to say that the
viewpoint of women on the world, and especially
on gender, had to wait for some time after the
"fathers of african lit" before we could hear
them. and the women's world as they constructed
it was quite different from the men's, in lots
and lots of ways. we really did not get full,
rich portrayals of women until women authors came
along and let us know what we were missing. we
focused on TFA; how about those early soyinka
plays! lots of room for criticisms there. (lion and the jewel, for starters)
ken