Albert Chinualumogu Achebe (1930-2013), better known as Chinua Achebe (ah-CHAY-bay), was a Nigerian writer famous for the novel “Things Fall Apart” (1958), which has sold 12 million copies in 45 languages. It shows British colonialism through Nigerian eyes. It is read at high schools and universities throughout the English-speaking world.
Achebe was an Igbo (Ibo) from south-eastern Nigeria. He was brought up as a Christian and received his education in English. As a boy he read about faraway places in books by Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, Sheridan, Swift, Conrad and Yeats. He took the side of white heroes against the savages – not knowing that in the eyes of whites he too was a savage.
He went to the University of Ibadan (then called University College) in Nigeria to study medicine but changed to English literature. The university was modelled on London University. Even the English professors were white! He studied Shakespeare, Milton, Defoe, Swift, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Tennyson, Housman, Eliot, Frost, Hemingway, Conrad, James Joyce and Joyce Cary – white men all.
Joyce Cary, born in Ireland of English blood, wrote what Time magazine called “the best novel ever written about Africa”: “Mister Johnson” (1939). Achebe’s professors loved it too. But Achebe and his fellow students hated it: the main character was a Nigerian who was a bumbling idiot. The book had an undertone of hatred, mockery and distaste for all things Nigerian.
But if Cary could write about Nigeria, so could he. In fact, as a writer, he must:
There is that great proverb – that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter … Once I realized that, I had to be a writer.
And so he wrote “Things Fall Apart”.
That book showed Toni Morrison that she could and should write about Black Americans for Black Americans, that she should not write for the white gaze. And so she wrote “The Bluest Eye” (1970).
Achebe’s books made Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie see that “people like me, girls with skin the colour of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.” Her favourite Achebe book is “Arrow of God” (1964).
Achebe wrote in English because, unlike Igbo, it is understood all across Nigeria. But he Africanized it: what The Economist calls his “stately English” is Igbo in English clothing – the turns of expression, proverbs and parables are Igbo all the way, but put in words that any English-speaking person can understand.
Achebe’s best known essay is “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness'” (1977). He called Joseph Conrad a “thoroughgoing racist”, saying that any book that dehumanizes a whole continent of people cannot count as great literature – and to teach it as such is damaging. Conrad was “of the times” but as an artist he should rise above those times – as Picasso did when he learned from African art rather than look down his nose at it.
– Abagond, 2013.
Update (November 16th 2017): Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Chinua Achebe’s 87th birthday:
See also:
- posts on his essays:
- Toni Morrison
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- “It was the times!”
- Leopold Sedar Senghor
I will challenge myself to read Things Fall Apart.
LikeLike
This man is very inspiring to me since I want to be an author when I get older. Will the public take me seriously if I talk about race relations in this country?
LikeLike
Thank you for this biographical information. I’m glad Achebe was able to overcome the disillusionment that was taught by being among white intellectuals at this time.
LikeLike
One of my favorite books. R.I.P.
LikeLike
A quote from Chinua Achebe that was very simple and succinct. “If you don’t like someone’s story write your own.” A lot of bloggers in the black blogosphere complain that they don’t like how images of African American’s are portrayed. Maybe they should take the advice of this wise griot and write their own stories and change the way blacks are portrayed in television and film and other mediums. Just a thought.
LikeLike
Thank you for this.
LikeLike
@ Mary Burrell I agree 100% with you. This is why I am trying to get black muscian, writers, and artist together for a surge but it has been hard. Still if you want your children to grow up with a healthy image you should take the world by the reigns an move it to that accord.
LikeLike
@ K.O.T. That’s very cool that we are in sync. Because I like your commentary.
LikeLike
@King of Trouble
I agree especially in this current generation of Black kids and young adults. There is so much self hatred among them, it is unreal! I know this because I am a young woman of Jamaican descent and I watch how their actions.
We really need more positive role models for Black people in this country besides the Obama family, Oprah and a few others.
I plan on being an writer who writes about the struggles minorities and people in general struggle with.
LikeLike
@Adeen
I think it will come down to your talent and skill,if its great enough they/we will have to take you seriously and respect you.
@all
We need writers ,musicians,filmmakers etc of stories and images that inspire,that show success and triumph ,that stay true to us but that any and all people can relate to.
Obviously no easy task ,as we need not just great contributors but a cultural paradigm shift that makes contributions to civilization and culture both great and small in every area and subject (not just sports and entertainment) as desirable and achievable aspirations.
LikeLike
What a revolutionary. He will definitely be missed.
LikeLike
[…] Albert Chinualumogu Achebe (1930-2013), better known as Chinua Achebe (ah-CHAY-bay), was a Nigerian writer famous for the novel "Things Fall Apart" (1958), which has sold 12 million copies…" "There is that great proverb – that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter … Once I realized that, I had to be a writer." -Chinua Achebe […]
LikeLike
Good thread Abagond
LikeLike
@ Mary Burrell, I love reading through your comments.
@ Adeen, here is what my old journalism teacher use to say, write everyday like brushing your teeth, walking, or talking at one time all those things took practice. I believe in that do not let the negative demon seduce you. It would like nothing better then to laugh and watch you fail. Fall sometimes we must but give-up is not something we should accept. I write, and I have to teaching writing and English for a living. I started this assignment hating both. Yet, like a few of my African friends use to say we let other people write our history no wonder we sit on the bottom.
Unfortunately, I had never read any black author except for Sounder until I was in my last year of high school. Then I had to read Malcolm X my English teacher pushed me into it. When I went to college I read a little more. Then I came to Japan and my girlfriend at the time turn me on to minority writers like Toni Morrison, Even reading books like like “Black Like Me” and reading “Black Boy” it was enlightening because as a kid these books had been off limits. In my school they were labelled communist propaganda. My mother hadn’t realized it until later because my sister and I never mention it. Plus the amount of trouble I already got in for the books and views I had didn’t encourage me to go looking into those corners. I wish for all the stars I had gone and read them at an earlier age. It would have comforted me and made me think more. Instead of going through the school of hard knocks I could avoided some of those scenes altogether.
My students always think I should write down my life experiences. I always wonder why. I am not an artist with stories so I wouldn’t know how to explain how everywhere I went the air tasted different the excitement crowded every sense making my derma tingle. Yet, you could feel the anger at “She towered over me with those pale ice blue eyes, thinking very much that I was her lesser.
I think we should always read from our ethnic group a lot of time wisdom is dripping in their words. So is the experience that we miss in mainstream writing.
LikeLike
My wife had to study Things Fall Apart for her School Certificate exam in English Literature in Kenya in 1968. We have the book still. I must read it!
LikeLike
The white gaze…..is more like a white hot glare. African Americans have developed and handed down a system of beliefs and reactions to this glare that most of us refuse to notice or even admit exists. That truth makes it hard to convince the young ones to resist, negate and DISMANTLE it. Instead they acquiesce to it. That glare gives rise to policies racial profiling that undermine us in the justice system ( there is none….. reference Dred Scott) the economic system (our unemployment is twice the average) and educational system (lower grad rates, FORGET the natural sciences, computer science and mathematics due to low expectation of ourselves and low expectations of others…no mentors). But I am angry and tenacious enough to try to change one mind at a time. Anybody else with me? The big white lies need to meet the truth for all to see.
LikeLike
Thanks once again for turning me on to some things I should really be reading!
LikeLike
I’ve read a short form of this book when I was in the tenth grade and loved it! It was some well done literature.
LikeLike
Update (November 16th 2017): Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Chinua Achebe’s 87th birthday:
LikeLike