It ended on the right. She was alive and well. He sang the song again, and it ended on the left. But the second time did not count. That was a favorite saying of children. Tradition holds the people together, but it also drives them apart. The missionaries, though ignorant of local customs, are not all bad: one in particular treats the villagers with respect.
But others show little interest in their way of life. This was a grotesque misreading. I want one of my sons to join these people and be my eyes there. If there is nothing in it you will come back. But if there is something there you will bring home my share. The world is like a Mask, dancing. If you want to see it well you do not stand in one place. My spirit tells me that those who do not befriend the white man today will be saying had we known tomorrow.
Achebe then rewrites the passage, preserving its content but stripping its style:. I am sending you as my representative among these people—just to be on the safe side in case the new religion develops.
One has to move with the times or else one is left behind. I have a hunch that those who fail to come to terms with the white man may well regret their lack of foresight. The publisher soon asked him to sign on as general editor of its African Writers Series, a post he held, without pay, for ten years. Among the writers whose novels were published during his tenure were Flora Nwapa, John Munonye, and Ayi Kwei Armah—all of whom became important figures in the emerging African literature.
But the appeal of English was not purely commercial. Political imperatives were not hypothetical in Nigeria, which, having achieved independence in , entered a prolonged period of upheaval. In , following two coups that had led to genocidal violence against the Igbo, Igboland declared independence as the Republic of Biafra.
He devoted himself fully to the Biafran cause. But the fledgling nation starved, its roads and ports blockaded by the British-backed Nigerian Army. It has its merits and it no doubt has its defects.
Igbo people understand quite well that their way of looking at the world is not the only one, or should not be the only one. They say that a young man who has never travelled imagines that his mother makes the best soup in the world.
So they encourage you to travel, with all respect to your mother. This is something very complex and important for the life of the community. My father, who was a Christian convert and a teacher, had pretty much abandoned the traditional life of the Igbo society, but he was still so imbued with this aspect of the life of the community that before he died he dictated to my brother the entire genealogy of our town, from the man who was the first ancestor down to every family, and my brother got this all down on paper.
I saw that happen. You knew exactly how every part of the town fit into the family tree. Then if there was a land quarrel between families. That was their job; they would know. And they would not play any tricks about this—it was a sacred duty. They really do remember. They remember much better than we do, those of us who write things down. It is something which is yet to come to us, with literacy and writing The Igbo long ago abandoned the notion of kingship, in favor of an egalitarian system of government.
Therefore by rights, there should not be any griots among the Igbo, because the Igbo are very democratic. They don't have to be exactly the same. But it will be very valuable if we can develop a literary tradition that carries the intonations of this great past. It can be discussed and even interrogated, but that should not diminish whatever value the story has.
Rather it puts each story in a proper perspective, and it will also encourage diversity. Those who have not spoken so far need to be heard, all around the world. And we will not be poorer, we will be richer for that. Achebe, Chinua. Anthills of the Savannah. New York: Doubleday, Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. New York : Anchor-Doubleday, A3 H6 ].
This classic essay is widely reprinted - here are some sources where you can find it: --R pt. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, Robert Kimbrough. New York: W. Norton, Novels for Students , Vol.
Gale Literature Resource Center. Francis Abiola Irele. New York: Norton, Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays. London: Heinemann, Things Fall Apart. Bacon, Katie. Yes, I do agree. I think the result has been to create a fatigue, whether it's charity fatigue or fatigue toward being good to people who are less fortunate.
I think that's a pity. The reason for this concentration on the failings of Africans is the same as what we've been talking about—this tradition of bad news, or portraying Africa as a place that is different from the rest of the world, a place where humanity is really not recognizable. When people hear the word Africa, they have come to expect certain images to follow. If you see a good house in Lagos, Nigeria, it doesn't quite fit the picture you have in your head, because you are looking for the slum—that is what the world expects journalists covering a city in Africa to come back with.
Now, if you are covering America, you are not focusing on slums every day of your life. You see a slum once in a while, maybe you talk about it, but the rest of the time you are talking about other things.
It is that ability to see the complexity of a place that the world doesn't seem to be able to take to Africa, because of this baggage of centuries of reporting about Africa. The result is the world doesn't really know Africa. If you are an African or you live in Africa, this stands out very clearly to you, you are constantly being bombarded with bad news, and you know that there is good news in many places.
This doesn't mean that the bad news doesn't exist, that's not what I'm saying. But it exists alongside other things. Africa is not simple—people want to simplify it. Africa is very complex.
Very bad things go on— they should be covered— but there are also some good things. This is something that comes with this imbalance of power that we've been talking about.
The people who consume the news that comes back from the rest of the world are probably not really interested in hearing about something that is working. Those who have the ability to send crews out to bring back the news are in a position to determine what the image of the various places should be, because they have the resources to do it. Now, an African country doesn't have a television crew coming to America, for instance, and picking up the disastrous news.
So America sends out wonderful images of its success, power, energy, and politics, and the world is bombarded in a very partial way by good news about the powerful and bad news about the less powerful.
You mentioned that literature was used to justify slavery and imperialism. What is this negative coverage of Africa being used to justify now? It's going to be used to justify inaction, which is what this fatigue is all about. Why bother about Africa? Nothing works there, or nothing ever will work.
There is a small minority of people who think that way, and they may be pushing this attitude. But even if nobody was pushing it, it would simply happen by itself. This is a case of sheer inertia, something that has been happening for a long time just goes on happening, unless something stops it.
It becomes a habit of mind. The relationship between me and the society I write about is so close and so necessary. Maybe I make it sound as if it's impossible for me to write outside of Nigeria. That's really not true. I think what I mean is that it is nourishing for me to be working from Nigeria, there's a kind of nourishment you get there that you cannot get elsewhere. But it doesn't mean you cannot work.
You can work, you can always use what's available to you, whether it's memory, hearsay, news items, or imagination. I intend to write a novel in America. When I have done it, perhaps we can discuss the effect of writing a novel from abroad.
It's not impossible. Now a related question, which is not exactly the one you've asked, is, Why don't you write a novel about America?
The reason for that is not simply that I don't want to sing the Lord's song in a foreign land, it's just the practical issue of this balance we've been talking about.
There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else. So that's really my reason, it's nothing mystical. I have no intention of trying to write about America because it would be using up rare energy that should be used to produce something that has no chance of being produced otherwise.
Has living here changed the way you think about Nigeria? It must have, but this is not something you can weigh and measure. I've been struck, for instance, by the impressive way that political transition is managed in America.
Nobody living here can miss that if you come from a place like Nigeria which is unable so far to manage political transitions in peace. I wish Nigeria would learn to do this. There are other things, of course, where you wish Americans would learn from Nigerians: the value of people as people, the almost complete absence of race as a factor in thought, in government.
That's something that I really wish for America, because no day passes here without some racial factor coming up somewhere, which is a major burden on this country. Could you talk about your visit to Nigeria this past summer? What was it like for you to go back there?
It was a very powerful and emotional experience. Emotional mostly because I had not been there in many years, but the circumstances of my leaving Nigeria were very sad, and many people who were responding to my return had that in their mind, and so it was more than simply someone who had not been home in quite a few years.
And then you add to that all the travails that Nigeria had gone through in the rule of General Abacha, the severe hardship and punishment that the country had suffered in those years. And the new experiment in democratic rule was also just a few months old when I went home, so it was a very powerful experience.
Do you hope to be able to go back there to live at some point? Yes, I do indeed. Things would have to be better than they are now for me to be able to do that. Things like hospitals that used to be quite good before have been devastated. The roads you have to take to get to a hospital if the need arises, not to talk about the security of life—both of those would have to improve. But we are constantly watching the situation. It's not just me, but my family. My wife and children—many of them would be happier functioning at home, because you tend to have your work cut out for you at home.
Here there are so many things to do, but they are not necessarily the things you'd rather be doing. Whereas at home it's different—it's clear what needs to be done, what's calling for your special skills or special attachment. I keep hoping, and that hope really is simply a sense of what Nigeria could be or could do, given the immense resources it has—natural resources, but even more so human resources.
There's a great diversity of vibrant peoples who are not always on the best of terms, but when they are, they can really make things happen. And one hopes that we will someday be able to realize that potential.
Could you talk about your dream, expressed in Home and Exile, of a "universal civilization"—a civilization that some believe we've achieved and others think we haven't?
What the universal civilization I dream about would be, I really don't know, but I know what it is not. It is not what is being presented today, which is clearly just European and American. A universal civilization is something that we will create. If we accept the thesis that it is desirable to do, then we will go and work on it and talk about it. We have not really talked about it. All those who are saying it's there are really suggesting that it's there by default—they are saying to us, let's stop at this point and call what we have a universal civilization.
I don't think we want to swindle ourselves in that way; I think if we want a universal civilization, we should work to bring it about. And when it appears, I think we will know, because it will be different from anything we have now.
There may be cultures that may sadly have to go, because no one is rooting for them, but we should make the effort to prevent this. We have to hold this conversation, which is a conversation of stories, a conversation of languages, and see what happens.
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