Showing posts with label Ifi Amadiume. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ifi Amadiume. Show all posts

Friday, May 5, 2017

Chinua Achebe’s Unrelenting Feminist Critics

Chinua Achebe
*Chinua Achebe

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 
Recently, I was at a forum put together to celebrate the work of Chinua Achebe, one of Africa’s widely read authors who is universally regarded as the father and rallying point of African Literature. As the speeches flowed and the ovations sounded, I could feel the depth of admiration in the various speakers for Achebe and his work.  The whole thing was moving on well until one lady came up with elaborate praise for Achebe for the significant “improvement” his female characters achieved in Anthills Of the Savannah, unlike what obtained in Things Fall Apart, his first novel, which is globally acknowledged as a classic, and which now exists in more than fifty major languages.
 
 Now, I would easily have ignored and quickly forgotten this comment as “one of those things” one was bound to hear in a “mixed crowd” if I had not also heard similar thoughts brazenly expressed by some female scholars whom I thought should be better informed. 

For instance, I was at a lecture in Port Harcourt some years ago when a female professor of literature announced with the excitement of someone who had just discovered another earth: When Achebe created his earlier female characters, she said,  they complained; then he responded by giving them Clara (in No Longer At Ease), they still complained; then he gave them Eunice (in A Man Of The People) and they still asked for more; and then he gave them Beatrice (in Anthills Of The Savannah)! 

Unfortunately, I have encountered thoughts even more pedestrian than this flaunted by several scholars and readers alike.

Honestly, I had thought that this matter had long been resolved and forgotten. It should be clear (and I should think that this has been sufficiently stressed) that whatever perceived differences in the various female characters created by Achebe are a function of the prevailing realities in the different settings and periods that produced them, and Achebe’s ability to record those realties so accurately should not be construed to mean that he also “celebrates” them (as some critics have wrongly imputed) or advocates their sustenance.

In his lecture at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, specially slated to precede the very memorable Eagle On Iroko Symposium organized to mark Achebe’s sixtieth birthday in 1990, Prof Dan Izevbaye described Achebe as “history’s eyewitness,” and I easily agree with him.

Today Achebe is being widely hailed for using his first novel, Things Fall Apart, to change the distorted images of Africa celebrated in the heaps of mostly concocted historical and literary accounts about the continent and its people by mostly Western writers. But Achebe did not see any wisdom in countering these distortions with his own distortions. He merely presented reality with both its glowing and unedifying sides with exceptional insight, penetration and grasp of the real picture which the foreigner, whose impressions were mostly coloured by many years of deep-seated prejudices, was incapable of capturing.

It is a credit to Achebe’s mastery of his art that even though his readers might be shocked, for instance, at the bloodcurdling murder of Ikemefuna (which every sane person should find overly revolting), they would still find it nearly impossible to categorize the incident as  one more evidence of savage pleasure of the native in wanton bloodletting. The reader is able to see an Okonkwo with genuine human feelings that are even more appealing than those of the white man who was attempting to “civilize” him, but who would have no qualms wiping out an entire community, as happened in Abame!

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Lingering Issues In Chinua Achebe's Female Characterisation

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 
Recently, (Saturday April 12, 2008), I was at the National Theatre, Lagos, because of Prof Chinua Achebe, Africa’s best known and most widely read author, who many regard as the indisputable father and rallying point of African Literature.  The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) had organised a forum to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Achebe’s classic novel, Things Fall Apart, published in London by William Heinemann in June 1958. 
*Chinua Achebe 
I was held back at the office by some engagements and so by the time I arrived at the venue, I had missed a substantial part of the ‘Interactive Session’. I came in while Mr. Segun Olusola, a former ambassador and arts enthusiast, was concluding his speech. As I sat down, I heard him paying glowing tribute to Achebe and his novel and saying how happy he was to be at the event. He then announced that he would also grace the Awka event in honour of Achebe and Things Fall Apart coming up more than a week later.  

Achebe evokes a very special kind of feelings in most people that have read either his novels or essays. And this was evident in the emotion-laden speeches made by various speakers at the National Theatre that day. The literary patriarch and icon was absent at the ceremony, but his image loomed large everywhere, and this, mind you, was not because of those large posters and billboards bearing his photographs (and, of course, the emblem of the main sponsors, Fidelity Bank Plc) displayed at strategic points by the organisers. 

His wit, deep insights, the wisdom he conveys with such sagely precision, the simple, subtle diction and disarming style, the impressive imageries he effortlessly conjures and the pleasant local colour he so generously splashes on his narratives, never cease to overwhelm. Achebe is one writer whose reputation and looming image was neither built nor enhanced by any prize. What further glamour can occasional decorations add to an already very colourful and ‘big masquerade’? The man rather dignifies any prize he decides to accept and not the other way round. For instance, as Achebe and Things Fall Apart are celebrated across the world this season, only a few, perhaps, might consider it necessary to recall that a few months ago, he was awarded the Man Booker Prize – a very important prize, no doubt.  Such information, though great in its own right, makes little or no difference to the man’s already solidly established stature.    

It is impossible to read Things Fall Apart without visualizing the village of Umuofia in its alluring freshness in the warm embrace of rich nature in its most exciting vivacity and purity.  This is the only novel I know written by an African that has acquired such a stature and influence, as to be so celebrated in such a grand fashion.

No, doubt, Chinua Achebe is Africa’s rare gift to the world and Nigeria should never cease to be glad and grateful that this giant emerged from its loins.

With his novels, superb lectures and rich essays, Achebe has been able to compel the world out there to significantly alter their entrenched warped views about Africa.

After a speaking engagement in Canberra, Australia, in the summer of 1973, Professor Manning Clark, a distinguished Australian historian wrote to Achebe and pleaded: “I hope you come back and speak again here, because we need to lose the blinkers of our past. So come and help the young to grow up without the prejudices of their forefathers…”
I find this display of sincerity very touching.

Part of the greatness of
Things Fall Apart is the significant readership it enjoys across cultures and races; its message continues to register lasting impacts that are rare and peculiar. Not a few Nigerians can recall the instant celebrity status they had suddenly assumed or even some favours that had come their way in one remote part of the world or the other just because they had let it be known that they were from Achebe’s country.
*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 
Achebe has also remarkably excelled as a critic and essayist. His 1975 Chancellor’s Lecture at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, entitled, “An Image Of Africa: Racism In Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, which I am never of tired of re-reading, has not only significantly altered the nature and direction of Conrad criticism, but is now widely regarded as one of the significant and influential essays in the criticism of literature in English.

As I listened to several speeches at the National Theatre on that Saturday, I could feel the depth of admiration displayed by the various speakers towards Achebe and his work.  The whole thing was moving on well until one lady came up with elaborate praise for Achebe for the significant “improvement” his female characters achieved in Anthills Of the Savannah, unlike what obtained in Things Fall Apart, which we had all gathered to celebrate that afternoon.

 Now, I would easily have ignored and quickly forgotten this comment as “one of those things” one was bound to hear in a “mixed crowd” if I had not also heard similar thoughts brazenly expressed by some female scholars whom I thought should be better informed. For instance, I was at a lecture in Port Harcourt some years ago when a female professor of literature announced with the excitement of someone who had just discovered another earth: When Achebe created his earlier female characters, she said,  we complained; then he responded by giving us Clara (in No Longer At Ease) and we still complained; then he gave us Eunice (in A Man Of The People) and we still asked for more; and then he gave us Beatrice (in Anthills Of The Savannah)! Unfortunately, I have encountered thoughts even more pedestrian than this boldly flaunted in several literary essays by women and some men.