By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
March 21 was here again recently. On this particular day in 2013, Professor Chinua Achebe, one of the world’s most distinguished writers and intellectuals took his last breath in Boston, Massachusetts, mourned and celebrated by his teeming readers, critics and divers people across the globe on whom his work and life had significantly impacted in various ways. I have decided to use this period to examine some of the important discussions that have continued to circulate around Achebe, his work and African literature which appear to have even gained considerable weight since his demise and have also distinguished themselves by the largely tantalizing distortions, half-truths and deliberate misinformation that have been carefully injected into them.
This service is for the benefit of students, younger professors and scholars who were yet to be admitted into the African literary household when some of the events stoking these discussions took place and who are innocently gobbling up the horribly deficient accounts being fed them by those who either do not have any better grasp of those aspects of the African literary history themselves or are on a deliberate mission to distribute misleading concoctions.
It seems so natural to commence with Chinua Achebe and the Nobel Literature Prize given that discussions on it have stubbornly refused to go away even after over a decade of Achebe’s passing.
*Achebe and the Nobel Politics
By 1986, it was very obvious that the Swedish Academy which annually selects the recipients of the Nobel Literature Prize had decided to bring it to Africa. But to actualize this, they did something that viciously affected the credibility of that year’s prize. They summoned African writers to Stockholm to discuss African Literature before them. While several African writers including the illustrious Wole Soyinka who won the prize that year trooped to Sweden to attend the conference which held from 11-17 April, 1986, Chinua Achebe thought that such an event was not worth his time.
In his message to the Nobel Committee rejecting their invitation, Achebe wrote:
“I regret I cannot accept your generous invitation for the simple reason that I do not consider it appropriate for African writers to assemble in European capitals in 1986 to discuss the future of their literature. In my humble opinion it smacks too much of those constitutional conferences arranged in London and Paris for our pre-independence political leaders.
“The fault, however is not with the organizers such as yourselves, but with us the writers of Africa who at this point in time should have outgrown the desire for the easy option of using external platforms instead of grappling with the problem of creating structures of their own at home.
“…I strongly believe that the time is overdue for Africans, especially African writers, to begin to take the initiative in deciding the things that belong to their peace…” (See “Ikejemba: He Had in Him the Elements So Mixed” by Professor Michael Thelwell, Usaafrica dialogue google groups).
One wonders what the astounded Nobel Committee members must have whispered to each other after receiving this letter.
