Celebrating Chinua Achebe - A Literary Giant!
By Chidiebere Sullivan Nwuguru
“I instinctively took sides with the white people. They were fine! They were excellent. They were intelligent. The others were not… they were stupid and ugly. That was the way I was introduced to the danger of not having your own stories,” Achebe recounted in an interview with the Paris Review. It was to salvage Africans from the dangers of having a foreigner tell their own story that led Achebe into the pursuit of writing. “There is that great proverb—that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It's not one man’s job. It's not one person’s job. But it is something we have to do so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail—the bravery, even, of the lions,” he added. Before rising to stardom, even to the point of being widely regarded as the “Father of Modern African Literature”, Achebe grew up in a society that needed their stories to be told accurately in black and white, for the proper documentation and depiction of the people who are at the centre of the story; these needs would later open him up to ethereal and remote worlds as he fondly described.
Born on November 16, 1930, Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was a brilliant child whose literacy skills in high school enabled him to complete two classes in one session under the guidance of a teacher who spotted his brilliance. He would later go on to become one of the first set of students to graduate from the University of Ibadan. At first, he was enrolled to study medicine and surgery under a scholarship but later switched to study English Literature. Although this switch saw him lose his scholarship, he was poised to change the horrendous portrayal of Africans, especially as it borders on their cultures and histories, before and during colonialism, by white authors.
Achebe was not just a storyteller, his first book, “Things Fall Apart”, which was written six years after his graduation from the university, went on to cause a seismic shift in the way Africans were portrayed in the global narrative. For the first time, a story about African narrative, especially as it concerns colonialism broke into the global mainstream with a perspective that did not present Africans as victims, but as a proud civilization that was interrupted by an external force beyond its control. Okonkwo, the protagonist (a tragic hero), through the book, became a perfect reflection of a continent grappling with a change it was never prepared for, a symbol that resonated perfectly with societies across Africa, who for the first time, felt well represented in a book.
Beyond projecting the influence of Westernization on African culture, Achebe equally highlighted a lot of other vital issues through his works. In his book, “A Man of The People”, Nigerian politics was clearly captured. In “There Was A Country,” he recaptured the pogrom of the Nigerian Civil War, especially as a first-hand witness. Through his essays and poetry, he touched on some other topical issues, particularly as they relate to us as Africans. One other thing so remarkable about Achebe was the way he altered the English syntax in his narratives; he did this by employing the oral tradition of the Igbo people in a way that best suited his message. He indeed Igbolized English in a very beautiful and simple way in the delivery of his stories.
Till today, Achebe’s influence in literature across Africa and the world at large has continued to grow, even after his death; the long-lasting relevance of his works speaks volumes.
