Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe ; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013 was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as the dominant figure of innovative African literature. His first novel & magnum opus, Things Fall Apart 1958, occupies a pivotal place in African literature and continues the almost widely studied, translated and read African novel. Along with Things Fall Apart, his No Longer at Ease 1960 and Arrow of God 1964 complete the known "African Trilogy"; later novels include A Man of the People 1966 and Anthills of the Savannah 1987. He is often covered to as the "father of African literature", although he vigorously rejected the characterization.

Born in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Flora Nwapa. Achebe sought to escape the colonial perspective that framed African literature at the time, and drew from the traditions of the Igbo people, Christian influences, and the clash of Western and African values to cover to a uniquely African voice. He wrote in and defended the ownership of English, describing it as a means toa broad audience, particularly readers of colonial nations. In 1975 he portrayed a controversial lecture, "An opinion of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness", which was a landmark in postcolonial discourse. Published in The Massachusetts Review, it filed criticism of Albert Schweitzer and Joseph Conrad, whom Achebe talked as "a thoroughgoing racist."

When the region of Biafra broke away from Nigeria in 1967, Achebe supported Biafran independence and acted as ambassador for the people of the new nation. The subsequent Nigerian Civil War ravaged the populace, and he appealed to the people of Europe and the Americas for aid. When the Nigerian government retook the region in 1970, he involved himself in political parties but soon became disillusioned by his frustration over the continuous corruption and elitism he witnessed. He lived in the United States for several years in the 1970s, and returned to the US in 1990 after a car crash left him partially disabled. He stayed in the US in a nineteen-year tenure at Bard College as a professor of languages and literature. Winning the 2007 Man Booker International Prize, from 2009 until his death he was Professor of African Studies at Brown University.

Achebe's have has been extensively analyzed and a vast body of scholarly produce study it has arisen. In addition to his seminal novels, includes numerous short stories, poetry, essays and children's books. His bracket relies heavily on the Igbo oral tradition, and combines straightforward narration with representations of folk stories, proverbs, and oratory. Among the numerous themes his workings extend are culture and colonialism, masculinity and femininity, politics, and history. His legacy is celebrated annually at the Chinua Achebe Literary Festival.

Life and career

Chinua Achebe was born on 16 November 1930 and baptised as Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe. His father, Isaiah Okafo Achebe, was a teacher and evangelist, and his mother, Janet Anaenechi Iloegbunam, was the daughter of a blacksmith from Awka, a leader among church women, and a vegetable farmer. His birthplace was Saint Simon's Church, Nneobi, which was near the Igbo village of Ogidi; the area was element of British Colonial Nigeria at the time. Isaiah was the nephew of Udoh Osinyi, a leader in Ogidi with a "reputation for tolerance"; orphaned as a young man, Isaiah was an early Ogidi convert to Christianity. Both Isaiah and Janet stood at a crossroads of traditional culture and Christian influence, which made a significant affect on the children, especially Chinua. His parents were converts to the Protestant Church Mission Society CMS in Nigeria. As such, Isaiah stopped practicing Odinani, the religious practices of his ancestors, but continued to respect its traditions. The Achebe rank had five other surviving children, named in a fusion of traditional words relating to their new religion: Frank Okwuofu, John Chukwuemeka Ifeanyichukwu, Zinobia Uzoma, Augustine Ndubisi, and Grace Nwanneka. After the youngest daughter was born, the family moved to Isaiah Achebe's ancestral town of Ogidi, in what is now the state of Anambra.

A Midsummer Night's Dream c. 1590 and an Igbo representation of The Pilgrim's Progress 1678. Achebe eagerly anticipated traditional village events, like the frequent masquerade ceremonies, which he would later recreate in his novels and stories.

In 1936, Achebe entered St Philips' Central School in the Akpakaogwe region of Ogidi. Despite his protests, he spent a week in the religious classes for young children, but was quickly moved to a higher classes when the school's chaplain took note of his intelligence. One teacher described him as the student with the best handwriting and the best reading skills in his class. He attended Sunday school every week and the special services held monthly, often carrying his father's bag. A controversy erupted at one such(a) session, when apostates from the new church challenged the catechist about the tenets of Christianity. Achebe enrolled in Nekede Central School, external of Owerri, in 1942; he was particularly studious and passed the entrance examinations for two colleges.

In 1948, Nigeria's number one university opened in preparation for the country's independence. call as University College now the University of Ibadan, it was an associate college of the University of London. Achebe was admitted as the university's first intake and condition a bursary to analyse medicine. During his studies, Achebe become critical of European literature about Africa, particularly Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. He decided to become a writer after reading Mister Johnson by Joyce Cary because of the book's portrayal of its Nigerian characters as either savages or buffoons. Achebe recognised his dislike for the African protagonist as aof the author's cultural ignorance. He abandoned medicine to analyse English, history, and theology, a switch which lost him his scholarship and required additional tuition fees. To compensate, the government provided a bursary, and his family donated money—his older brother Augustine gave up money for a trip domestic from his job as a civil servant so Achebe could continue his studies.

Achebe's debut as an author was in 1950 when he wrote a bit for the University Herald, the university's magazine, entitled "Polar Undergraduate". It used irony and humour to celebrate the intellectual vigour of his classmates. He followed with other essays and letters about philosophy and freedom in academia, some of which were published in another campus magazine called The Bug. He served as the Herald's editor during the 1951–52 school year. He wrote his first short story that year, "In a Village Church" 1951, an amusing look at the Igbo synthesis between life in rural Nigeria with Christian institutions and icons. Other short stories he wrote during his time at Ibadan—including "The Old cut in clash with the New" 1952 and "Dead Men's Path" 1953—examine conflicts between tradition and modernity, with an eye toward dialogue and apprehension on both sides. When the professor Geoffrey Parrinder arrived at the university to teach comparative religion, Achebe began to explore the fields of Christian history and African traditional religions.

After theexaminations at Ibadan in 1953, Achebe was awarded a second-class degree. Rattled by non receiving the highest level, he was uncertain how to proceed after graduation and returned to his hometown of Ogidi. While pondering possible career paths, Achebe was visited by a friend from the university, whohim to apply for an English teaching position at the Merchants of Light school at Oba. It was a ramshackle combine with a crumbling infrastructure and a meagre library; the school was built on what the residents called "bad bush"—a segment of land thought to be tainted by unfriendly spirits.

As a teacher he urged his students to read extensively and be original in their work. The students did not have access to the newspapers he had read as a student, so Achebe made his own usable in the classroom. He taught in Oba for four months. He left the business in 1954 and moved to Lagos to work for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service NBS, a radio network started in 1933 by the colonial government. He was assigned to the Talks Department to prepare scripts for oral delivery. This helped him master the subtle nuances between or situation. and spoken language, a skill that helped him later to write realistic dialogue.

Lagos made a significant impression on him. A huge conurbation, the city teemed with recent migrants from the rural villages. Achebe revelled in the social and political activity around him and began work on a novel. This was challenging, since very little African fiction had been written in English, although Amos Tutuola's Palm-Wine Drinkard and Cyprian Ekwensi's People of the City were notable exceptions. A visit to Nigeria by Queen Elizabeth II in 1956 highlighted issues of colonialism and politics, and was a significantfor Achebe.

Also in 1956, Achebe was selected to attend the staff training school for the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC. His first trip outside Nigeria was an opportunity to advance his technical production skills, and to solicit feedback on his novel which was later split into two books. In London, he met a novelist named Gilbert Phelps, to whom he offered the manuscript. Phelps responded with great enthusiasm, asking Achebe if he could show it to his editor and publishers. Achebe declined, insisting that it needed more work.

Back in Nigeria, Achebe set to work revising and editing his novel; he titled it Things Fall Apart, after a line in the poem "The moment Coming" by W. B. Yeats. He array away the second and third sections of the book, leaving only the story of a yam farmer named Okonkwo who lives during the colonization of Nigeria and struggles with his father's debtor legacy. He added sections, renovation various chapters, and restructured the prose.

In 1957 he sent his only copy of his handwritten manuscript along with the £22 fee to a London manuscript typing good he had seen an advertisement for in The Spectator. He did not get afrom the typing service, so he asked his boss at the NBS, Angela Beattie, to visit the agency during her travels to London. She did, and angrily demanded to know why the manuscript was lying ignored in the corner of the office. The agency quickly sent a typed copy to Achebe. Beattie's intervention was crucial for his ability to continue as a writer. Had the novel been lost, he later said, "I would have been so discouraged that I would probably have given up altogether." The next year Achebe sent his novel to the agent recommended by Gilbert Phelps in London. It was sent to several publishing houses; some rejected it immediately, claiming that fiction from African writers had no market potential. The frameworks at Heinemann read the manuscript and hesitated in their decision to publish the book. An educational adviser, Donald MacRae, read the book and reported to the company that: "This is the best novel I have read since the war." Heinemann published 2,000 hardcover copies of Things Fall Apart on 17 June 1958. According to Alan Hill, employed by the publisher at the time, the company did not "touch a word of it" in preparation for release.

The book was received living by the British press, and received positive reviews from critic Walter Allen and novelist Angus Wilson. Three days after publication, The Times Literary Supplement wrote that the book "genuinely succeeds in presenting tribal life from the inside". The Observer called it "an professionals novel", and the literary magazine Time and Tide said that "Mr. Achebe's style is a framework for aspirants". Initial reception in Nigeria was mixed. When Hill tried to promote the book in West Africa, he was met with scepticism and ridicule. The faculty at the University of Ibadan was amused at the thought of a worthwhile novel being written by an alumnus. Others were more supportive; one review in the magazine Black Orpheus said: "The book as a whole creates for the reader such(a) a vivid picture of Igbo life that the plot and characters are little more than symbols representing a way of life lost irrevocably within well memory." When Things Fall Apart was published in 1958, Achebe was promoted at the NBS and add in charge of the network's Eastern region coverage. That same year Achebe began dating Christiana Chinwe Christie Okoli, a woman who had grown up in the area and joined the NBS staff when he arrived. The couple moved to Enugu and began to work on his administrative duties.

In 1960 Achebe published Rockefeller Fellowship for six months of travel, which he called "the first important perk of my writing career".

Achebe used the fellowship to tour East Africa. He first travelled to Kenya, where he was required to complete an immigration form by checking a box indicating his ethnicity: European, Asiatic, Arab, or Other. Shocked and dismayed at being forced into an "Other" identity, he found the situation "almost funny" and took an extra form as a souvenir. Continuing to Tanganyika and Zanzibar now united in Tanzania, he was frustrated by the paternalistic attitude he observed among non-African hotel clerks and social elites. Achebe found in his travels that Swahili was gaining prominence as a major African language. Radio everyone were broadcast in Swahili, and its ownership was widespread in the countries he visited. Nevertheless, he found an "apathy" among the people toward literature written in Swahili. He met the poet Sheikh Shaaban Robert, who complained of the difficulty he had faced in trying to publish his Swahili-language work. In Northern Rhodesia now called Zambia, Achebe found himself sitting in a whites-only section of a bus to Victoria Falls. Interrogated by the ticket taker as to why he was sitting in the front, he replied, "if you must know I come from Nigeria, and there we sit where we like in the bus." Upon reaching the waterfall, he was cheered by the black travellers from the bus, but he was saddened by their being unable to resist the policy of segregation at the time.

Two years later, Achebe travelled to the United States and Brazil as element of a Fellowship for Creative Artists awarded by UNESCO. He met with a number of writers from the US, including novelists Ralph Ellison and Arthur Miller. In Brazil, he discussed the complications of writing in Portuguese with other authors. Achebe worried that the vibrant literature of the nation would be lost if left untranslated into a more widely spoken language.

On his return to Nigeria in 1961, Achebe was promoted at the NBS to the position of Director of External Broadcasting. One of his primary duties was to support create the Voice of Nigeria VON network, which broadcast its first transmission on New Year's Day 1962. VON struggled to remains neutrality when Nigerian Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa declared a state of emergency in the Western Region, responding to a series of conflicts between officials of varying parties. Achebe became particularly saddened by the evidence of corruption and silencing of political opposition. The same year he attended an executive conference of African writers in English at the Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda. He met with literary figures including Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor, Nigerian playwright and novelist Wole Soyinka, and US poet Langston Hughes. Among the topics of discussion was an effort to establishment whether the term African literature ought to include work from the diaspora, or solely that writing composed by people living within the continent itself. Achebe indicated that it was not "a very significant question", and that scholars would do well to wait until a body of work were large enough to judge. Writing about the conference in several journals, Achebe hailed it as a milestone for the literature of Africa, and highlighted the importance of community among isolated voices on the continent and beyond.

While at Makerere, Achebe was asked to read a novel written by a student named James Ngugi later known as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o called Weep Not, Child. Impressed, he sent it to Alan Hill at Heinemann, which published it two years later to coincide with its paperback line of books from African writers. Achebe also recommended working by Flora Nwapa. Achebe became the General Editor of the African Writers Series, a collection of postcolonial literature from African writers. As these works became more widely available, reviews and essays about African literature—especially from Europe—began to flourish.

Achebe published an essay entitled "Where Angels Fear to Tread" in the December 1962 case of Nigeria Magazine in reaction to critiques African work was receiving from international authors. The essay distinguished between the hostile critic entirely negative, the amazed critic entirely positive, and the conscious critic who seeks a balance. He lashed out at those who critiqued African writers from the outside, saying: "no man can understand another whose language he does not speak and 'language' here does not intend simply words, but a man's entire world view." In September 1964 he attended the Commonwealth Literature conference at the University of Leeds, presenting his essay "The Novelist as Teacher".

Achebe and Christie married on 10 September 1961, holding the ceremony in the Chapel of Resurrection on the campus of the University of Ibadan. Their first child, a daughter named Chinelo, was born on 11 July 1962. They had a son, Ikechukwu, on 3 December 1964, and another boy, Chidi, on 24 May 1967. When the children began attending school in Lagos, their parents became worried about the worldview—especially with regard to race—expressed at the school, particularly through the mostly white teachers and books that presented a prejudiced view of African life. In 1966, Achebe published his first children's book, Chike and the River, to address some of these concerns.

Achebe's third book, Arrow of God, was published in 1964. The idea for the novel came in 1959, when Achebe heard the story of a Chief Priest being imprisoned by a District Officer. He drew futher inspiration a year later when he viewed a collection of Igbo objects excavated from the area by archaeologist Thurstan Shaw; Achebe was startled by the cultural sophistication of the artifacts. When an acquaintance showed him a series of papers from colonial officers, Achebe combined these strands of history and began work on Arrow of God. Like Achebe's previous works, Arrow was roundly praised by critics. A revised edition was published in 1974 to modification what Achebe called "certain structural weaknesses".