Chinua achebe essays
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Chinua Achebe on How Storytelling Helps Us Survive History’s Rough Patches
“Those who tell you ‘Do not put too much politics in your art’ are not being honest,” beloved Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (November 16, 1930–March 21, 2013) observed in his forgotten 1980 conversation with James Baldwin. “If you look very carefully you will see that they are the same people who are quite happy with the situation as it is… What they are saying is don’t upset the system.” By that point, Achebe had already been busy upsetting the system for more than two decades, beginning with his iconic debut novel Things Fall Apart, which remains the most widely read book in African literature.
Eight years after his conversation with Baldwin, 58-year-old Achebe sat down to discuss the storyteller’s task in both upsetting the system and stabilizing the spirit of the people with another exceptional interlocutor — Bill Moyers, who so poetically describes Achebe as “a storyteller who hears the music of history, weaves the fabric of memory, and sometimes
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Fall 1991
An Interview
Bradford Morrow and Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe and I met for the first time on Martin Luther King Day, this year. It was snowing hard and the trip from New York up the Saw Mill River and the Taconic was daunting. When I pulled into the little frozen-mud drive that led to his house near Annandale-on-Hudson, and was asked in, I felt an immediate sense of warmth—warmth both physical and of spirit. I’d heard this about Chinua and his family. I had heard that he was not just a man of immense literary greatness, but that he embodied a profoundly decent humanity.
Since that snowy day I have had the good fortune of passing many hours with him up at Bard College, where we both teach. I’ve since read and reread all his books, and count him without hesitation as one of my favorite writers. I think it is a shame that he—a hero in his native Nigeria, well-known throughout the rest of Africa, and in Europe—remains less appreciated in America. Many readers, myself quite obviously included, are committed to Chinua Achebe’s vision and work. But it is clear to me that •
By rights I should be talking to Chinua Achebe in Ogidi, his home town in Nigeria. He should be telling me about his efforts as chairman of the village council to build schools, improve the water and bring health to the people. We should be talking about whether and when the rains will come, and how the yam harvest is doing this year.
Instead, we are sitting in a bungalow on the banks of the Hudson, upriver from New York, surrounded by clapboard houses, rolling green hills and cows chewing the cud. The nearest restaurants have names such as Rose's Kitchen, Pat's Place and Hickory. As I arrive, Achebe is sitting at his desk at the window overlooking a gravel front drive.
It seems a strange place to find the writer credited above all others with inventing the modern African novel. Nadine Gordimer, one of the many writers indebted to Achebe for the ground that he broke, described him
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