A writer on a constant search for new meanings in African stories.
Leaping
forward by casting ballots in Nigeria’s 1999 presidential elections.
A traditional meeting of masks, minds and spirits in South Ika, Nigeria.
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the
Wise man in the Woods
True art is
universal. An old and sometimes pretentious idea until you meet–or read the work
of–Chinua Achebe. No grand theories to build a universal civilization, instead the
Nigerian offers stories steeped in Igbo philosophy, which have inspired the most
diverse readers. The same books that helped to sustain Nelson Mandela during his
prison years are studied as classics by students around the globe. Considered the
founding father of the African novel, Achebe has attracted more scholarly papers
and media articles than any other African author. His work–including some 20 books,
numerous essays and edited collections of African short stories–has been translated
into 50 languages.
The first novelist to offer an African perspective on colonialism, Achebe has turned
the same critical eye to contemporary ills such as the rampant corruption of Nigeria’s
rulers. In his most recent book, Home and Exile (Oxford, 2000), Achebe analyzes the
current state of post-colonial literature based on his personal experience. In particular,
he celebrates his good fortune in being part of a “crossroads generation.” Born in
Nigeria in 1930, he recalls village elders infusing his childhood with traditional
Igbo culture, while a modern education and the heady days of Nigeria’s independence
provided the distance to both respect and criticize his society without passing judgement.
Today Achebe is faced with a painful story: a car accident in 1990 forced him into
a wheelchair. Unable to receive the medical care he needs in Nigeria, he lives with
his wife in a modest house in the woods north of New York City at Bard College–a
small elite liberal arts college, where both Achebes teach.
“During happier days,” says Achebe, “I always suspected that the virtue of difficulty
is enriching. But I didn’t have any real personal experience to base this on until
my accident. I remember being in the hospital and a well-meaning visitor asked, ’Why
you?’ And I said, ’Why not?’ (A deep laugh) ’Who should it be?’”
Under the soft wisdom lies a bitter irony: the man who has beseeched African artists
to stay at home is exiled from the place closest to his heart and where he is needed
most, Nigeria. “But the inner life is a major source and doesn’t entirely depend
on where you happen to be. You make use of what life deals,” says Achebe, “which
is what a lot of our stories are about.”
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“Westerners
see a moral message in art as a weakness”
“The oldest man is the reference book of the village. This keeps the mind active” |
Although
confined to a wheelchair far from his native Nigeria, the founding father of African
literature in English is as close to his beloved home as in student days, when revolt
awoke the writer within
En your last book,
you recall listening as a child to the conversations of your relatives and family
friends who met at the piazza of your father’s house. You only began to understand
the significance of their discussions decades later. Today, at the age of 70, are
there any ideas from those early times that continue to rattle around in your head?
Yes–the recognition of the importance of stories. We don’t know one-tenth of the
stories knocking about. But if you want to understand a people’s experience, life
and society, you must turn to their stories. I am constantly looking for that moment
when an old story suddenly reveals a new meaning.
It’s a bitter loss not to meet the kind of people that I encountered in my father’s
house. They were not giants–in fact they were quite unimpressive in terms of what
they achieved, but when they are gone, you realize that they were more important
than you originally thought.
At the age of 25, you began writing your first story, Things Fall Apart,
which is considered one of the first African classics to be published in English
(1958). Legend has it that the book was the result of what you describe as a “landmark
rebellion,” when your fellow students openly challenged the latent racism in Mister
Johnson, written by a British author and revered by colonial teachers. At the time,
did you have any idea where this rebellion would lead?
Mister Johnson did not turn me into a writer–I was born that way. But it did open
my eyes to the fact that my home was under attack and that my home was not merely
a house or a town, but an awakening story in which the first fragments of my own
existence began to have coherence and meaning.
To begin with, it just seemed to me that everyone was entitled to tell his or her
own story. Some of the first people to embrace this notion were friends and classmates
who more or less said, “Well if Chinua can do it, so can I.” Then came the ladies.
Even the British writers who had previously tried to represent us began to step back
and leave the telling to the owners of the story.
This recognition hasn’t stopped growing. It’s gone to the point where the seventh
edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature includes Things Fall Apart
as a major contribution of the 20th century.
Artists are now pushing to not only tell their own story but to do so in their
own language. You must understand their frustration. Things Fall Apart has
been translated into about 50 languages but not your native Igbo.
Of course it bothers me. However, I feel very strongly that a novel written about
the Igbo people in English is better than no novel at all. You can never wait for
the ideal circumstances to take action. You do what you can right away–not in 50
years or 15–because you cannot be certain where the current situation will lead.
For instance, a few months ago I went home for the first time in 10 years. The real
purpose of the journey was to give a public lecture in Igbo about the problem of
the language (the continued use of a standard dialect imposed by colonial missionaries).
It was one of the most incredible things I have ever done in my life. Thousands and
thousands of people in an open stadium were dramatically responding to my words.
So the question of Igbo language is very close to my heart and I’m working on it
all the time. Things Fall Apart tells the world about the Igbo people. Now
let us figure out how to tell our children and ourselves in our own language the
same story and even more. It’s not a matter of choosing this language or the other,
but about accommodating both possibilities.
Your stories revolve around the weaknesses of your central characters. As you’ve
written, “it’s not very exciting when monstrous characters cause trouble. When an
ordinary man causes havoc, that is more ominous.” But Western critics often seem
very uncomfortable with this irony. They’d rather see a hero come through. Their
criticism seems to reflect an essentialist view of the good African or the bad.
I think the word essentialism is appropriate. I don’t know where this defective way
of looking at art comes from. I suspect it’s more Western than African because in
my case–that of the Igbo–art is inclusive. It includes ordinary people and their
lives.
We have, for instance, this Mbari celebration in which ordinary people are secluded
for a few months to work with professional artists. Everyone and everything is included
in the creative process. Whatever appears on the horizon–be it a new religion or
a missionary’s bicycle–is part of this story. This is a way of domesticating what
is new or foreign. By bringing a new element into your home, you bring it under surveillance.
It’s both about hospitality and practicality to ensure your own safety.
The goddess–called Ani by the Igbo–who commands the Mbari festival is not only responsible
for art and creativity but morality as well. So there is always a frontier between
good and evil. This is why art cannot be used to justify destruction or an essentialist
view of people. That doesn’t mean that our heroes are angels–they are human like
anyone else.
However, Westerners see a moral message in art as a weakness. In the West, a novel
that is said to be “political” is not very good. Or critics say, “despite its political
message, it is good,” which is in itself a very political thing to say. For it means,
“the world is okay; we don’t need to drag any extraneous or political issues into
the story.”
In searching for a metaphor to reflect post-colonial literature, you first considered:
“Until the lions produce their own historian, the story of the hunt will glorify
only the hunter.” In the end, you opted for Salman Rushdie’s saying: “The empire
writes back.” Why?
The metaphor of the lion was far too dramatic. The lion was bound to drag in willy-nilly
the question of its strength and overpowering the enemy. But the “The empire writes
back” reminded me of the first post office in my village. As a child, I watched the
building go up and followed the transactions going on there. As I learned to put
pen to paper, I watched postmasters on bicycles bringing sacks of letters and taking
others away. Then came the blue-painted lorry emblazoned with “Royal Mail”. As children,
we called it Ogbuaekwu-ugwo, which means Killer-that-doesn’t-pay-back. We saw the
various forms in which we were being integrated into the empire.... “Writing back”
is not violent like the lion. It celebrates debate and persuasion.
You have been revolting since your early days against a long line of colonial
literature which was originally used to justify the slave trade. The current media
trend of reporting only on the misery of Africa stems, in your eyes, from this same
line of thinking. The latest chapter in this “story” is the call to “take a hard
look at Africa” and insist that the continent’s problems are strictly her own fault.
Why this rise in “zealotry”?
I suspect it’s the guilt of imperialism and slavery. Slavery is probably the one
thing that the West is still most uncomfortable about. I suspect that the “discovery”
of slavery in Africa today gives a good deal of good feeling to this group of zealots.
Some people, perhaps not realizing what’s going on, are playing into their trap.
There is no denying the abuse of children that can go on in poverty–when parents,
for example, send their children to work because they are unable to earn a bare minimum.
But then some well-meaning Westerner stumbles upon this and cries “Slavery!” The
downgrading of the word “slave” to represent any kind of abuse or ill-treatment doesn’t
help the story about what happened for 300 years in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
For every two steps forward, take one step backwards–that’s the way you described
the “experiment known as Nigeria” about 20 years ago in an interview. What phase
is the country in now?
Nigeria took a huge step to get out of military dictatorship. However the military
had been so powerful for so long that an ordinary civilian leader taking them on
seemed to require too much luck to succeed.
So Olusegun Obasanjo [a retired general elected president in 1997] seemed to be the
ideal person to navigate this problem. He was the only military ruler ever to hand
power back to civilians, in 1987. And finally, he experienced the terrorism of the
military dictator Sani Abacha and is lucky to be alive.
He has done fairly well. But the problem of getting Nigeria back to sanity, let alone
prosperity, is far greater than anyone imagined. So there doesn’t seem to be a chance
for much dramatic achievement in this first term. But the fact that we are still
knocking about and asking how we should proceed is a truly great measure of success.
The fear I have now comes from rumours that the next president could be Ibrahim Babangida,
the military dictator preceding Abacha. If we were to get the notion that the retired
generals from the terrible past will take their turn to rule–that would be a signal
for the ultimate suicide.
A central question in your work has been about finding an appropriate form of
political representation. Does the question still apply?
Finding the form is not difficult, at least on paper. But it is difficult when the
economic poverty of the people is so great that we cannot trust them to exercise
control over who rules them–a situation in which they would accept a few dollars
from anybody in exchange for their vote. The level of poverty is crucial in measuring
the success of any kind of representation. And the most ruthless and cynical leaders
know this. So they plunder the state and stash the money to use whenever there is
an election.
Western reports on Nigeria’s transition to democracy almost always evoke the spectre
of an ethnic explosion. How real is the threat?
The ethnic problem is real but an explosion is not inevitable. You have differences
in language, culture and history. But it is important to realize that none of these
ethnic groups were recently imported into Nigeria. They have all been there through
the millennia. The level of contact among groups has increased, but nobody is an
intruder. So if it was possible in the past for these people to live as near or distant
neighbours, then there is no reason to expect an inevitable explosion today.
Whenever there is a problem, if you look closely you will find somebody manipulating
differences between people to serve a purpose of their own. We saw it clearly at
the beginning of our nationalist existence, when the British were planning their
exit from Nigeria. They helped to set one group against another so that we would
fight amongst ourselves instead of against them.
Our leaders inherited that ability to create dissension. You saw it at its worst
during our civil war, the Biafran War. And we have it today with the imposition of
sharia law in parts of the country. Our real problem is one of leadership at all
levels.
You once asked in an interview: “How do we transmit a national culture to Nigerians
if not through works of imagination?” Aren’t you putting a lot of responsibility
on the shoulders of the artist?
Yes it is heavy. But a little goes a long way. It surprised me for instance when
in 1987 a leader of one of the main parties, which is based in the Muslim north,
asked me to be his deputy. I joined simply to tell people that it was possible to
go from eastern Nigeria to a party in the north that is led by a mullah, an honest
man of integrity. That I was a writer rather than politician made the proposal doubly
remarkable.
So the writer has a leadership role to play.
Yes, but you must also explain that nobody can have all the answers. By saying that
our problem is one of leadership doesn’t mean that the “followership” has no work.
Everybody wants to be a leader until you see the responsibilities it entails. You
see this clearly in a society like mine, where age, for example, is revered. But
not revered for nothing. The oldest man is the one who knows most about the past.
He is the reference book of the village. That kind of responsibility keeps a man’s
mind active.
When will you go home to take on this role?
Aaah, I really want to go back home. But there are a number of serious limitations
that have increased since I went into the wheelchair. I have to consider for instance
such things: is there a hospital within reach? If I need certain antibiotics, will
they be available?
What do you miss most?
The atmosphere of real work. The atmosphere of people who are on the same page with
you. For instance, just before my accident, I became president of my town council.
The other day, the current president wrote to me to ask for my help with a project
for a new library. Nobody in upstate New York comes and says, “we want to build a
library, can you help?” I miss being where I am needed most.
Major
titles: Things Fall Apart (over 8 million copies sold since its publication
in 1958 by Heinemann), No Longer At Ease (1960), Girls at War and Other
Stories (1972), Anthills of the Savannah (1987), The Voter (Viva
Books, 1994) |
