UNESCO Courier, June, 2001
Chinua Achebe: no longer at ease in exile
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Interview by Amy Otchet, UNESCO Courier journalist
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)
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.
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
Q. In 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?
A. 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.
Q. 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?
A. 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.
Q. 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.
A. 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.
Q. 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”?
A. 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.
Q. 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?
A. 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.
Q. A central question in your work has been about finding an appropriate form of political representation. Does the question still apply?
A. 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.
Q. Western reports on Nigeria’s transition to democracy almost always evoke the spectre of an ethnic explosion. How real is the threat?
A. 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.
Q. 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?
A. 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.
Q. So the writer has a leadership role to play.
A. 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.
Q. When will you go home to take on this role?
A. 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?
Q. What do you miss most?
A. 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.
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Extracts...
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.”
“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”