• Chinua Achebe Biography

Chinua Achebe's emergence as 'the founding father of African literature. In the English language,' in the words of the Harvard University philosopher K. Anthony Appiah, could very well be traced to his encounter in the early fifties with Joyce Cary's novel Mister Johnson, set in Achebe's native Nigeria. Achebe read it while studying at the University College in Idaban during the last years of British colonial rule, and in a curriculum full of Shakespeare, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, Mister Johnson stood out as one of the few books about Africa. Time magazine had recently declared Mister Johnson the 'best book ever written about Africa,' but Achebe and his classmates had quite a different reaction.

Author: Chinua Achebe Editor: Oxford University Press ISBN: 081 FileSize: 99 MB File Format: Pdf Read: 9999 Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe Summary. Chinua Achebe is Africa's most prominent writer, the author of Things Fall Apart, the best known-and best selling-novel ever to come out of Africa.

The students saw the Nigerian hero as an 'embarrassing nitwit,' as Achebe writes in his new book, and detected in the Irish author's descriptions of Nigerians 'an undertow of uncharitableness. A contagion of distaste, hatred, and mockery.'

Mister Johnson, Achebe writes, 'opened my eyes to the fact that my home was under attack and that my home was not merely a house or a town but, more importantly, an awakening story.' In 1958, Achebe responded with his own novel about Nigeria, which was one of the first books to tell the story of European colonization from an African perspective. (It has since become a classic, published in fifty languages around the world.) Things Fall Apart marked a turning point for African authors, who in the fifties and sixties began to take back the narrative of the so-called 'dark continent.' Home and Exile, which grew out of three lectures Achebe gave at Harvard in 1998, describes this transition to a new era in literature. The book is both a kind of autobiography and a rumination on the power stories have to create a sense of dispossession or to confer strength, depending on who is wielding the pen. Achebe depicts his gradual realization that Mister Johnson was just one in a long line of books written by Westerners that presented Africans to the world in a way that Africans didn't agree with or recognize, and he examines the 'process of 're-storying' peoples who had been knocked silent by all kinds of dispossession.' He ends with a hope for the twenty-first century—that this 're-storying' will continue and will eventually result in a 'balance of stories among the world's peoples.'

Achebe encourages writers from the Third World to stay where they are and write about their own countries, as a way to help achieve this balance. Yet he himself has lived in the United States for the past ten years— a reluctant exile. In 1990, Achebe was in a car accident in Nigeria, and was paralyzed from the waist down. While recuperating in a London hospital, he received a call from Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, offering him a teaching job and a house built for his needs. Achebe thought he would be at Bard, a small school in a quiet corner of the Hudson River Valley, for only a year or two, but the political situation in Nigeria kept worsening. During the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha, who ruled from 1993 to 1998, much of Nigeria's wealth—the country has extensive oil fields—went into the pocket of its leader, and public infrastructure that had been quite good, like hospitals and roads, withered.

In 1999, Olusegan Obasanjo became Nigeria's first democratically elected President since 1983, and the situation in Nigeria is improving, albeit slowly and shakily. Achebe is watching from afar, waiting for his country to rebuild itself enough for him to return. Achebe, who is sixty-nine, has written five novels, including (1964) and (1987), five books of nonfiction, and several collections of short stories and poems.

Achebe spoke recently with me at his home in Annandale-on-Hudson, in New York. —Katie Bacon Chinua Achebe You have been called the progenitor of the modern African novel, and Things Fall Apart has maintained its resonance in the decades since it was written.

Have you been surprised by the effect the book has had? Was I surprised? Yes, at the beginning.

There was no African literature as we know it today. And so I had no idea when I was writing Things Fall Apart whether it would even be accepted or published. All of this was new—there was nothing by which I could gauge how it was going to be received. But, of course, something doesn't continue to surprise you every day. After a while I began to understand why the book had resonance. I began to understand my history even better.

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It wasn't as if when I wrote it I was an expert in the history of the world. I was a very young man.

I knew I had a story, but how it fit into the story of the world—I really had no sense of that. Its meaning for my Igbo people was clear to me, but I didn't know how other people elsewhere would respond to it.

Did it have any meaning or resonance for them? I realized that it did when, to give you just one example, the whole class of a girls' college in South Korea wrote to me, and each one expressed an opinion about the book. And then I learned something, which was that they had a history that was similar to the story of Things Fall Apart—the history of colonization. This I didn't know before.

Their colonizer was Japan. So these people across the waters were able to relate to the story of dispossession in Africa. People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story, if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.

It seems that people from places that haven't experienced colonization in the same way have also responded to the story. There are different forms of dispossession, many, many ways in which people are deprived or subjected to all kinds of victimization—it doesn't have to be colonization. Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do —it can make us identify with situations and people far away. If it does that, it's a miracle. I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you.

What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders. A character in Things Fall Apart remarks that the white man 'has put a knife on the things that held us together, and we have fallen apart.' Are those things still severed, or have the wounds begun to heal?

What I was referring to there, or what the speaker in the novel was thinking about, was the upsetting of a society, the disturbing of a social order. The society of Umuofia, the village in Things Fall Apart, was totally disrupted by the coming of the European government, missionary Christianity, and so on. That was not a temporary disturbance; it was a once and for all alteration of their society. To give you the example of Nigeria, where the novel is set, the Igbo people had organized themselves in small units, in small towns and villages, each self-governed.

With the coming of the British, Igbo land as a whole was incorporated into a totally different polity, to be called Nigeria, with a whole lot of other people with whom the Igbo people had not had direct contact before. The result of that was not something from which you could recover, really. You had to learn a totally new reality, and accommodate yourself to the demands of this new reality, which is the state called Nigeria. Various nationalities, each of which had its own independent life, were forced by the British to live with people of different customs and habits and priorities and religions. And then at independence, fifty years later, they were suddenly on their own again. They began all over again to learn the rules of independence. The problems that Nigeria is having today could be seen as resulting from this effort that was initiated by colonial rule to create a new nation.

There's nothing to indicate whether it will fail or succeed. It all depends. One might hear someone say, How long will it take these people to get their act together? It's going to take a very, very long time, because it's really been a whole series of interruptions and disturbances, one step forward and two or three back. It has not been easy. One always wishes it had been easier. We've compounded things by our own mistakes, but it doesn't really help to pretend that we've had an easy task.

In Home and Exile, you talk about the negative ways in which British authors such as Joseph Conrad and Joyce Cary portrayed Africans over the centuries. What purpose did that portrayal serve? It was really a straightforward case of setting us up, as it were.

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery. The cruelties of this trade gradually began to trouble many people in Europe. Some people began to question it. But it was a profitable business, and so those who were engaged in it began to defend it—a lobby of people supporting it, justifying it, and excusing it. It was difficult to excuse and justify, and so the steps that were taken to justify it were rather extreme.

You had people saying, for instance, that these people weren't really human, they're not like us. Or, that the slave trade was in fact a good thing for them, because the alternative to it was more brutal by far. And therefore, describing this fate that the Africans would have had back home became the motive for the literature that was created about Africa. Even after the slave trade was abolished, in the nineteenth century, something like this literature continued, to serve the new imperialistic needs of Europe in relation to Africa.

This continued until the Africans themselves, in the middle of the twentieth century, took into their own hands the telling of their story. You write in Home and Exile, 'After a short period of dormancy and a little self-doubt about its erstwhile imperial mission, the West may be ready to resume its old domineering monologue in the world.' Are some Western writers backpedaling and trying to tell their own version of African stories again? This tradition that I'm talking about has been in force for hundreds of years, and many generations have been brought up on it. What was preached in the churches by the missionaries and their agents at home all supported a certain view of Africa. When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day. When the African response began, I think there was an immediate pause on the European side, as if they were saying, Okay, we'll stop telling this story, because we see there's another story.

But after a while there's a certain beginning again, not quite a return but something like a reaction to the African story that cannot, of course, ever go as far as the original tradition that the Africans are responding to. There's a reaction to a reaction, and there will be a further reaction to that. And I think that's the way it will go, until what I call a balance of stories is secured.

And this is really what I personally wish this century to see—a balance of stories where every people will be able to contribute to a definition of themselves, where we are not victims of other people's accounts. This is not to say that nobody should write about anybody else—I think they should, but those that have been written about should also participate in the making of these stories. And that's what started with Things Fall Apart and other books written by Africans around the 1950s. Yes, that's what it turned out to be. It was not actually clear to us at the time what we were doing.

We were simply writing our story. But the bigger story of how these various accounts tie in, one with the other, is only now becoming clear.

We realize and recognize that it's not just colonized people whose stories have been suppressed, but a whole range of people across the globe who have not spoken. It's not because they don't have something to say, it simply has to do with the division of power, because storytelling has to do with power. Those who win tell the story; those who are defeated are not heard.

But that has to change. It's in the interest of everybody, including the winners, to know that there's another story. If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all. You're talking about a shift in power, so there would be more of a balance of power between cultures than there is now? Well, not a shift in the structure of power. I'm not thinking simply of political power.

The shift in power will create stories, but also stories will create a shift in power. So one feeds the other. And the world will be a richer place for that. Do you see this balance of stories as likely to emerge in this era of globalization and the exporting of American culture? That's a real problem. The mindless absorption of American ideas, culture, and behavior around the world is not going to help this balance of stories, and it's not going to help the world, either. People are limiting themselves to one view of the world that comes from somewhere else.

That's something that we have to battle with as we go along, both as writers and as citizens, because it's not just in the literary or artistic arena that this is going to show itself. I think one can say this limiting isn't going to be very healthy for the societies that abandon themselves. In Anthills of the Savannah the poet Ikem says, 'The prime failure of our government is the. Failure of our rulers to reestablish vital inner links with the poor and dispossessed of this country, with the bruised heart that throbs painfully at the core of the nation's being.' Does this hold true for Nigeria today?

Yes, this is very much the Nigerian situation. The British handed over the reins of government to a small group of educated people who then became the new rulers. What Ikem is talking about is the distance between this new class of rulers and the other Nigerian people.

What needs to be done is to link the two together again, so that those who control power will see the direct relationship to the people in whose name this power is wielded. This connection does not happen automatically, and has not happened in many instances. In the case of Nigeria, the government of the military dictator General Abacha is a good example. The story coming out of his rule is of an enormous transfer of the country's wealth into private bank accounts, a wholesale theft of the national resources needed for all kinds of things—for health, for education, for roads. That's not the action of someone who sees himself as the servant of the Nigerian people. The nation's infrastructure was left to disintegrate, because of one man's selfish need to have billions. Or take what is happening today, now that we have gotten rid of this military dictator and are beginning to practice again the system of democratic rule.

You have leaders who see nothing wrong in inciting religious conflict between Christians and Muslims. It's all simply to retain power. So you find now a different kind of alienation. The leadership does not really care for the welfare of the country and its people. What's your opinion about the new President, Olusegan Obasanjo? Are you less optimistic about him now than you were when he was elected, in May of 1999? When I talk about those who incite religious conflict, I'm not talking about him, though there are things maybe you could leave at his door.

But I think he has a very difficult job to do. What has happened to the country in the past twenty years or so is really grave, and I'm reluctant to pass judgment on a leader only one year after he's assumed this almost impossible task. So the jury is still out, as far as I'm concerned. I think some of the steps he's taken are good; there are some steps he still needs to take, perhaps with greater speed, but then it's easier to say this from a distance than when you're actually doing it. Leading a very dynamic country like Nigeria, which has a hundred million people, is not a picnic.

In an Atlantic Unbound interview this past winter Nadine Gordimer said, 'English is used by my fellow writers, blacks, who have been the most extreme victims of colonialism. They use it even though they have African languages to choose from. I think that once you've mastered a language it's your own. It can be used against you, but you can free yourself and use it as black writers do—you can claim it and use it.'

Do you agree with her? Yes, I definitely do. English is something you spend your lifetime acquiring, so it would be foolish not to use it. Also, in the logic of colonization and decolonization it is actually a very powerful weapon in the fight to regain what was yours. English was the language of colonization itself. It is not simply something you use because you have it anyway; it is something which you can actively claim to use as an effective weapon, as a counterargument to colonization.

You write that the Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo is on the 'right side, on behalf of the poor and afflicted, the kind of 'nothing people' V. Naipaul would love to hammer into the ground with his well-crafted mallet of deadly prose.' Do you think a writer from a country like Nigeria has a moral obligation to write about his homeland in a certain way? No, there's no moral obligation to write in any particular way. But there is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally yourself with power against the powerless. I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects.

That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write. But I do think decency and civilization would insist that you take sides with the powerless. There are those who say that media coverage of Africa is one-sided—that it focuses on the famines, social unrest, and political violence, and leaves out coverage of the organizations and countries that are working. Do you agree? If so, what effect does this skewed coverage have? Is it a continuation of the anti-Africa British literature you talk about in Home and Exile? Yes, I do agree.

I think the result has been to create a fatigue, whether it's charity fatigue or fatigue toward being good to people who are less fortunate. I think that's a pity. The reason for this concentration on the failings of Africans is the same as what we've been talking about—this tradition of bad news, or portraying Africa as a place that is different from the rest of the world, a place where humanity is really not recognizable. When people hear the word Africa, they have come to expect certain images to follow. If you see a good house in Lagos, Nigeria, it doesn't quite fit the picture you have in your head, because you are looking for the slum—that is what the world expects journalists covering a city in Africa to come back with. Now, if you are covering America, you are not focusing on slums every day of your life.

You see a slum once in a while, maybe you talk about it, but the rest of the time you are talking about other things. It is that ability to see the complexity of a place that the world doesn't seem to be able to take to Africa, because of this baggage of centuries of reporting about Africa. The result is the world doesn't really know Africa.

If you are an African or you live in Africa, this stands out very clearly to you, you are constantly being bombarded with bad news, and you know that there is good news in many places. This doesn't mean that the bad news doesn't exist, that's not what I'm saying. But it exists alongside other things. Africa is not simple—people want to simplify it. Africa is very complex. Very bad things go on— they should be covered— but there are also some good things.

This is something that comes with this imbalance of power that we've been talking about. The people who consume the news that comes back from the rest of the world are probably not really interested in hearing about something that is working. Those who have the ability to send crews out to bring back the news are in a position to determine what the image of the various places should be, because they have the resources to do it. Now, an African country doesn't have a television crew coming to America, for instance, and picking up the disastrous news. So America sends out wonderful images of its success, power, energy, and politics, and the world is bombarded in a very partial way by good news about the powerful and bad news about the less powerful. You mentioned that literature was used to justify slavery and imperialism.

What is this negative coverage of Africa being used to justify now? It's going to be used to justify inaction, which is what this fatigue is all about. Why bother about Africa? Nothing works there, or nothing ever will work. There is a small minority of people who think that way, and they may be pushing this attitude. But even if nobody was pushing it, it would simply happen by itself. This is a case of sheer inertia, something that has been happening for a long time just goes on happening, unless something stops it.

It becomes a habit of mind. You said in a New York Times interview in 1988, 'I would be very, very sad to have to live in Europe or America. The relationship between me and the society I write about is so close and so necessary.' What was it like for you to write this book outside of your own country?

Maybe I make it sound as if it's impossible for me to write outside of Nigeria. That's really not true. I think what I mean is that it is nourishing for me to be working from Nigeria, there's a kind of nourishment you get there that you cannot get elsewhere. But it doesn't mean you cannot work. You can work, you can always use what's available to you, whether it's memory, hearsay, news items, or imagination.

I intend to write a novel in America. When I have done it, perhaps we can discuss the effect of writing a novel from abroad. It's not impossible. Now a related question, which is not exactly the one you've asked, is, Why don't you write a novel about America?

The reason for that is not simply that I don't want to sing the Lord's song in a foreign land, it's just the practical issue of this balance we've been talking about. There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else. So that's really my reason, it's nothing mystical. I have no intention of trying to write about America because it would be using up rare energy that should be used to produce something that has no chance of being produced otherwise. Has living here changed the way you think about Nigeria?

It must have, but this is not something you can weigh and measure. I've been struck, for instance, by the impressive way that political transition is managed in America. Nobody living here can miss that if you come from a place like Nigeria which is unable so far to manage political transitions in peace. I wish Nigeria would learn to do this. There are other things, of course, where you wish Americans would learn from Nigerians: the value of people as people, the almost complete absence of race as a factor in thought, in government. That's something that I really wish for America, because no day passes here without some racial factor coming up somewhere, which is a major burden on this country.

Could you talk about your visit to Nigeria this past summer? What was it like for you to go back there? It was a very powerful and emotional experience. Emotional mostly because I had not been there in many years, but the circumstances of my leaving Nigeria were very sad, and many people who were responding to my return had that in their mind, and so it was more than simply someone who had not been home in quite a few years. And then you add to that all the travails that Nigeria had gone through in the rule of General Abacha, the severe hardship and punishment that the country had suffered in those years.

And the new experiment in democratic rule was also just a few months old when I went home, so it was a very powerful experience. Do you hope to be able to go back there to live at some point? Yes, I do indeed. Things would have to be better than they are now for me to be able to do that. Things like hospitals that used to be quite good before have been devastated. The roads you have to take to get to a hospital if the need arises, not to talk about the security of life—both of those would have to improve. But we are constantly watching the situation.

It's not just me, but my family. My wife and children—many of them would be happier functioning at home, because you tend to have your work cut out for you at home. Here there are so many things to do, but they are not necessarily the things you'd rather be doing. Whereas at home it's different—it's clear what needs to be done, what's calling for your special skills or special attachment. What hopes do you have for Nigeria's future? I keep hoping, and that hope really is simply a sense of what Nigeria could be or could do, given the immense resources it has—natural resources, but even more so human resources. There's a great diversity of vibrant peoples who are not always on the best of terms, but when they are, they can really make things happen.

And one hopes that we will someday be able to realize that potential. Could you talk about your dream, expressed in Home and Exile, of a 'universal civilization'—a civilization that some believe we've achieved and others think we haven't? What the universal civilization I dream about would be, I really don't know, but I know what it is not. It is not what is being presented today, which is clearly just European and American. A universal civilization is something that we will create. If we accept the thesis that it is desirable to do, then we will go and work on it and talk about it. We have not really talked about it.

All those who are saying it's there are really suggesting that it's there by default—they are saying to us, let's stop at this point and call what we have a universal civilization. I don't think we want to swindle ourselves in that way; I think if we want a universal civilization, we should work to bring it about. And when it appears, I think we will know, because it will be different from anything we have now. There may be cultures that may sadly have to go, because no one is rooting for them, but we should make the effort to prevent this.

We have to hold this conversation, which is a conversation of stories, a conversation of languages, and see what happens. Every so often, a right-wing commentator who purports to abhor dishonesty among media elites admits that they’ve been guilty of dishonestly purveying propaganda. These figures are not marginal. In the final years of the Bush administration it was Rush Limbaugh, easily the most popular talk-radio host on the right, who responded to GOP losses in Congress by admitting that he hadn’t been leveling with his listeners about their political party. He declared, “I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don’t think deserve having their water carried.

Now, you might say, ‘Well, why have you been doing it?’ Because the stakes are high! Even though the Republican Party let us down, to me they represent a far better future for my beliefs and therefore the country’s than the Democrat Party does.”. This is a good day, Samantha tells me: 10 on a scale of 10. We’re sitting in a conference room at the San Marcos Treatment Center, just south of Austin, Texas, a space that has witnessed countless difficult conversations between troubled children, their worried parents, and clinical therapists. But today promises unalloyed joy.

Samantha’s mother is visiting from Idaho, as she does every six weeks, which means lunch off campus and an excursion to Target. The girl needs supplies: new jeans, yoga pants, nail polish. Listen to the audio version of this article: Feature stories, read aloud: At 11, Samantha is just over 5 feet tall and has wavy black hair and a steady gaze. She flashes a smile when I ask about her favorite subject (history), and grimaces when I ask about her least favorite (math). She seems poised and cheerful, a normal preteen. But when we steer into uncomfortable territory—the events that led her to this juvenile-treatment facility nearly 2,000 miles from her family—Samantha hesitates and looks down at her hands.

“I wanted the whole world to myself,” she says. “So I made a whole entire book about how to hurt people.”. In the first novel ever written about Sherlock Homes, we learn something peculiar about the London detective. Holmes, supposedly a modern man and a keen expert in the workings of the world, does not know how the solar system works. Specifically he is unfamiliar with the heliocentric Copernican model, which, upon its slow acceptance in the 17th century, revolutionized Western thought about the place of our species in the universe.

“What the deuce is it to me?” Holmes asks his sputtering soon-to-be sidekick, Dr. “You say that we go ’round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.” Brains are a kind of “little empty attic,” says the detective, and they should be filled only with furniture that’s useful to one’s line of work. Holmes doesn’t doubt the Copernican model; he simply has no use for it in solving murder cases.

“Now that I do know it,” he adds, “I shall do my best to forget it.”. HEMET, California—Many cities across America are doing better today than they were before the recession. This is not one of them. A decade after the start of the Great Recession, it struggles with pervasive crime and poverty.

“We’re still recovering—we were really hit hard on all levels,” Linda Krupa, the mayor of Hemet, told me. A fifth of the population lives below the poverty line, up from 13 percent in 2005. Hemet is not alone in its troubles. A released this year by the Economic Innovation Group, a research group started by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, found that one in six Americans lives in what the group calls “economically distressed communities” that are “increasingly alienated from the benefits of the modern economy.” Such communities have high shares of poverty, many housing vacancies, a large proportion of adults without a high-school diploma, high joblessness, and a lower median income than the rest of the state in which they are located. They also lost jobs and businesses between 2011 and 2015. On Thursday morning, Adam Gill stepped outside in a heavy, bright-yellow coat, bulky gloves, and a ski mask to brace himself against the blistering wind.

He brought with him a metal teakettle full of boiling water. As he tipped the kettle over, the piping-hot liquid turned instantly into snow and blew away in the wind. That’s how cold it was at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire, the highest peak in the northeastern United States., a meteorologist at the observatory, conducting this little presentation received thousands of sympathetic likes on Facebook. The temperature that day at the observatory a bone-chilling low of -34 degrees Fahrenheit (-37 degrees Celsius)—and that was without accounting for wind chill.

The day broke the previous record of -31 degrees Fahrenheit (-35 degrees Celsius), set in 1933. At Reed College, a small liberal-arts school in Portland, Oregon, a 39-year-old recently caused an uproar over cultural appropriation. In the classic Steve Martin skit, he performs a goofy song, “King Tut,” meant to satirize a Tutankhamun exhibit touring the U.S. And to criticize the commercialization of Egyptian culture. You could say that his critique is weak; that his humor is lame; that his dance moves are unintentionally offensive or downright racist.

All of that, and more, was debated in a humanities course at Reed. But many students found the video so egregious that they opposed its very presence in class.

“That’s like somebody making a song just littered with the n-word everywhere,” a member of Reedies Against Racism (RAR) told the student newspaper when asked about Martin’s performance. She told me more: The Egyptian garb of the backup dancers and singers—many of whom are African American—“is racist as well. The gold face of the saxophone dancer leaving its tomb is an exhibition of blackface.”. This year, podcasts got funnier, sharper, and even more niche. Our recommendations here pass a vigorous audio smell test. First, the arrival of a new podcast episode must send you into an ethical quandary: How do I get out of at least some of my obligations today to listen to this?

Second, you must be able to recommend this to a colleague with the knowledge that your reputation is at stake. A podcast that teaches you how to prepare your taxes by hand might blow your hair back, but it’s doubtful you’ll recommend it to anyone aside from your accountant. Third, we recused ourselves from ranking any podcasts produced by The Atlantic, including and. Finally, the podcast world, like any other sphere, is about what have you done for me lately. The best shows don’t paint themselves into a corner.

They evolve and progress or risk their listeners hitting “unsubscribe.” Podcasts, like cowboys, shouldn’t get fenced in. These shows generated maximum buzz, kept us refreshing our apps, broke boundaries, and made our future selves romanticize the golden years of podcasting. Sophie Gilbert and David Sims will be discussing the new season of Netflix’s Black Mirror, considering alternate episodes.

The reviews contain spoilers; don’t read further than you’ve watched. See all of their coverage.

When Black Mirror’s third season premiered in late 2016, it began with “,” a wrenchingly comical episode about the horrors of a connected world, where every interaction or transaction with another person is rated and judged on social media. Its fourth season begins with an opposite horror: a hermetically sealed world, disconnected from the rest of the internet, a sci-fi fantasy perversely controlled by one man. In “Nosedive,” escaping the online universe was the goal; in “USS Callister,” it’s the opposite. Credit to the show’s creator, Charlie Brooker (who co-wrote this episode with William Bridges): He can conjure nightmares from anywhere.

'The Empire Writes Back' would have been a fitting alternative title for this essay collection. (Achebe doesn't fail to pay a tribute to Salman Rushdie's essay of the same name published in 1982).

Because that is what the running theme here is - a reclamation of a land and a culture that was wrested away with brutal force and made a part of an 'Empire' which still insists on viewing that period as one of glory and not characterized by the worst kind of human rights violation ever. And a heraldin 'The Empire Writes Back' would have been a fitting alternative title for this essay collection. (Achebe doesn't fail to pay a tribute to Salman Rushdie's essay of the same name published in 1982). Because that is what the running theme here is - a reclamation of a land and a culture that was wrested away with brutal force and made a part of an 'Empire' which still insists on viewing that period as one of glory and not characterized by the worst kind of human rights violation ever. And a heralding of the arrival of the African voice in the world literary scene. Achebe is slowly turning into my personal literary hero.

His wry humor, elegant prose, mildly sardonic tone and passion for social justice exude a righteousness that's hard not to defer to. His writings continue to make me question certain pet notions and ideas that are so deeply ingrained in each one of us that they seem like indisputable facts and consequently evade further introspection. My penchant for unconsciously comparing Latin American, South East Asian and African writing to the style, technique and language of the Americans and Europeans I admire and immediately pronouncing judgement on them on the basis of said parameters has to go away now, I realize. It doesn't matter if African, Asian and other writers of the Commonwealth (Dear god, why do we have that ridiculous redundant grouping still? Is it not there for the sole purpose of reminding us that we were once colonies?) have the same degree of grammatical precision and structural integrity to their English prose as their European and American counterparts.

It matters that their voices be heard and universally acknowledged and the overlooked truths, their narratives highlight, be analyzed without bias. Although this collection consists of 3 essays titled 'My Home Under Imperial Fire', 'The Empire Fights Back' and 'Today, the Balance of Stories' it should be considered a single body of work or discourse intended to dispel certain flawed notions about African people who are often derogatorily referred to as 'tribes' and automatically consigned to a lesser category of humanity. Achebe begins with his reminiscences on his early years as a young university student in Nigeria, reading literature based on Africa authored mostly by British and European scholars who, of course, liberally manufactured painfully offensive 'facts' regarding the intellectual and anatomical inferiority of his fellow brethren and propagated the theory that European acquisition of their land and sphere of existence was for the sake of their own personal benefit.

This is what Achebe says about the interlinked nature of inherently racist literature of the time (he is sophisticated enough not to use the word 'racist' even once though) and the Atlantic slave trade:- 'I will merely say that a tradition does not begin and thrive, as the tradition of British writing about Africa did, unless it serves a certain need. From the moment in the 1560s when the English captain John Hawkins sailed to West Africa and 'got into his possession, partly by the sword and partly by other means, to the number of three hundred Negroes,' the European trade in slaves was destined by its very profitability to displace trade in commodities with West Africa.' Achebe directs his suppressed ire at Anglo-Irishman Joyce Cary who was regarded as one of the finest novelists of his time and his creation 'Mister Johnson' which Achebe systematically breaks down and interprets as a text strewn with viciously hateful commentary on Africans. Another renowned novelist and polymath who had considerable first hand experience of Africa, Elspeth Huxley, isn't spared either as her criticism of Amos Tutuola's 'The Palm-Wine Drinkard' as a 'folk tale full of queer, distorted poetry, the deep and dreadful fears, the cruelty, the obsession with death and spirits, the macabre humour, the grotesque imagery of the African mind' comes off as an insidious denunciation of all African literature in general. Joseph Conrad, predictably, is his next victim. (Criticism of 'Heart of Darkness' seems like a recurrent theme in Achebe's essays) Quote from 'Heart of Darkness' - 'Well, you know, that was the worst of it-this suspicion of their not being inhuman.'

Achebe's deconstruction- 'A more deadly deployment of a mere sixteen words it would be hard to imagine. I think it merits close reading. Note first the narrator's suspicion; just suspicion, nothing more. And note also that even the faint glimmer of apparent charitableness around this speculation is not, as you might have thought, a good thing, but actually the worst of it! And note finally, the coup de grace of double negation, like a pair of prison guards, restraining that problematic being on each side.'

Next in Achebe's line of fire is the ever controversial V.S. Naipaul and his lecture titled 'Our Universal Civilization' delivered at the Manhattan Institute and his caustic and downright obnoxious comments on Asian and African readership and cultures.

Achebe brings into focus the difference in attitudes between the Indian-origin Naipaul and the famed Indian writer R.K. Narayan by stating how Narayan saw 'a million stories' every time he looked out of his window and not a like Naipaul did. He ends by hailing story-tellers of repute like Nadine Gordimer (for her literary activism in the backdrop of the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa), Wole Soyinka, Amos Tutuola and names like Nigerian Cyprian Ekwensi , Guinea's Camara Laye , Cameroon's Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono , Cheikh Hamidou who have lent enormous credibility to the African literary landscape and have led readers all over the world, to take into account the complementary points of view of the people who had been, so far, deprived of a voice. 'Despite the significant changes that have taken place in the last four or five decades, the wound of the centuries is still a long way from healing. And I believe the curative power of stories can move the process forward.'

P.S.:-My rating may be upgraded (or downgraded) in the future based on what I glean from a reading of, and a re-reading of. This is a very short book which contains several essays Achebe delivered as public lectures late on in his life at Harvard. As an introduction to Achebe's life and career I think they would work very well. I was especially interested in how he delineated the growth of African literature and the way in which it was received in the west.

Also fascinating/sobering is his account of British imperial rule of Nigeria and the colonial education he received. This includes interesting observations about This is a very short book which contains several essays Achebe delivered as public lectures late on in his life at Harvard. As an introduction to Achebe's life and career I think they would work very well. I was especially interested in how he delineated the growth of African literature and the way in which it was received in the west. Also fascinating/sobering is his account of British imperial rule of Nigeria and the colonial education he received.

This includes interesting observations about power and control which I think are widely applicable. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in African literature, the history of imperialism and the way in which power corrupts and extends its influence. I must say, the man is absolutely amazing and brilliant.

The book, which is beautifully written, short, and easy to follow (I mean, it's Achebe, what else would you expect?), discusses the history of literature about Africa - the British literature before and during the colonial period, and the African literature emerging in the 50's and 60's. It is a polemic not only against shallow treatments of African culture in the literature, but in favor of African yuppies holding true to their roots and I must say, the man is absolutely amazing and brilliant. The book, which is beautifully written, short, and easy to follow (I mean, it's Achebe, what else would you expect?), discusses the history of literature about Africa - the British literature before and during the colonial period, and the African literature emerging in the 50's and 60's. It is a polemic not only against shallow treatments of African culture in the literature, but in favor of African yuppies holding true to their roots and developing an identity for the African academic beyond assimilation into Western culture.

I found the book valuable mostly as a telling of the story of the encounter with the Other. 'Until the lions produce their own historians, the story of the hunt will glorify only the hunter,' Achebe quotes the proverb of unknown origin on p. In my opinion, well-written and story-filled discussions of this matter like Achebe's are an order of magnitude more valuable (and probably more true) than the abstract, unstructured drivel of the postmodern philosophers. See my full reaction. This short book is based on a series of lectures given at an American University after the author had moved to this country.

It's a primer for anyone, like me, woefully unfamiliar with fiction written in Africa by Africans about Africans in Africa. It examines how colonialism first suppressed, then condescended to, novels and stories from or about Africa unless they were written by whites. Good education was available to at least a few in a then colony like Nigeria, but it was all based on Eng This short book is based on a series of lectures given at an American University after the author had moved to this country.

It's a primer for anyone, like me, woefully unfamiliar with fiction written in Africa by Africans about Africans in Africa. It examines how colonialism first suppressed, then condescended to, novels and stories from or about Africa unless they were written by whites. Good education was available to at least a few in a then colony like Nigeria, but it was all based on English literature, as if London were more important to a young African than his own home. Was about all there was until the publication of Joyce Cary's in the early 1950s. Achebe is critical of both books, more so of Mister Johnson, as he is of the writings of V.S. Naipaul, whom he sees as contemptuous of Black Africa even in writings not (as is set there. He finds an ally in Salman Rushdie in the struggle for novelists to break out of the colonial oppression of local culture and sensibility.

Mr Achebe reviews briefly the emergence of black African fiction writers starting in the 1950s, making clear that one huge hindrance (among others) was the necessity (if one wanted to get published) to write what would sell in England and, later, in North America. These lectures were meant to be eye-openers to Americans. This book motivates additions to my shelves that are long long overdue. There is a poignant personal message in our copy: it is inscribed by the author to 'Elizabeth and Stephen.' The Achebes were friends of my parents during Chinua Achebe's time of teaching at Bard College.

On the back of the book, Home and Exile is described as 'his first fully autobiographical work. Achebe recalls his childhood and early adulthood and reveals the man behind the writing.' I don't know about you, but that got me thinkin' it was ol' Achebe spilling his story.

There's a cringeworthy quote on the back by some tool named Richard Flanagan, who deems it necessary to say 'Home and Exile shines through the cold cant of our winter of new empires, doing for stories what spring On the back of the book, Home and Exile is described as 'his first fully autobiographical work. Achebe recalls his childhood and early adulthood and reveals the man behind the writing.' I don't know about you, but that got me thinkin' it was ol' Achebe spilling his story. There's a cringeworthy quote on the back by some tool named Richard Flanagan, who deems it necessary to say 'Home and Exile shines through the cold cant of our winter of new empires, doing for stories what spring does for apricot trees.'

That, unfortunately, set a much truer tone for this small examination of the literature of the dispossessed & their imperial bff's. I picked this book up as a bit of an apology. I read Things Fall Apart in college & haven't read any of his works since.

That's because I couldn't stand Things Fall Apart, though I've always remembered Okonkwo & the overall vibe of the work. Getting a bit older, I realized I was really probably rather biased against the work due to the class itself, & meant to read it again to confirm whether or not the book's for me. Instead, I saw this in the library & thought that maybe some insight into the man behind the book would do me good. First of all, I don't really like Achebe's tone. I really don't. I find it absolutely appalling what some of the English authors got away with saying in the excerpts he gives in the book, & some of his recollections of life back in his home town were rather charming, & he gets in some nice proverbs/metaphorical tales. But overall, I can imagine this book being a very dry lecture with the old man himself up on stage with one of his little hats on, giving joking smiles while my mind wanders.

I don't know. I currently don't have much reason to be interested in the stuff this book talks about, so it limits my possible enjoyment. I will still re-read Things Fall Apart, & then whether or not I like it, I will read its sequel. After that, I can consider myself as having given him a fair shot - here's to hoping the fiction finds a warmer place in my heart than Home and Exile! I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Chinua Achebe presents the case of why the African voice is needed to tell the African story. He does this effectively through inviting the reader to explore the times where the African voice was largely absent in literature which told the story of the African continent.

He largely criticises writers such as Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Elspeth Huxley's demeaning portrayal of Africa. However, in 'The Empire fights back', Achebe praises and encourages the emergenc I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Chinua Achebe presents the case of why the African voice is needed to tell the African story. He does this effectively through inviting the reader to explore the times where the African voice was largely absent in literature which told the story of the African continent.

He largely criticises writers such as Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Elspeth Huxley's demeaning portrayal of Africa. However, in 'The Empire fights back', Achebe praises and encourages the emergence of African writers to the literary scene, this he feels provides a balance of stories. It presents the story of a people, from the people themselves. I believe the perfect summary for this book lies in this statement: 'Until the lions produce their own historian, the story of the hunt will only glorify the hunter'.

To conclude, Home and Exile clearly explains why Achebe is one of the greatest literary voices to emerge from Africa - and, I dare say, one of the best voices in literature the one has ever seen! It is very encouraging to see other African writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche carrying the torch of African literature lit in the 1950s by Achebe and his contemporaries to our generation today. I will definitely be reading more African literature. A book written by an African of his own Africa and of his own natives. The first lecture was moving with which I was able to smell the fragrance of African soil, culture & innocence of people, which was indicated by terms like Ezebuilo which means a King is an Enemy, an intense feeling of not wanting a king or leader which was very different than the west like Germany & the east like in India, where people always looked for a Hero or a Savior. Achebe not only tells about his Africa but t A book written by an African of his own Africa and of his own natives. The first lecture was moving with which I was able to smell the fragrance of African soil, culture & innocence of people, which was indicated by terms like Ezebuilo which means a King is an Enemy, an intense feeling of not wanting a king or leader which was very different than the west like Germany & the east like in India, where people always looked for a Hero or a Savior.

Achebe not only tells about his Africa but tells about how through literature people has surpassed poisonous thoughts from one generation to another in the west about Africans as naked, beast and mean people, just for the sake of their economical capital and for their higher dominance over other race people. The most important thing which Achebe talks about is, how to be a good reader & writer and at various point of time is guidelines to his reader of reading the text again & again with awareness & carefully. I think Achebe is a great novelist, and I expected to learn a lot from reading this selection of lectures. But I was disappointed. First, Achebe goes over well-worn and familiar ground; most of what he discusses was cutting edge in the sixties and seventies, not the nineties,when this book was published. Second, he chooses two writers for specific ridicule, Elspeth Huxley and Buchi Emecheta.

Call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever, but I wonder why both of his poster children for imperialism a I think Achebe is a great novelist, and I expected to learn a lot from reading this selection of lectures. But I was disappointed. First, Achebe goes over well-worn and familiar ground; most of what he discusses was cutting edge in the sixties and seventies, not the nineties,when this book was published.

Second, he chooses two writers for specific ridicule, Elspeth Huxley and Buchi Emecheta. Call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever, but I wonder why both of his poster children for imperialism and African self-hatred respectively are women? Specific examples are okay, but he could have spread the blame around a bit. Achebe is an elderly man, and the thinking in this book illustrates that, sadly enough. In 1958 Chinua Achebe published Things Fall Apart, the novel that helped usher in a new wave of African literature. Until that point literature concerning African had been written by European colonials, and was rife with derogatory depictions of African people and their varied cultures.

Chinua Achebe Biography

With the contributions of Camara Laye, Amos Tutuola, and Chinua Achebe, amongst others, there came a rebellion of sorts - the African novel, going against “an age-old practice: the colonization of one people’s st In 1958 Chinua Achebe published Things Fall Apart, the novel that helped usher in a new wave of African literature. Until that point literature concerning African had been written by European colonials, and was rife with derogatory depictions of African people and their varied cultures.

With the contributions of Camara Laye, Amos Tutuola, and Chinua Achebe, amongst others, there came a rebellion of sorts - the African novel, going against “an age-old practice: the colonization of one people’s story by another.” Read my full review. A nice, short essay. Achebe muses about why he became a writer, the evolution of British and African writing about Africa, and what he thinks of other 'post-colonial' writers. It includes nice anecdotes such as how he watched the opening of the first post office in his village in Nigeria, and therefore its incorporation into the vast postal system of the British empire. It also describes his first visit to London, where he, just like nearly everyone else from the British Commonwealth, witnessed A nice, short essay. Achebe muses about why he became a writer, the evolution of British and African writing about Africa, and what he thinks of other 'post-colonial' writers.

It includes nice anecdotes such as how he watched the opening of the first post office in his village in Nigeria, and therefore its incorporation into the vast postal system of the British empire. It also describes his first visit to London, where he, just like nearly everyone else from the British Commonwealth, witnessed for the first time the spectacle of 'white man working'. This short essay by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe is all about the need of a people to tell their own stories.

Achebe writes about the books he read in school, including books about Africa by European writers. In a mellow, humorous style, he describes the melodramatic image of the African that he kept coming across. Then he discusses the explosion of new African writers in the 50s and 60s, and the reactions to this writing.

Achebe tells us very little of his own story, but he does tell us why he This short essay by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe is all about the need of a people to tell their own stories. Achebe writes about the books he read in school, including books about Africa by European writers. In a mellow, humorous style, he describes the melodramatic image of the African that he kept coming across. Then he discusses the explosion of new African writers in the 50s and 60s, and the reactions to this writing. Achebe tells us very little of his own story, but he does tell us why he writes. Chinua Achebe was a novelist, poet, professor at Brown University and critic.

He is best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), which is the most widely read book in modern African literature. Raised by Christian parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria, Achebe excelled at school and won a scholarship for undergraduate studies. He became fascinated with world religion Chinua Achebe was a novelist, poet, professor at Brown University and critic. He is best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), which is the most widely read book in modern African literature. Raised by Christian parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria, Achebe excelled at school and won a scholarship for undergraduate studies. He became fascinated with world religions and traditional African cultures, and began writing stories as a university student. After graduation, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service and soon moved to the metropolis of Lagos.

He gained worldwide attention for Things Fall Apart in the late 1950s; his later novels include No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). Achebe writes his novels in English and has defended the use of English, a 'language of colonizers', in African literature. In 1975, his lecture An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' became the focus of controversy, for its criticism of Joseph Conrad as 'a bloody racist'. When the region of Biafra broke away from Nigeria in 1967, Achebe became a devoted supporter of Biafran independence and served as ambassador for the people of the new nation.

The war ravaged the populace, and as starvation and violence took its toll, 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 resigned due to frustration over the corruption and elitism he witnessed. He lived in the United States for several years in the 1970s, and returned to the U.S.

In 1990 after a car accident left him partially disabled. Achebe's novels focus on the traditions of Igbo society, the effect of Christian influences, and the clash of values during and after the colonial era. His style relied heavily on the Igbo oral tradition, and combines straightforward narration with representations of folk stories, proverbs, and oratory.

He also published a number of short stories, children's books, and essay collections. He became the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Achebe died at age 82 following a brief illness.