Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Chimamanda Adichie's "Yellow Hibiscus" By Chidi Anthony Opara

Jama,

Good job with the Lions in Nsukka. Make you teacher them that is is not just in Africa. Those same misguided zealots were responsible for the killing of 9 million people, mostly women, during the witch craze in the dark ages of Europe at the same time that they were launching their blood-thirsty crusade against Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, forcing the Muslims to adopt the strategy of jihad ever since. No wonder they have distorted and truncated the very African philosophy of non-violence that Gandhi said he learned from the war-like Zulu but which courageous African women like the Nobel Laurette, Gbowee, continue to deploy as they 'Pray the Devil back to Hell'.

Biko

From: "Abidogun, Jamaine" <JamaineAbidogun@MissouriState.edu>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2011, 20:40
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Chimamanda Adichie's "Yellow Hibiscus" By Chidi Anthony Opara

Dear Biko,
 
I agree with your well summarized critique of the issues that are raised in Adichie's works.  I use both her books in teaching African Civilizations (survey course) and Women in Africa (upper  level undergrad course). I use her texts to familiarize students with historical events in Nigeria and to identify cultural norms and practices and the factors (western ed, Christianity, etc) that impact them.  They compare her narrative with academic readings to sort fact from fiction.  The novels provide a more vivid lived experience than most academic sources provide, so the students tend to digest the two together in a more agreeable fashion.
 
I was teaching at the University of Nsukka when I met her works and fell in love with her writing. It was like a modern version of Buchi Emecheta's work and it seemed to cut closer to the bone for me.  It is always problematic to get the layers of cultural nuance effectively portrayed on par with what we may experience in real life.  She does capture the essence of cultural norms and the interactions and conflicts of modernity or "westernization" and "nation building" in her works without question.  While I am not Igbo, I have discussed her work with many Igbo women and men (colleagues and students).  These discussions reveal that while some of the events in her work are difficult to deal with, they are issues that touch if not ourselves then members of the wider society.  In particular (for myself) the ongoing religious conflict in her work always triggers visual memories of the "war on idols" signs that I see posted on the highway between Enugu and Nsukka. I see her work as asking, begging for us to remember to practice tolerance and a sense of equanimity in Nigeria's rich and complex society.
 
-Jamaine Abidogun
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Biko Agozino
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2011 9:58 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Chimamanda Adichie's "Yellow Hibiscus" By Chidi Anthony Opara
 
Bro Chidi,
 
You interpret Adichie too literally for a practicing poet like yourself. Go back and finish the book and you will then see that Adichie was not critiquing Igbo culture but what V.C. Uchendu would call certain 'intrusive traits' that are found in modernism, not just among Catholics but even more so among the Aladura sects that Soyinka lambasted (in Brother Jero) for their bonfires of priceless cultural artifacts, who would burn down ancient places of worship, excommunicate neighbors, and terrorize family members who profess even a different Christian denomination. It happens all over the world and not just among the Igbo; the Pilgrim fathers paid good money for the scalps of Native American Indian children's, women's and men's scalps even while professing to be exemplary Protestants; the people who drive nails into the heads of their own children on suspicion that they are child witches are very good Christians too but not Igbo; the Boko Haram militants see themselves as good Muslims while engaging in mass murder; and the Lords Resistance Army keeps breaking the 10 commandments in order to save them in Uganda as they claim. Adichie clearly indicates that the scholar-sister of the phantom bourgeois comprador element undermined his terrorism by taking her nephew and niece to go and hang out with their grand father and to go and see masquerades against the decrees of the crazy Christian; and taking her sister in-law to live with her on campus where patriarchal professors denied her tenure and forced her to emigrate to God's Own Country. The man was being portrayed as no better than slave holders and Nazis who killed millions even while claiming to be good Christians. When his son was detained on death row for his death even though he was innocent, the author is calling attention to the barbaric practice of the death penalty that is not part of Igbo culture but yet another colonial imposition that the country clings to even after those who imposed it on us have since abolished it in their own country. I hope that you will not act like that wild Christian by forbidding your daughter from reading a good book that her school wisely required for her literature class. Otherwise, na jealousy dey worry you.
 
Biko
 
From: Ayo Obe <ayo.m.o.obe@gmail.com>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Cc: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2011, 11:22
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Chimamanda Adichie's "Yellow Hibiscus" By Chidi Anthony Opara
I guess that this is bound to be a problem for Africans living in the US where the rest of the world will take Chimamanda Adichie's work as the definitive travelogue through Nigerian - nay African - time and space.  (Some Tanzanians will be having to explain why whatever happened in Purple Hibiscus or Half of a Yellow Sun is not relevant to their own lives!)  Sometimes a writer novelises their own experience.  Sometimes a writer approaches a topic because the events or characters it deals with are unusual, out of the ordinary.  But poor old Chimamanda!  She is only allowed to write about the entirety of what obtained throughout Igboland in the 1980s to 1990s.  She is not allowed to just write a NOVEL!
 
I don't know enough about Igbo culture to be able to say what Adichie got wrong or right.  Definitely there are some anachronisms in her work, and I am very sure that there was more to the Yoruba reaction to the events of 1966-1970 than the cheating backstabbers portrayed in Half of a Yellow Sun, but they are works of fiction.
 
So I guess that rather than throw her books aside, parents who fear their US bred children will also take the fiction for fact might take time to discuss the stories with their children.  Definitely if they are smart enough to be studying Adichie, they are smart enough to imbibe and even inform their class that such and such as portrayed in the novels are at variance with the actuality.  I know this is easier said than done.  After all, even on this thread we have members who misunderstand our griping about this or that on our continent as evidence of the ease with which our heads will be turned by flushing loos or electric power ...  But you can only try.  And do your best to let your kids experience Africa through different eyes.  Possibly even their own!

Ayo
I invite you to follow me on Twitter @naijama

On 8 Nov 2011, at 14:28, woleatere01@yahoo.com wrote:
Well, I empathise with your worries and disappointment even though I am not Ibo. The truth is that most African cultures are daily turned upside down and rendered obsolete by writers who know next to nothing about such cultures all in the name of modernisation and globalisaton. What more, such writers are rewarded with awards and cash gifts in order to continue the 'good" work. Unfortunately those of us who know better, merely sit back looking helpless, bemoan our fate and smply agonise. It is a tragedy, my brother. Adewole Atere. Ph.D, Associate Professor of Socology, Osun State University, Okuku Campus, Nigeria.
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
From: "Public Information Projects Management\(PIPROM\)" <piprom@ymail.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 01:40:10 -0800 (PST)
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Chimamanda Adichie's "Yellow Hibiscus" By Chidi Anthony Opara
 
I have to issue a caveat at this point that this piece is not a critique in the traditional sense, of the work of the well known young Nigerian novelist. It is rather an observation of what I consider a serious faux pas in social relationships in Igboland in Adichie's "Purple Hibiscus", which should have been titled "Yellow Hibiscus".
 
Let me hasten to say that I have not read any of the novelist's well publicized works before now. I have however read some of the reviews, mostly by Western reviewers, on her and her works, many of which I consider very patronizing. Such reviews make me suspicious, the Adichie reviews do.
 
When Chinagorom, my twelve-year-old daughter who has just entered senior secondary school came back from school last week and greeted me as she is wont to whenever she has a new book with "daddy do you know this writer?" waving "Purple Hibiscus" which she said is part of her Literature in English syllabus, I saw that as an opportunity to see what the novelist has to say. I borrowed the book and settled down to read.
 
I must confess that that I fell in love with the writer's narrative style. The book is what Western reviewers like to label "unputdownable".
 
The story is set in South-Eastern Nigeria, which is the homeland of the Igbos, a majority ethnic nationality in Nigeria. The period is in the 1980s through the 1990s. Please note that I am an Igbo, born and bred in a predominately Roman Catholic part of Igboland some forty-eight years ago.
 
Even though I got worried early in the reading with the characterization of Igbo Roman catholic priests as spiritually and intellectually inferior to their white colleagues, I nevertheless let that be.
 
What got my full attention is the seriously strained relationship between the main character's father and her grandfather on ground of differences in religious belief. Kambili's(main character) father is a literate wealthy Christian with a tradition title. He is a community man. His father on the other hand is an illiterate poor pagan. He is also a community man. Kambili's father is his only son and first child.
 
The relationship between father and son, which placed the son in a stronger position, is not such that can be tolerated anywhere in Igboland at anytime, even in this so called modern. You cannot, for instance decree that your father should not enter your house in any Igbo village for whatever reasons. If that becomes necessary, it will be the prerogative of Umunna. If you do that, fines will be imposed and you will be ordered to rescind that decision and to apologies to your father or face ostracization, your wealth and position notwithstanding, but Kambili's father did that and got away with it, there is even an "Omere Ora"(benefactor of the community)title to the bargain. That is not Igboland.
 
There are many other situations in the portions I read before dropping the book like a hot iron, that portray the Igbos as either uncultured or easily influenced by wealth and position to abandon their customs and traditions.
 
One would not have bothered writing this piece if one had not read distinguished Professors in World class Universities proudly saying "I teach Adichie" or words to that effect, meaning that they also teach "Purple Hibiscus". Chances are that future mindsets about the Igbos will mirror these negative, albeit false impressions in the novel. I cringe whenever I remember that my young daughter is reading this book as part of her school curriculum.
 
 
 
 
Public Information Projects Management(PIPROM) is an Internet based non profit making public information project.
 
PIPROM Website?
 
 
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