You will live long, I was going to write you to applaud you for your fine review of Chika Ezeanya's lovely historical fiction, Before We Set Sail about that great Ndigbo, Olaudah Equiano. I just finished reading that book and I enjoyed it very much, you have great taste in books ;-)
I am half-way through Achebe's book. The man has nice things to say about Awolowo, he genuinely respects the man as a leader and as a visionary and he says it. One angry statement and a few people are foaming in the mouth. He has harsh words for Ojukwu, no one says boo about that. Again, there are many things in the book to disagree with, but first, read the book, haba.
Anyway, I wish I was more organized than I currently am. I would love to finish the book and write a review...
- Ikhide
From: Biko Agozino <bikozino@yahoo.com>
Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:57:55 +0000 (GMT)
To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Cc: <xokigbo@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - On Achebe's There Was A Country.
| Bro Ikhide, Glad to hear that you finally found time to start reading the book, you rascal. Some books just grab your attention and make you drop everything else to read it before opening your mouth to yab, as you said. Never say again that you will not find the time to read a book like There Was A Country, you are setting a bad example to those who have all the time to give lengthy interviews and excavate what Soyinka called 'erudite irrelevancies' in Season of Anomy as elaborate excuses for not reading anything, never mind a hotly discussed instant classic like Achebe's. You also set a bad example by abandoning your son's soccer match to go and sit in your car when you should be there at the touchline, cheering the future Super Eagle with ohh, ohh, ohh! Make sure you apologize to the boy o! Instead of plugging your Kindle to show off how hip and cool you are, you should make time to read that book in detail for we all await your detailed review. A Poet also lied that he glanced at a copy on his friends Kindle but that he was yet to read the book himself. And yet he had no hesitation to compete for attention by stating that he was a juvenile reporter back then and so he supposedly knows it all; and that, in any case, the most important book on Nigerian history was already written by a certain Mr Greene (Bekee bu Agbara or the Whiteman is an Oracle, as the Igbo would say) and so there is no need to read anything that Achebe has to say about events in which he was a major participant observer. The Poet Lied indeed. To joke that you will have no time to read Achebe's book is to give encouragement to folks like a certain postgraduate student in London who said that he thinks that professors are slaves because they have no control over their time (completely ignorant of how free professors are with their time as members of the Petty Bourgeoisie) and thinks that he is more sophisticated than professors because he is taking his time to complete three Master's degrees and a Ph.D. at the same time to enable him to be an employer of labor. He too had no time to read Achebe but is poking around to find documents to support his prejudice that the great author is a villain and not a hero (rather than buckling down to concentrate on his endless dissertation as he was wisely advised on several occasions). How anti-intellectual, mean and vindictive have our people become? You are right that ignorant Nigerians are not to blame when our educational system is in shambles but how about Nigerians being educated abroad who are steeped in all sorts of irrationality? We all must strive to show better examples: Do not give the impression that a book as important as There Was A Country is competing for attention with your kid's soccer match of no more than 90 minutes. Demonstrate better time-management for the young by mapping out the solid block of time when you will not be able to put down the book as you confessed when the text took hold of you and refused to let go. As you said, you could not put it down. What did you expect? Enjoy and share more of your thoughts. Biko --- On Sun, 28/10/12, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:
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