Am I motivated enough to give my time to this?
I have doubts
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 3:27 PM, Biko Agozino <bikozino@yahoo.com> wrote:
Bros,
No sweat about the football loss, everyday the monkey go go market but one day it no go return. Thanks for getting the humor. But seriously, when next the boy has a tough match, that is when he will need you most, that is when you will need to psyche him up and tell him that even if the other team comes from Mars, they have only one head each and the game is lost or won 99% of the time mentally. If he has the stomach to face the opposition, then you as cheer leader numero uno cannot go and hide in your car, air conditioner, burning holes the ozone layer.
I wish that we could introduce such parental involvement in sporting events at the elementary levels in Africa but big Ogas like you will probably ask your personal driver to take Junior to his games while you stay at home drinking tombo liquor. Shame, because they are missing much of the fun of parenting by skipping the games.
Glad you liked my take on Chika Ezeanya's delicious book. I look forward to reading your review of the novel. You see, many of us rely on you to alert us when a book appears on your radar. We do not always agree with your bad-mouth opinions but when you say that Soyinka rides again, many of us go looking for the book immediately and amazon made sure that I got it because of their Onicha market strategy of telling customers that those who bought this also bought that and with huge discounts or jara. Keep up the good work.
To Emmanual, Chidi and Shina, the issue is not how many Ph.D.s anyone can boast of or whether the person has none. Soyinka and Achebe, Toni Morrison and Stuart Hall, to mention but a few, did not earn Ph.D.s but rose o become full professors in their fields and leading intellectuals. We respect the opinion of Ikhide because even before he has read Achebe, he defended his right to write about his experience and cautioned our pseudo intellectuals to respect themselves and go siddon and read the book before retailing the tokunbo or okrika reviews of reviews.
But when a neophyte whose parents are shelling out hard currencies to pay for graduate school abroad begins to mock professors as slaves who should be paying him to teach them his mumbo jumbo superstitions whether or not the professors are interested in such diversionary alibis against reading a book before debating the text, then we need to call the brother to order and ask him to humble himself and read the book because it is no longer against the law for black people to read and write.
There is no disagreement with a brother who goes about bragging: 'I get more degrees pass you and I better pass you because you are employed as a professor and I am unemployed'. Such is a pitiable attack on the straw man and it is beyond the remedial capacity of Shina's introduction to logic. It is rather a case of borderline insanity, weeree niyen or akula. If you love the brother then join us in cautioning him to wise up and discipline his mind with reading instead of goading him towards full-blown madness.
Biko
From: Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com>To: "USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com" <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>, "Biko Agozino" <bikozino@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - On Achebe's There Was A Country.
Date: Monday, 29 October, 2012, 0:15Biko! LWKMD! Abeg I nor fit shout! My son is fine; it was American football, I knew his team was going to be slaughtered by this other team - offspring of American farmers and I did not have the stomach to watch. It was ugly, I'm told. They lost of course.--
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...
- IkhideFrom: Biko Agozino <bikozino@yahoo.com>Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:57:55 +0000 (GMT)ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comCc: <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:
From: Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - On Achebe's There Was A Country.
To: "Ederi" <Ederi@yahoogroups.com>, "Toyin Falola" <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, 28 October, 2012, 14:53--I had said elsewhere I would not have the time to read Chinua Achebe's new book, There Was A Country. I have a backlog of many books and manuscripts that I am determined to finish before taking on anything new. And besides, as an amateur student of the Nigerian civil war, and a child caught up in the war (the Biafran occupation of Benin City) I was not sure what I was going to learn new there. Yesterday however as I sat in my car waiting for my son's football game to end, I turned on my kindle app and it was there.Reading it clearly makes the profoundly sad point that many who have "reviewed" the book dispensed with the inconvenience of reading it. It is a sad commentary on how we conduct the business of scholarship these days. Many people should be stripped of their degrees, they are a disgrace to scholarship.There are many things to disagree with Achebe about, but one comes away with a sad realization that we are witnessing the passing of an era, of principled hard working writers and thinkers, well educated and brought up to believe in intellectual rigor. Please go and read that book before you open your mouths one more time. The man puts together a compilation of sources including our own Professor Toyin Falola in order to tell a moving compelling story about his life. And yes, it is not all about Biafra. There are powerful passages there for instance about the burden of the writer of African extraction, profoundly moving are his thoughts on what we should be preoccupied with.It is a great look back, one that should elicit a more coherent and respectful engagement than what we are currently witnessing. To be fair, our educational system is at best incoherent, in reality in shambles. People are reacting with pieces of dog-eared junk because we have not invested in an infrastructure that keeps our history intact. It is our loss, not Achebe's.I would like to put this book down, but I can't because I am simply in awe at the grace and courage of this man who was born into many wars that he did not ask for.- Ikhide- IkhideStalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/Follow me on Twitter: @ikhideJoin me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide
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