Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Elechi Amadi Joins The Ancestors

Elechi Amadi. I would have loved to have met him. In some ways his novels were the most widely taught African novels of all. I know that is heresy with many who know little about the actual teaching of afr lit, and imagine it is all wrapt up in one novel, Things Fall Apart. But the novels that I think were steadily taught in all the African universities I’ve known were The Great Ponds, The Concubine, Sunset in Biafra, The Slave. His particularly readable texts were historical realism, no doubt inspired by the same impulse that guided Achebe, which was to present, and preserve, the world of an Igbo Africa prior to the coming of the Europeans, and that meant not only showing the conflict, to give interest to his accounts, but like achebe to glorify the culture and language, thought, of what he was reconstituting as “traditional Africa.”  In short he, and the writers of that first generation, established a bedrock for our understanding of African literature, against which the subsequent generations could then react. My own belief is that it was that reading of his works, of his generation’s work, that created what we can call the tradition of African literature. It was not grounded in responding to European misguided views; the world returned to Africa itself as the center, with its glories and its problems. That’s why I resist all the time the need to continually read African thought as though it were still responding to colonialism. That was the past; we are past it ; and elechi amadi, along with achebe, Soyinka, ngugi, laye, kane—that whole generation of writers of the 50s and 60s—made it possible. The fathers, and along with aidoo, nwapa, etc—the mothers, of African literature. How appropriate that we salute his passing with the encomium coming from the 3d generation’s spokesperson, osofisan.

ken

 

From: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 11:38 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Elechi Amadi Joins The Ancestors

 

Dayan ha emet

 

Elechi Amadi , another illustrious and unassuming Ikwerre elder gone, but not his literary legacy.

May his soul rest in perfect peace.

On Thursday, 30 June 2016 16:14:28 UTC+2, ibk wrote:

PRESS RELEASE:

ADIEU, ELECHI.

I called him Elechi, simply and without formality, as many did, because he was that kind of man. In spite of his age and achievements, he had no airs. In his company you laughed easily; and you learned, because he was full of yarns and wisdom. Certainly I was proud to be his friend, this man whose books were among the ones that taught us how to write. His prose was crisp, his narrative style brisk, compelling; he knew the art of total seduction through the manipulation of suggestion and suspense; he was thoroughly familiar with traditional lore and the world of mystery, magic and fabulation. You enter his fiction, and you are instantly gripped!. Even as you turn the last page, you find yourself king for more... And now he too is gone. No one of course was born to live forever, and the consolation is that Elechi at least stayed long enough with us to a full and ripe age. Still, his departure is painful, for it marks another sad loss from that fine generation of pioneers whose writing established and defined our contemporary literature, and gave our culture a refining ethical direction that, for better or for worse, the younger ones have since jettisoned. Adieu then, humble hero and superb story-teller! May you have a smooth ride back home to the ancestors!

FEMI OSOFISAN.

June 30 2016.

 

 

_________________________

Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)

(+2348061276622)
ibk...@gmail.com

 

On 30 June 2016 at 11:38, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ace story teller, Elechi Amadi has just joined the ancestors. He will be greatly missed.

CAO.

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