Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebewas a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apartwas considered his magnum opus, and is the most widely read book in modern African literature...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 November 1930
CityOgidi, Nigeria
CountryNigeria
writing wrestling difficult-and-easy
Writing is like wrestling; you are wrestling with ideas and with the story. There is a lot of energy required. At the same time, it is exciting. So it is both difficult and easy. What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing. I have said in the kind of exaggerated manner of writers and prophets that writing, for me, is like receiving a term of imprisonment-you know that's what you're in for, for whatever time it takes.
mother children yams
You sound as if you question the authority and the decision of the Oracle, who said he should die.""I do not. Why should I? But the Oracle did not ask me to carry out its decision." [...]"The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her mesenger," Okonkwo said. "A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm.
children men okonkwo
No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.
rain heart village
Even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene. He could not stop the rain now, just as he would not attempt to start it in the heart of the dry season, without serious danger to his own health.
way likes poet
The emperor would prefer the poet to keep away from politics, the emperor's domain, so that he can manage things the way he likes.
reality difficult
It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.
hurt men necks
We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
blame vulture
Do you blame a vulture for perching over a carcass?
simple thinking white
Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked.
real mean self
To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!
pride modesty inverted
What is modesty but inverted pride?
gun lips faces
She pouted her lips like a gun in my face.
life men transition
A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
children people world
Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest. That's not the way my people rear their children. They let them experience the world as it is.