>Chinua Achebe (/ˈtʃJnwɑː əˈtʃɛbɛ/,[1] born Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic.[2] His first novel Things Fall Apart (1958), often considered his best,[3] is the most widely read book in modern African literature.
Have you read anything by Google's token nigger of the day? You aren't a bigot are you?
I had to read Things Fall Apart as a freshman in college. It was okay. Okonkwo is a pretty decent tragic hero.
Things Fall Apart is legit pretty good, but I haven't dove into much of his other stuff yet.
You could just honestly ask for black authors instead of doing this double-reverse pol-bait every time you know.
>The gender roles of men and women, as well as societies' conceptions of the associated concepts, are frequent themes in Achebe's writing. He has been criticised as a sexist author, in response to what many call the uncritical depiction of traditionally patriarchal Igbo society, where the most masculine men take numerous wives, and women are beaten regularly.[185] Paradoxically, Igbo society immensely values individual achievement but also sees the ownership over or acquisition of women as a signifier of success.[186] As seen in Things Fall Apart, Igbo society condemns violence but Okonkwo's ability to control ‘his’ women is inextricably connected to his dignity.
uhh sexist much?
I read the trilogy, it was good
I have actually. Things Fall Apart was quite good.
Things Fall Apart is good and Nigeria will become the first African post-Colonial Super Power by 2040
Things Fall Apart was atrociously bad. Terrible prose, children's story level of thematic depth and contetn
Look at this uncultured retard.
Africans are much more advanced and smarter than us
things fall apart is a good novel brother
>obligatory
>can't spell content
Retard
Kek
>tfw no yams
Yes I have. Also Arrow of God.
IM IN THE KITCHEN, YAMS EVERYWHERE
...
Lagos will be under water by then and nobody will use oil anymore. Don’t see how they’ll be a super power.
To simplify things a bit, is it leftist or right-wing people who are saying it's a shit read?
>Lagos will be under water
even if, presuming those wild claims about global warming wiping out most of central Africa are correct, Lagos went under that would just push millions of young Nigerians into other more contested territory and eventually they would use it as causus belli to invade & take over the the surrounding African Republics (Whose populations they outnumber 5 to 1).
>nobody will use oil anymore
How do you know that?
Right wingers don't like that he's African and left wingers don't like that he's right wing.
Literati like that he was a good writer.
True.
The weird thing about intersectionality is that it'd be super fucking interesting if all its practitioners weren't moron retard Twitter slacktivists
Imagine if all the issues of progressive values like feminism and deconstructing oppression vs. hermeneutical/relativist respect for other cultural lifeworlds vs. remaining "authentic" to "your" original culture, while also living/being raised in a Western country and being able to participate in a Western "universal"/post-relativist scholarly discourse, all that shit, was subtly blended together by people who actually understood how difficult it is to reconcile
Instead, it's just short-sighted fucking bratty immigrants who don't even realise the difficulty, and who think living in Boston their entire lives and tweeting about problematic subway advertisements places them at the height of intersectionality
It's a shame that the "moment" of postcolonialism is utterly wasted on the deracinated faggot ivory tower whitewashed rich immigrant spawn infantilised people who actually constitute its discursive sphere.
Things Fall Apart is one of the greatest novels written since WWII. Beautiful and thoughtful analysis of colonialism.
people are dumb user. we gotta be careful with our ideas, because dumb people will take em and do retarded shit with it
Fuck I need that tattoo.
>"Grandpa,why are you such a moronophobic accessibility hater? Your tattoo is grotesque."
>Bitches little Timmy. Fucking retarded ass bitches.
Things fall apart is good, reminds me of that one song by Windir about how the Christians come and spread their dumb shit through the weaklings. Make Nigeria Great Again.
I mean, he doesnt like British Missionaries very much, but I think he doesnt fit very well into 2010s left right twitter dichotomy.
Also thiong'o is better (except for the last chapter of things fall apart, fuck)
Thanks for the answer. Bought the book (pocket) today during lunch.
I'm right-wing, but 90% of my friends are foreigners (most of them from MENA). Don't see anything wrong with that, and I would think most right-wing people feel the same; as long as a person has good values, we tend to respect that person.
Things, especially people, rarely fit into neat little categories.
With that said, I think one can be both right-wing and not like British missionaries.
Heh i might have to read this know
This guy said Heart of Darkness was racist.
Why do you retards measure everything by prose style? Are you really that superficial?
Those are yams? I thought that was poo.
I love HoD and definitely don't think it should be removed from the canon, but Achebe's criticism of it is pretty legit.
no it isn't. achebe clearly didn't understand that conrad was satirising colonialism. i bet he didn't even read heart of darkness much less any of conrad's other work.
also conrad was writing in his second language and still managed to produce a masterpiece so achebe can fuck off
You know Achebe was also writing in his second language, right?
His criticism is facile. He's basically criticizing a book about human nature for not being about colonialism, and ignores all the ways in which the book actually lends itself pretty pronouncedly to an anti-colonialist reading. (Boat firing into the jungle, England being represented as basically the same thing as the Congo, everything 'savage' actually being linked to Colonial sources.) He doesn't mention other work of Conrad's that would support such a reading. (Under Western Eyes, Lord Jim by contrast, etc.) His essay is basically: "I read colonialism into everything ambiguous." Conrad is a great writer precisely because of the ambiguities and ironies in his presentation that make this first-look possible.
If he would have refuted the anti-colonial reading Achebe's argument would have developed into something worth listening to, but as it stands he's no better than a sophmore with a highly polished structure and style. He has no deeper engagement with Conrad or the work. He's actually everything that's wrong with academia and politics, acting in bad faith because he assumes bad will.
read Things Fall Apart in high school. I kinda liked it tbqh.
Achebe is spot on in that whilst HoD is attacking colonialism, it does so whilst still seeing blacks as inferior. Sort of a 'the African is my brother- my little brother' sort of way
Heart of Darkness was published in 1899. That's how things were then. To compare the thinking of the past with contemporary thinking (even when Achebe was writing) is absurd.
how are the horrible drums at night, the occult rites of the lake tribes and the cannibals tied to Western colonial practice? Pretty sure they are seen by Marlowe as some sort of evil, primal darkness.
(Seen by Marlowe, not Conrad. I think Achebe's author blaming is naive, and paved the way for easy, resentment style criticism of older books)
Are you saying historical texts shouldn't be criticised from a moral standpoint?
nice try satan
also not the guy you were talking to but 100 years from now people are going to think you and all your friends were fucking retarded for following social norms/teachings, there's things we know now that most people were not aware of because it wasn't shared with them or encouraged, I don't think that makes them bad people or morally inferior or whatever, just ignorant
With the cannibals you're neglecting how Marlowe regards them. The strangeness and forboding that's linked to the Congo tribesman is just what a person of that period would think going into the Congo. There's no way he's going to suddenly invent modern anthropology. And remember, it's Marlowe telling a tale to a group of men.
minorities can't into literature.
>achebe clearly didn't understand that conrad was satirising colonialism
You can do that and still be racist.
>He's basically criticizing a book about human nature for not being about colonialism
As I recall he's upset that Conrad describes Africans as completely without culture or societal restraints. They're described as free and much more driven by instinct than the Europeans. I think a big point of Things Fall Apart was to show how that isn't true. And then there's the whole thing about Marlow being disgusted and horrified at the thought of being related to the savages he sees.
I do agree however that much in HoD is ambiguous. Achebe's interpretation is very one-sided, but I don't think that makes it "wrong."
Y A M S
I know that. That's why I made it clear that it is Marlowe, the storyteller character, who presents the occult, evil image of Africa to his listeners. I wasn't making a moral judgement or blaming Conrad.
>Me and my friends
Who?
Also I'm aware in the future people will criticise today's morals. In this thread we are criticising the moral standpoint of a decades old lecture. Ethical criticism will always exist, and is a valid way into literature if you acknowledge it's (many) weaknesses as a method.
>You can do that and still be racist.
people of the late 19th century were racist by today's standards, so what?
even the most progressive writers of the time were like that. HG Wells for example was considered a liberal free thinker at the time but he still wrote Jimmy Goggles the God.
the way you think now will be considered racist by the people of 2100
Ah yes, yammy old "Yams" Achebe. Writing another story about the African yam trade in a yam-raising village no doubt. Truly amazing. I bet this one is about an Igbo man who raises yams! I can't wait to find a new yam-related dilemma greet me with every turn of the page. I am almost certain that this tale of Nigerian tribesmen and the destruction of their sacred yam economy will teach me a lot about myself, and about humanity in general. If only we in the West understood the perfect harmony of pre-colonial yam-based civilization, we would live in a yam-filled paradise and read books entirely about yams, written mainly by Chinua Achebe himself. Some day.
I took the stilted matter of fact exposition to be part of the effect. It was good, it felt authentic.
White people are a minority in the world.
I don't think Achebe would care if Conrad was just some dude that happened to be racist. His problem is that a book that, according to him, perpetuates the idea of Africa being without culture, is still being read and held in such high regard today. Again, I don't agree with him at all that we shouldn't read it, I think it's a wonderful book. But I can definitely see why he'd be concerned about that aspect, and I think it's good that he brought it to our attention.
>and I think it's good that he brought it to our attention.
Mother fucker 99% of all discussion around the novella is now about whether it's racist or not. Achebe's criticism was fucking meaningless but now occupies highschool curriculums across North America. Fuck him for bringing it up. Conrad literally states that race is meaningless while the characters are on the Thames in the intro.
>Fuck him for bringing it up. Conrad literally states that race is meaningless while the characters are on the Thames in the intro
He also says that the thought of being related to the savages is gross.
I get hating the racist angle if it was shoved down your throat in school, but shouldn't the school system be blamed for that, rather than Achebe? When I read it in school we talked about a ton of other things.
>now occupies highschool curriculums across North America. Fuck him for bringing it up
i fucking hate that kind of shit
like you can't read alice in wonderland any more without some smug piece of shit saying "ah, but did you know lewis carroll was a pedo?"
NO HE WASN'T
HE WAS A VICTORIAN
still funny to laugh about famalam
like laughing about greeks molesting little boys
ye it was normal but.... lel
If they can't brag to their internet buddies about how difficult to understand their books are, it doesn't really interest them.
Is he really wrong though?
dude too real
Ungrateful nog who made his name badmouthing better writers than himself, notably Joseph "Bloody racist" Conrad - the person who did the most to publicise and criticise Belgin brutality in the Congo.
That's what you get for trying to help the nogs, ungrateful savages. Should've left the Belgians have at them.
>Make Nigeria Great Again.
M'N'GgA
Figures
ikr?
mind=blown
>that image
>think how cool that black mask is
>realize they're black under the black mask
wtf
I think Africans would look scarier without the mask, lmao.
KEK my brother! Veeky Forumsfags absolutely BTFO'd xD
Who doesn't know this guy? push pen to pay-pa like cheen-uwa ah-chee-bay!