Yes Remembering Chinua Achebe.

Most remarkable about Achebe’s life is the fact that his extraordinary pen and sui generis literary talent took him from the provincial African town of Ogidi to the hallowed halls of the Ivy League as a professor. Achebe excelled during his early educational pursuits and had such a virtuoso grasp of the English language that he earned the nickname “Dictionary.” The fact that Achebe’s work continues to be required reading all over the globe—from the primary school level to the graduate school level—makes it difficult to impeach his literary credibility. His rise from obscurity to international prominence is a testament to the lofty heights that can be achieved when tremendous talent is merged with the same level of tremendous devotion to hard work.

In his writings, Chinua Achebe celebrated, explained, and defended Igbo culture. The late professor was famously critical of the portrayal of African culture in Western literature, and he believed the most efficient way to combat this was to write his own stories. Describing the purpose of his distinguished writing career in his final book published in late 2012, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra, Achebe writes that “a major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories—prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.” He exhibited no trepidation about taking on Joseph Conrad, a Western literary hero, for his negative depiction of Africans. In his devastating critique of Conrad, Chinua Achebe referred to him as a “thoroughgoing racist.”

Although Chinua Achebe is of inestimable importance as a global literary icon, his magnitude vis-à-vis the Igbo tribe cannot be understated. Additionally, his intellectual significance to Africans in the diaspora cannot be discounted. West African history is African American history. Africans in the diaspora—both descendants of West African slaves and West African immigrants to the Western world—have an intellectual tradition of which to be proud. As pointed out by historian Douglas B. Chambers in his book Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia, many of the early black Americans who were taken as slaves to Virginia were of Igbo descent. Moreover, many black Americans who are descendants of slaves have ancestors from the Igbo tribe. Any person with a serious appreciation for black history must see beyond country lines and appreciate the African origin of black people.

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