By Mukoma Wa Ngugi
“Sir, I am very happy to finally
meet you in person – I have read
all your books,” a man gushed to
my father, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o at
the Jomo Kenyatta Airport,
Nairobi. My father loves talking
with people, but he also does not
mind a compliment or two and
so we stopped to chat. “Your
books, especially Things Fall
Apart…”
And on another occasion my
friends and I were sitting in a
bar in Madison Wisconsin when
a drunken student stumbled to
our table. “I hear you are the son
of that famous African writer?”
He asked me.
“Yes, I happen to be,” I replied
and sat up straight to cheerfully
receive a few proxy compliments.
“We just finished reading Things
Fall Apart in class – now that
Okonkwo character…”
Suffice it to say then that Chinua
Achebe has been around all my
life – from the Heinemann Series
poster of a smiling, serious,
bemused, pipe smoking Achebe
that was framed in our family
sitting room, to cases of
mistaken identity, to my own
work as a writer and teacher.
In fact just last month, I was
teaching Things Fall Apart
alongside Joseph Conrad’s Heart
of Darkness. The question at
hand was – how does Achebe
counter and answer Conrad’s
Africa? One word comes to mind
– voice. To my ear Achebe’s voice
is always measured even at its
most defiant.
It’s a voice strong enough to
speak for a continent denied its
voice by colonial racism. It’s the
voice of a humble listener who is
moved into action by what he
sees and hears around him.
There Was A Country is as much
about Biafra as it is about how
Achebe answered the question –
what is the role of the African
writer in a decolonizing Africa?
Jump into your times with both
your feet and pen.
Thinking about the African
literary tradition and the humility
to listen, Achebe never accepted
the title, “father of African
literature” that we are now
forcefully bestowing on him.
When asked about it in 2009, he
told the Brown Daily Herald that
he “strongly resisted” the title
because “it’s really a serious
belief of mine that it’s risky for
anyone to lay claim to something
as huge and important as African
literature … the contribution
made down the ages. I don’t
want to be singled out as the
one behind it because there
were many of us – many, many
of us.”
With Achebe, Nelson Mandela and
others who have challenged the
way we live and think about the
world, there will be areas of
disagreements. So with Achebe
there are questions around his
stand on the role of African
languages in African writing.
Things Fall Apart has been
translated into 50 languages –
how many of them are African
languages? How many of the
translations are in a Nigerian
language? There is also much to
be argued about in regards to
his representation of the Biafra
war and Ibo nationalism in There
was a Country.
But there is a counter-argument
to be made that the work of my
generation of African writers is
to shine a light on his blind
spots. We can give Things Fall
Apart new lives in African
languages. And we should tell
our histories in as many different
ways as we can so that there are
multiple mirrors reflecting our
tragedies and triumphs.
The bottom line for me is this –
We are all better off because he
lived and beautifully wrote his
conscience. A writer who has left
so much of himself in the world
and on whose shoulders others
will stand for generations to
come cannot be said to be truly
dead.
Achebe the man has died.
Achebe the writer lives on.
* Mukoma Wa Ngugi is an
Assistant Professor of English at
Cornell University, the author of
Nairobi Heat (Melville, 2011) and
the forthcoming Black Star
Nairobi (Melville, 2013).