Chinua Achebe Honored with the 2010 Gish Prize

And the winner is Chinua Achebe!   The converted Gish Prize for 2010 went to legendary Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe.  Those who gathered last night for the highbrow and well-attended event at the Hudson Theatre, in mid-town Manhattan, New York, were not disappointed; not that they expected to be.

The Gish Prize, bequeathed by the silent movie stars, Dorothy and Lillian Gish for artistic excellence, spoke eloquently about the high honors in which the artistic community held Chinua Achebe’s literary creativity. The Gish Prize winners are generally nominated by the worldwide arts community and selected for their unprecedented impact in their chosen fields.

The 2010 Gish Prize was worth some $300,000. As the compeerer Lisa Philp, the managing director of JPMorgan Chase Bank remarked, “The legacy of the Gish Prize is its devotion to the continuing power of the creative spirit. JPMorgan Chase is proud to be a part of this legacy.”

The high honors to Achebe was best summed up by Toni Morrison, who described the award which placed Achebe in the renowned company of artistic greats, such as Bob Dylan,  Arthur Miller, Peter Sellers, and Robert Redford, as “the most distinguished and the most deserved.” Since its establishment in 1993, Achebe is the 17th winner and the first African so honored.

The niche of the Gish Prize is that it is not literary per se, but devoted to humanity and those who have singularly enriched it.  Indeed, Dorothy and Lillian Gish decreed that the Gish Prize is to be given to “A man of woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life….”  That proviso and Chinua Achebe surely were like the hands and gloves.

The high literary, artistic and society personas that graced the event were many and included poet Sonia Sanchez, curator Lowery Sims, former NEA chair Jane Alexander, author Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, and musician Baba Ola Jagun. Philosopher and PEN president Kwame Anthony Appiah was unavoidably absent.

Achebe family members, friends and Nigerian Diaspora representatives were also present in large numbers and included notables likes author Okey Ndibe, author Chike Momah and his wife, Ethel Momah; Dr. Ofunne Omo Obaze, Chair of the NJ Chapter of the Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas (ANPA), Consul-General Ibrahim Awalu, and Nigerian painter and poet, Obiora Udechukwu. Their collective presence gave cognizance to the high esteem they had for Achebe and the value of the prize. As Michael Thelwel, exuberantly put it, “the guests graced the recipient, who in turn, graced the prize and those who were present to witness the honors.” To those present, the complimentarity was most explicable and unambiguously so.

Poet, playwright Sonia Sanchez – a friend of Achebe- did the honors of putting the evening’s event in its proper perspective. With her ululation and singsong cadence, she regaled Achebe, underlining all the while, his unparallel impact on world literature and “the international diaspora of African fiction and voices”.

Michael Thelwel in his drawn out remarks would not be outdone. He too regaled Achebe, and thrilled the guests with his vivid and endlessly anecdotal recall of Achebe’s memorable visit to Jamaica, during which a local sage encapsulated the revered author’s persona by characterizing him as “a black-hearted man”. This characterization, evidently, was a reference to Achebe’ broad and unquestioned role as the conscience, custodian and purveyor of African folktales, culture, mores, and the dissector of her taboos and political and moral quandary, all memorialized in his many works, with excruciatingly delicate balance and finesse juxtaposed with impenitent forthrightness, but one consistently devoid of moralizing.

Achebe, ever humble, measured and the optimist visionary that he is, had his say.  From his terse handwritten acceptance speech, he proclaimed softly:  “I have news for you! I’m a lucky man; very lucky indeed.”  He went on to observe that with the award of the Gish Prize to him, the guests had joined in “celebrating the universe of human creativity”.  However, his paramount accolade was reserved for his benefactors.  Of the two women, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, he had very endearing words. He observed that even though he and the women had never met, it was clear to him that back in time and from his far end of Africa, “I knew them and they knew me… May their kind increase and prosper.”

At the behest of Achebe, Michael Thelwel paid tribute to the memory of late Basil Davidson, the renowned British chronicler of African history, but Thelwel went further to heap nuanced but inimitable barbs and reprimand on those literary awards that seem to have become agenda-driven, politicized and not “totally unbiased” –read the Nobel Prize. The audience, in seeming unapologetic complicity, nodded their concurrence.  Such gesture, added further vim to the choice for the 2010 Gish Prize.

When the time came to end the event, which was well chaperoned by Lisa Philp, the immortal words of Chinua Achebe, read so eloquently earlier by Jane Alexander, still resonated in the ornate and grand cavernous bowl of the Hudson Theatre.

As the guests rose to brownnose, take pictures and obtain autographs from Achebe, the distant sounds of the drums of Baba Ola Jagun and the Ancestral Rhythms and the impromptu Igbo ululation by Obiora Udechukwu, all in tribute to the genius of Achebe, lingered unreservedly.

In the end and though unstated, what was evident to many had simply become so apparent all; Chinua Achebe, a legend in his lifetime and a man of unquestionable gravitas lived on, with great equanimity and unmatched humility, propriety and good taste in behavior and speech.

Chinua Achebe, may your kind increase and prosper.

http://www.kwenu.com/bookreview/obaze/2010/achebe_gish_prize_2010.htm

nice one! he deserves it!

well deserving honour

He is truly "the father of modern African writing."