Chinua Achebe by Jago Morrison, and: Achebe and Friends at Umuahia: The Making of a Literary Elite by Terri Ochiaghia

Abstract

Reviewed by: Chinua Achebe by Jago Morrison, and: Achebe and Friends at Umuahia: The Making of a Literary Elite by Terri Ochiaghia Chengyi Coral Wu (bio) Jago Morrison. Chinua Achebe. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2014. Pp xi, 272. £30.00. Terri Ochiaghia. Achebe and Friends at Umuahia: The Making of a Literary Elite. Rochester: James Currey, 2014. Pp ix, 218. US$80. Chinua Achebe has been recognized as the founding father of African literature for his internationally acclaimed novel Things Fall Apart (1958). His essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” (1975) also established him as a leading postcolonial studies critic. Two posthumous studies of Achebe, Jago Morrison’s Chinua Achebe and Terri Ochiagha’s Achebe and Friends at Umuahia, re-examine and challenge the conventional and widely held notions about Achebe’s scholarship. Morrison revisits the notion that Achebe is a “cultural nationalist” whose literary writing promotes Nigerian anti-colonial nationalism. For Morrison, far from endorsing Nigeria, the trajectory of Achebe’s novels questions the very premise of Nigerian nationalism. Ochiagha reviews Achebe’s status and relation to his closest contemporaries, including the poet Christopher Okigbo and the novelists Chukwuemeka Ike, Elechi Almadi, and Chike Momah, arguing that Achebe should not be treated as a “founding father” of African literature and thus his contemporaries should not be regarded as his “followers.” Against the notion of “the Achebe School” that has been used to understand Achebe and his contemporaries, Ochiagha foregrounds the “companionship” and “friendship” among them (9). Chinua Achebe begins by elaborating on Achebe’s career as a broadcaster and an editor in the 1950s and 1960s, both occupations which were developed in the context of Nigerian independence. Achebe’s position as the director of the broadcasting program “Voice of Nigeria” required him to promote the ideal of “One Nigeria” (Morrison 11). In the meanwhile, his position as the general editor of the African Writers Series for Heinemann Educational Books aimed to promote the national literature of Nigeria and many other African [End Page 176] countries. Achebe’s public image as a promoter of Nigeria and Nigerian literature thus ties him to the notion that his literary writings provide examples of Nigerian national literature. Morrison highlights contradictions between the contexts of Achebe’s career and the texts he composed (mainly his novels) and argues that Achebe was ambivalent about Nigeria as a political and cultural concept. Morrison’s analyses of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease (1960), and Arrow of God (1964) show paradoxes of Achebe’s representations of British colonization of Igboland in different time periods and his Igbo characters’ resistance against it. Morrison argues that Achebe’s novelistic critiques of colonialism are often oblique and his representations of British colonization of Igboland are, to some extent, not true to history. Instead, Achebe’s novels, Morrison emphasizes, focus more on weaknesses and conflicts existing within Igbo culture—including the Igbo’s passive resistance against British colonialism, the obsession with masculinity (as dramatized by Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart and Ezeulu in Arrow of God), the clannishness and corruptions associated with this obsession (as in No Longer at Ease), and the excess of intra-tribe competition (as dramatized by Ezeulu and his rival Nwaka). Those problems, Morrison argues, highlight Achebe’s reflection on the self-destructive nature of Igbo culture rather than his rebellion against colonial oppression and conquest. In foregrounding Achebe’s portrayals of the internal problems of an indigenous culture, Morrison does not intend to question Achebe’s anti-colonial attitude. Achebe’s novels demonstrate the richness and complexity of the Igbo cultural system in opposition to colonial representations of African indigenous cultures. However, Achebe’s identification with the Igbo does not make him a “nationalist.” Morrison’s analyses of Achebe’s novels about post-independence Nigeria, including A Man of the People (1966) and Anthill of the Savannah (1987), highlight the author’s pessimism about the validity of the Nigerian Federation. Morrison shows how in these two novels Achebe targets the corruption of the Nigerian (male) national and educated elites—a ruling class the author represents as being unable to change the status quo due to their obsession with...