The Education of a British-Protected Child
In 1958, while he was still in his 20s, Chinua Achebe published 鈥淭hings Fall Apart,鈥� the story of a traditional leader named Okonkwo whose inflexible nature undermines his humanity and his ability to resist the encroachments of British missionaries. 鈥淭hings Fall Apart鈥� has sold more than 8 million copies. It is the one African novel that everyone has heard of.
Fifty years after 鈥淭hings Fall Apart鈥� and more than 20 years after 鈥淎nthills of the Savannah,鈥� his last novel, it might seem time for Achebe to write his memoirs. But while his fellow Nigerian, the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, has published five full-length memoirs, Achebe has never chosen to write his own story. He denies in his new book that he is a modest man, but he is surely a private one.
The Education of a British-Protected Child is neither a memoir nor exactly what it is advertised to be: a collection of autobiographical essays. Of the 16 essays and speeches included here, the most directly autobiographical 鈥� 鈥淢y Dad and Me鈥� and 鈥淢y Daughters鈥� 鈥� are among the briefest. The memories in the title essay are separated by ruminations on British colonialism and the character of the Igbo people. As for the 1990 car accident that cost him the use of his legs, Achebe disposes of it with a couple of sentences in his preface.
But if 鈥淭he Education of a British-Protected Child鈥� doesn鈥檛 tell us much that is new about Achebe鈥檚 life, it does tell us a lot about his views on other matters. In it, among other things, he returns to the topics of two of his most controversial older essays: 鈥淎n Image of Africa,鈥� on the racism of Joseph Conrad鈥檚 鈥淗eart of Darkness,鈥� and 鈥淭he African Writer and the English Language,鈥� on the use of English by African writers.
鈥淧olitics and Politicians of Language in African Literature鈥� renews Achebe鈥檚 argument with Ngugi wa Thiong鈥檕, the best-known proponent of the idea that African literature should be written in the indigenous languages of Africa. Ngugi, he says, believes that the choice of a language must be either/or, while Achebe believes one can embrace both. One of his own best poems, he says, was an elegy for the poet Christopher Okigbo, who died during the Biafran war. It was written in the Igbo language.
鈥淎frica鈥檚 Tarnished Name鈥� takes Conrad as the touchstone for the myth of the 鈥渄ark continent.鈥� Achebe begins by noting the paradox that Africa, though geographically so close to Europe, has come to symbolize the 鈥渇arthest point of otherness,鈥� an otherness that takes the form of regarding Africa not only as alien but as deeply inferior. That view, Achebe argues (along with scholars including Basil Davidson and C.L.R. James) was 鈥渁 deliberate invention devised to facilitate two gigantic historical events: the Atlantic slave trade and the colonization of Africa by Europe.鈥�
Conrad鈥檚 role in this process, and his literary sin, was to take racist propaganda and give it the stamp of literary respectability. 鈥淐onrad managed to transform elements of transparently crude and fanciful writing about Africans into a piece of 鈥榮erious鈥� and permanent literature.鈥� And so we have the 鈥渂lack incomprehensible frenzy鈥� of Conrad鈥檚 gibbering natives along the Congo, and, even worse, the half-educated African who works as a fireman on the narrator鈥檚 ship. To look at him, says Conrad, 鈥渨as as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind legs.鈥�
鈥淭his is poisonous writing,鈥� Achebe remarks, 鈥渋n full consonance with the tenets of the slave trade-inspired tradition of European portrayal of Africa.鈥�
Achebe does not temper his language when attacking racism, colonialism, and their defenders. But that is not to say that he fails to see different points of view. The Igbo people, he says, prefer to view events not from the extremes but from the middle ground. The middle ground is a guard against fanaticism. It is 鈥渢he home of doubt and indecision, of suspension of disbelief, of make-believe, of playfulness, of the unpredictable, of irony.鈥�
And so Achebe condemns British colonial rule while recalling some of his English teachers with fondness. He honors Ngugi as a writer while finding him wrongheaded in his literary politics. And in his final essay, 鈥淎frica Is People,鈥� he calls on the World Bank to help restore the stolen wealth of the world鈥檚 poor countries with the simple argument that Africans are people, too, and that the harsh application of economic shock treatments that no Western country would accept should be equally unacceptable in Africa.
Geoff Wisner is the author of 鈥淎 Basket of Leaves: 99 Books that Capture the Spirit of Africa.鈥�
