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Other Books by
Rose Ure Mezu
Women
in Chains: Abandonment in Love Relationships in the
Fiction of Selected West African Writers (1994)
/
Songs of the Hearth
(1993) /
Homage to My People
(2004) /
A History of Africana Women's Literature (2004)
Black
Nationalists: Reconsidering Du Bois, Garvey, Booker T. &
Nkrumah (1999)
Chinua Achebe: The Man and His Works (2006)
*
* * * *
Books by Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart
/
Arrow of God /
No Longer at Ease
/
A Man of the People
/
Anthills of
the Savannah
* * * *
*
Preface
to
Chinua Achebe: The Man and His Works (2006)
The several novels of Chinua Achebe
can stand alone and can be read, appreciated, and
studied in isolation. They also can form an integrated
corpus some progressing either spatially, historically,
and genealogically from one to the other. The chapters
that form Chinua Achebe: The Man and His Works by
Rose Ure Mezu can be viewed and read in much the same
way as Achebe’s novels. Each chapter while forming part
of a whole can stand in isolation and on its own.
The work is not a novel to be read
from the beginning to the end but should be seen as
rooms with separate and connecting doors in a house each
designed with a specific purpose in mind, sufficient
unto itself yet forming part of the whole. These rooms
or chapters may naturally share common walls and ideas
which Dr. Rose Ure Mezu purposefully uses to reinforce
the unit rather than repeat or duplicate parts of the
whole. The reader of Chinua Achebe: The Man and His
Works can therefore end with the beginning or begin
with the end chapter or simply move into the central
chapter or living room and from there explore the house
that Chinua Achebe built, or better still try to climb
the iroko tree that Achebe planted with its foundations
rooted in pre-colonial Africa and its branches extending
to the diaspora.
Dr. Rose Ure Mezu, in this work,
inaugurates a new tradition, juxtaposing Achebe’s
thoughts and concepts and those of diasporan literary
and cultural groundbreakers such as Olaudah Equiano (The
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or
Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself,
1789) and Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Are Watching
God, 1937). Equiano’s work has lately become the
focus of some controversies by some people who are
neither Igbos nor inhabitants of Essaka. These people
question, out of ignorance, the authenticity of
Equiano’s place of birth. Without setting out to do so,
Mezu in Chinua Achebe: The Man and His Works has
presented veritably a defense of the truth about Igbo /
African culture and Equiano’s recollection of it. As
pointed out in this work and as established by Cheikh
Anta Diop and other scholars, Africa was not and is not
culturally, socially, and technologically a tabula
rasa.
Literature brings the world together,
interlocks human experience and brings out the universal
in the individual experience. Chinua Achebe in extolling
the individual succeeded in celebrating humanity with
his works and now Dr. Rose Ure Mezu has celebrated in
this work the humanity of Chinua Achebe. It reads almost
like a novel and certainly one would hope there will be
a sequel to this volume.
Dr. S. Okechukwu Mezu
* * *
* *
Table of Contents
| Preface |
|
viii |
| |
|
|
|
Introduction |
|
x |
| |
|
|
| Chapter 1 |
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart:
Implications for Black Cultural Nationalism
and Revisionism |
16 |
| |
|
|
| Chapter 2 |
Achebe’s Arrow of God: Ezeulu and
the Limits of Power |
37 |
| |
|
|
| Chapter 3 |
Conflicts and Notions of Culture and
Civilization in No Longer At Ease |
65 |
| |
|
|
| Chapter 4 |
A Man of the People: A Moral
Approach |
90 |
| |
|
|
| Chapter 5 |
Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah:
A Writer and his Ideas |
121 |
| |
|
|
| Chapter 6 |
Achebe’s Okonkwo and Hurston’s Jody
Starks: Twin Souls in Different Climes and
Their Women |
147 |
| |
|
|
| Chapter 7 |
Achebe’s Writings: An Authentication of
the Igbo Culture of Olaudah Equiano’s 1789
Narrative |
164 |
| |
|
|
| Chapter 8 |
Women in Achebe’s World: A Womanist
Critique |
210 |
| |
|
|
| Chapter 9 |
Conversations with Chinua Achebe, 1996 |
227 |
| |
|
|
| Chapter 10 |
The Mezus Visit with the Achebes: (A
second interview, June 15, 1999) |
235 |
| |
|
|
| Bibliography |
|
256 |
| |
|
|
| Index |
|
268 |
| |
Published by Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd
http://www.adonis-abbey.com |
|
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 |
Chinua Achebe wins $300,000 Gish prize—By
Philip Nwosu—Monday, September 27,
2010—The author of the epic novel,
Things Fall Apart, Chinua
Achebe, has emerged winner of the United
States Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.
The Gish prize, which was established in
1994 by the Dorothy and Lillian Gish
Prize Trust and administered by JPMorgan
Chase Bank as trustee, is given annually
to “a man or woman who has made an
outstanding contribution to the beauty
of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment
and understanding of life.” The prize is
worth $300,000. . . . Achebe’s writings
examine African politics and chronicle
the ways in which African culture and
civilization have survived in the
post-colonial world. Some of his
acclaimed works include
A Man of the People (1966) and
Anthills of the Savannah
(1988). [The 80-year-old author has
founded a number of magazines for
African art, fiction and poetry.]
Achebe, who is paralyzed from the waist
down due to a 1990 car accident, is
currently Professor of Africana Studies
at Brown University in Providence, Rhode
Island.—SunNewsOnline |
Again, Chinua Achebe
Rejects Nigerian Award—“The reasons for rejecting the offer
when it was first made have not been addressed let alone solved.
It is inappropriate to offer it again to me. I must therefore
regretfully decline the offer again,” Achebe said in the letter
which he reportedly sent to Nigeria Ambassador to the United
States. Achebe had in 2004 rejected offer of national award from
the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo in
protest of the political situation in Nigeria and his native
Anambra State then.
The US based writer had in
the rejection letter he wrote to the then President noted that:
“I write this letter with a very heavy heart. For some time now
I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay. I have
watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where
a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in
high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a
bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness
of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the
Presidency.
“Forty three years ago, at
the first anniversary of Nigeria’s independence I was given the
first Nigerian National Trophy for Literature. In 1979, I
received two further honours—the Nigerian National Order of
Merit and the Order of the Federal Republic—and in 1999 the
first National Creativity Award.
“I accepted all these
honours fully aware that Nigeria was not perfect; but I had a
strong belief that we would outgrow our shortcomings under
leaders committed to uniting our diverse peoples. Nigeria’s
condition today under your watch is, however, too dangerous for
silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by
declining to accept the high honour awarded me in the 2004
Honours List.”—PMNewsNigeria
* *
* * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 21 March 2006
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