Home And Exile

by Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe is Africa's most prominent writer. His fiction and poetry burn with a passionate commitment to political justice, bringing to life not only Africa's troubled encounters with Europe but also the dark side of contemporary African political life. Now, in Home and Exile, Achebe reveals the man behind his powerful work.

Genres: Africa, Nonfiction, Essays, Nigeria, African Literature, History, Biography

115 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Works, including the novel Things Fall Apart (1958), of Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe describe traditional African life in conflict with colonial rule and westernization.

This poet and critic served as professor at Brown University. People best know and most widely read his first book in modern African literature.

Christian parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria reared Achebe, who excelled at school and won a scholarship for undergraduate studies. World religions and traditional African cultures fascinated him, who began stories as a university student. After graduation, he worked for the Nigerian broadcasting service and quickly moved to the metropolis of Lagos. He gained worldwide attention in the late 1950s; his later novels include No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). Achebe defended the use of English, a "language of colonizers," in African literature. In 1975, controversy focused on his lecture An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" for its criticism of Joseph Conrad as "a bloody racist."

When the region of Biafra broke away from Nigeria in 1967, Achebe, a devoted supporter of independence, served as ambassador for the people of the new nation. The war ravaged the populace, and as starvation and violence took its toll, he appealed to the people of Europe and the Americas for aid. When the Nigerian government retook the region in 1970, he involved in political parties but witnessed the corruption and elitism that duly frustration him, who quickly resigned. He lived in the United States for several years in the 1970s, and after a car accident left him partially disabled, he returned to the United States in 1990.

Novels of Achebe focus on the traditions of Igbo society, the effect of Christian influences, and the clash of values during and after the colonial era. His style relied heavily on the Igbo oral tradition, and combines straightforward narration with representations of folk stories, proverbs, and oratory. He also published a number of short stories, children's books, and essay collections. He served as the David and Marianna Fisher university professor of Africana studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, United States.

ollowing a brief illness, Achebe died.

Reviews

[Samadrita · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The Empire Writes Back' would have been a fitting alternative title for this essay collection. (Achebe doesn't fail to pay a tribute to Salman Rushdie's essay of the same name published in 1982). Because that is what the running theme here is - a reclamation of a land and a culture that was wrested away with brutal force and made a part of an 'Empire' which still insists on viewing that period as one of glory and not characterized by the worst kind of human rights violation ever. And a heralding of the arrival of the African voice in the world literary scene.

Achebe is slowly turning into my personal literary hero. His wry humor, elegant prose, mildly sardonic tone and passion for social justice exude a righteousness that's hard not to defer to. His writings continue to make me question certain pet notions and ideas that are so deeply ingrained in each one of us that they seem like indisputable facts and consequently evade further introspection. My penchant for unconsciously comparing Latin American, South East Asian and African writing to the style, technique and language of the Americans and Europeans I admire and immediately pronouncing judgement on them on the basis of said parameters has to go away now, I realize.
It doesn't matter if African, Asian and other writers of the Commonwealth (Dear god, why do we have that ridiculous redundant grouping still? is it not there for the sole purpose of reminding us that we were once colonies?) have the same degree of grammatical precision and structural integrity to their English prose as their European and American counterparts. It matters that their voices be heard and universally acknowledged and the overlooked truths, their narratives highlight, be analyzed without bias.

Although this collection consists of 3 essays titled 'My Home Under Imperial Fire', 'The Empire Fights Back' and 'Today, the Balance of Stories' it should be considered a single body of work or discourse intended to dispel certain flawed notions about African people who are often derogatorily referred to as 'tribes' and automatically consigned to a lesser category of humanity.
Achebe begins with his reminiscences on his early years as a young university student in Nigeria, reading literature based on Africa authored mostly by British and European scholars who, of course, liberally manufactured painfully offensive 'facts' regarding the intellectual and anatomical inferiority of his fellow brethren and propagated the theory that European acquisition of their land and sphere of existence was for the sake of their own personal benefit.

This is what Achebe says about the interlinked nature of inherently racist literature of the time (he is sophisticated enough not to use the word 'racist' even once though) and the Atlantic slave trade:-

"I will merely say that a tradition does not begin and thrive, as the tradition of British writing about Africa did, unless it serves a certain need. From the moment in the 1560s when the English captain John Hawkins sailed to West Africa and 'got into his possession, partly by the sword and partly by other means, to the number of three hundred Negroes,' the European trade in slaves was destined by its very profitability to displace trade in commodities with West Africa."

Achebe directs his suppressed ire at Anglo-Irishman Joyce Cary who was regarded as one of the finest novelists of his time and his creation 'Mister Johnson' which Achebe systematically breaks down and interprets as a text strewn with viciously hateful commentary on Africans. Another renowned novelist and polymath who had considerable first hand experience of Africa, Elspeth Huxley, isn't spared either as her criticism of Amos Tutuola's 'The Palm-Wine Drinkard' as a 'folk tale full of queer, distorted poetry, the deep and dreadful fears, the cruelty, the obsession with death and spirits, the macabre humour, the grotesque imagery of the African mind' comes off as an insidious denunciation of all African literature in general.
Joseph Conrad, predictably, is his next victim. (Criticism of 'Heart of Darkness' seems like a recurrent theme in Achebe's essays)

Quote from 'Heart of Darkness' -

"Well, you know, that was the worst of it-this suspicion of their not being inhuman."

Achebe's deconstruction-

"A more deadly deployment of a mere sixteen words it would be hard to imagine. I think it merits close reading. Note first the narrator's suspicion; just suspicion, nothing more. And note also that even the faint glimmer of apparent charitableness around this speculation is not, as you might have thought, a good thing, but actually the worst of it! And note finally, the coup de grace of double negation, like a pair of prison guards, restraining that problematic being on each side."

Next in Achebe's line of fire is the ever controversial V.S. Naipaul and his lecture titled 'Our Universal Civilization' delivered at the Manhattan Institute and his caustic and downright obnoxious comments on Asian and African readership and cultures. Achebe brings into focus the difference in attitudes between the Indian-origin Naipaul and the famed Indian writer R.K. Narayan by stating how Narayan saw 'a million stories' every time he looked out of his window and not a 'million mutinies' like Naipaul did.

He ends by hailing story-tellers of repute like Nadine Gordimer (for her literary activism in the backdrop of the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa), Wole Soyinka, Amos Tutuola and names like Nigerian Cyprian Ekwensi (People of the City), Guinea's Camara Laye (L'Enfant Noir), Cameroon's Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono (Houseboy), Cheikh Hamidou (Ambiguous Adventure) who have lent enormous credibility to the African literary landscape and have led readers all over the world, to take into account the complementary points of view of the people who had been, so far, deprived of a voice.

"Despite the significant changes that have taken place in the last four or five decades, the wound of the centuries is still a long way from healing. And I believe the curative power of stories can move the process forward."

P.S.:-My rating may be upgraded (or downgraded) in the future based on what I glean from a reading of A Bend in the River, India: A Million Mutinies Now and a re-reading of Heart of Darkness.

[Samir Rawas Sarayji · Rating 5 out of 5]

The three essays contained in this all too slim book are actually lectures that Achebe gave at Harvard University in 1998. The essays are interlinked and form a sustained argument from start to end. The theme of the argument is the book's title Home and Exile and this collection, which contains glimpses of his childhood, motivations on becoming a writer, and of his home and people, is considered his first autobiographical work. The lectures, in order of presentation, are ‘My Home Under Imperial Fire’, ‘The Empire Fights Back’ and ‘Today, the Balance of Stories’.

[leynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Home and Exile came out of a series of three lectures Achebe delivered at Harvard University in December, 1998. The three lectures, now essays, continue a line of thought Achebe explored in essays and lectures over three decades and collected in Hopes and Impediments (1988). In the earlier volume, Achebe described the cultural oppression and “dispossession” that allowed works such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899, 1902) to depict Africa as a backward continent incapable of producing serious thought or remarkable art. As he does in the new book, Achebe called for a renewed dialogue between Africans and Europeans—a dialogue that writers and readers are particularly equipped to engaged in.

“In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything.”

In the first essay, “My Home Under Imperial Fire,” Achebe looks back at his own experiences as a student in a British school in Nigeria. As many readers know, Achebe is a member of the Igbo people, or “nation,” as he prefers to say. He rejects the word “tribe” as a racist misnomer, asserting that the Igbo are neither “primitive” nor bound by blood ties, with their language complex, including major and minor dialects, and their sociopolitical identity purposefully defined by disdain for the concept of a single ruler. He finds the term “nation” more appropriate for a loose federation of people with strong individual identities, loyalty to independent towns or ministates, a love of competition and controversy, and a marketing network for disseminating goods and news.

“In addition I like it because, unlike the word tribe, which was given to me, nation is not loaded or derogatory, and there is really no good reason to continue answering a derogatory name simply because somebody has given it to you.”

Achebe shares fond memories of how he came to love his father’s home village and how he did not fully understand the richness of his own people until he saw that richness called into question by non-African critics. After a lifetime of reading and thinking, Achebe unhesitatingly confesses that he quite enjoyed, as a student, the adventure stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, and others. Even stories that were set in the most remote and “savage” parts of Africa seemed to the young Achebe as mere entertainment with no political or cultural implications.

“As it happened, it was only these foreign aspects of my upbringing that we dignified with the title of education. For us that word was not about Igbo things; it was about faraway places and peoples; and its acquisition was generally painful.”

A telling moment came in the early 1950s when Achebe was a student at University College in Ibadan. He was taught by English professors who “were all Europeans from various British and European universities. With one or two exceptions the authors they taught us would have been the same ones they would teach at home.” No literature by Africans was included in the curriculum (in fact, there was almost no African literature in print), but one instructor did assign Mister Johnson (1939), a highly regarded novel about race relations in Nigeria by the Irish writer Joyce Cary. To the professor’s surprise, Achebe and his classmates protested that Cary’s representation of Nigeria, with its “jealous savages” living “like mice or rats in a palace floor,” did not resemble the homeland they knew (“And it becomes doubly offensive when such a work is arrogantly proffered to you, as your story.”).

It is quite clear that Achebe's argument is that stories might look innocent to children, adults need to know that the telling of stories is not innocent. While we have a line up of the usual suspects - Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary, Elspeth Huxley - Achebe increases the material on the argument by putting into the bowl the contribution of a number of contemporary English writers. This "classroom rebellion" led the young Achebe to scrutinize the connection between the slave trade and literature written to justify it and to recognize the appropriation of his homeland by imperialistic propaganda.

“I will merely say that a tradition does not begin and thrive, as the tradition of British writing about Africa did, unless it serves a certain need. From the moment in the 1560s when the English captain John Hawkins sailed to West Africa and 'got into his possession, partly by the sword and partly by other means, to the number of three hundred Negroes,' the European trade in slaves was destined by its very profitability to displace trade in commodities with West Africa.”

Achebe uses Mister Johnson as a starting point to describe a large body of British literature that, over a period of more than four hundred years, created a mythology of Africa as a godless dark continent. For this history, he draws on the work of Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow, who analyzed over five hundred books of this type for their 1970 book The Africa That Never Was. Achebe states that the purpose of derogatory depictions of Africans was to help Europeans justify to themselves the slave trade and their colonial occupation of Africa. While he cannot go so far as to excuse Cary for his racist presentation of Nigeria, Achebe does understand that Cary was the product of an education and a culture that gave him a particular view of Africa. Achebe writes, “In theory, a good writer might outgrow these influences, but Cary did not.”

Achebe’s early encounter with Cary was most important for his own work in that it helped him see literature in a new way: “What his book Mister Johnson did for me though was to call into question my childhood assumption of the innocence of stories. It began to dawn on me that although fiction was undoubtedly fictitious it could also be true or false.”

“By the way, the passport I carried on that first visit to London had defined me as a “British Protected Person.” That was an arrogant lie because I never did ask anyone to protect me. And to protect someone without his request or consent is like the proverbial handshake that goes beyond the elbow and begins to look like kidnapping.”

Achebe’s second essay, “The Empire Fights Back,” explores his outrage at racist depictions of his people and home, his decision to fight back in novels providing Nigerian perspectives, and his willingness to face considerable trouble to tell worthy stories. He contrasts the works of Joseph Conrad and Elspeth Huxley with F. J. Pedler’s call for authentic African literary voices in West Africa (1951), and he deplores the mindset that led British-educated Africans to mock Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead’s Town.

The third lecture and essay in this book deals with the present situation and the balance of the forces or as Achebe puts it the balance of stories. Achebe’s focus now, unlike the child looking back, is squarely on the road ahead for Africa and its literature, noting his anxiety over “what remains to be done, in Africa and in the world at large”. From his podium he calls for writers to remain at home and write about it, to post their manuscripts rather than go overseas and risk dilution. Only with the right people contributing their own stories can literature find the necessary balance be made that will lead to a universal civilisation.

“People have sometimes asked me if I have thought of writing a novel about America since I have now been living here for some years. My answer has always been “No, I don’t think so.” Actually, living in America for some years is not the only reason for writing a novel on it. Kafka wrote such a novel without leaving Prague. No, my reason is that America has enough novelists writing about her, and Nigeria too few.”

He argues that if colonial writers try to imitate and, indeed, go one better than the Empire, they run the danger of undervaluing their homeland and their own people. Achebe contends that to redress the inequities of global oppression, writers must focus on where they come from, insisting that their value systems are as legitimate as any other. Stories are a real source of power in the world, he concludes, and to imitate the literature of another culture is to give that power away.

“Despite the significant changes that have taken place in the last four or five decades, the wound of the centuries is still a long way from healing. And I believe the curative power of stories can move the process forward.”

Home and Exile is useful as a very superficial introduction to the African literary scene starting in the 1950s. But it is worthwhile for the additional autobiographical titbits Achebe offers. Nevertheless, Achebe presents here a very unfocussed and superficial discussion. It might entertain an impatient crowd, but most readers will probably regret that he does not go in far greater depth in his argumentation.

These are fairly casual essays, and unfortunately, they are still too close in tone to the anecdote-filled lectures that aim to please a large crowd. Nevertheless, there are a number of worthwhile bits strewn in as well. Those seeking a true autobiography will not find it here, given that it only touches on his early years, but what it does provide is an interesting insight into Achebe’s mind, with him pointing out the little details that have made him the influential writer that he is today, home and away. A tantalizing glimpse, often well written and well presented, it leaves one wishing for more—much more.

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very short book which contains several essays Achebe delivered as public lectures late on in his life at Harvard. As an introduction to Achebe's life and career I think they would work very well. I was especially interested in how he delineated the growth of African literature and the way in which it was received in the west. Also fascinating/sobering is his account of British imperial rule of Nigeria and the colonial education he received. This includes interesting observations about power and control which I think are widely applicable. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in African literature, the history of imperialism and the way in which power corrupts and extends its influence.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Predictably, this was excellent. Thoughts and prose in sharp and lucid harmony. Plus some excellent African literature recommendations.

[Chido · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 'review' is more of a statement on personal experiences than a proper review but is still relevant to the book, I promise ^_^

Although I am glad to report that the dismissal of black African and/or Asian writers writing about their experiences of their homelands in favour of white European or American writers is not as commonplace as it was in Achebe's day, I love this small collection of essays & I love Chinua Achebe for highlighting (and therefore validating) the frustration I have often felt throughout my years of schooling in a Britain that prides itself on being multicultural and yet offers it's multiethnic students a very Eurocentric curriculum with few exceptions...

For example, in my first year of sixth form, along with Shakespeare's 'Othello' and Tennessee William's 'A Streetcar Named Desire', my English Lang&Lit class also read 'Purple Hibiscus' by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (and I'd just like to take this moment to mention how thankful I am to my teachers for choosing this paticular syllabus and introducing me to the work of this amazing woman :-)).
I was very excited about this but it seems my excitement was only shared by my English teacher as the rest of the class skimmed through the novel and exclaimed their exasperation at having to learn "African"...
So despite being the only one in the class that enjoyed the book and constantly having to defend Adichie's use of Igbo words and phrases.

But anyway, about the book: Achebe is insightful, witty and above all educational, although I guess the length of these essays prevent him from being more thorough with his observations - which I would have enjoyed.

I leave you with this quote; "Despite the significant changes that have taken place in the last four or five decades, the wound of the centuries is still a long way from healing. And I believe that the curative power of stories can move the process forward."

[Guchu · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Achebe. Hi there, I just managed to roll back the rock I was trapped under for nearly three decades, what year is this?

This is a short collection of 3 interlinked lectures Achebe delivered in 1998 at Harvard University. The back of my copy called it “autobiographical work” and it starts with Achebe giving us a peek into his childhood during his family’s return to his ancestral home in 1935 after the end of his father’s missionary work. I did not expect it would veer off this biographical path but soon enough Achebe was undecidedly nibbling on a variety of other topics before settling for what he came for; a severe genealogy of African (and of Africa) literature.

The man does not pull any punches. He dedicates a significant portion of the book to chafing at the audacity of [white] people contemptibly writing about Africa and then arrogantly proffering those stories to Africans as their own, the ultimate dispossession of the dispossessed. Heavily drawing from research by Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow’s in their book “The African that never was” Achebe argues, convincingly, that there is no delinking literature on africa by non africans (white people) and slavery and colonialism. That the racist literature bathed and drank from the same well and in what I thought was especially striking imagery, Achebe calls this “renting crowds”. He remarks that these white people are not only despicable in their contempt, they also risibly lacked the imagination and skill to spin new narratives, and each writer only rented the crowd of the one before him (9 out of 10 a him).

“The content, style and timing of this literature leave us in no doubt that its production was largely an ancillary service to the slave trade. But on account, no doubt, of its enormous popularity as both sensational entertainment and a slave for the conscience, it also generated a life of its own, so that it did not simply expire when the slave trade was abolished at the beginning of the 19th century, but reshaped itself with the tools of trendy scholarly fantasies and pseudosciences. In its updated form it stood ready to serve the new historical era of European exploration of Africa and, hot on the heels of that endeavor, colonial occupation itself”.

In the third essay, he reserves some of this distaste for fellow Africans and to V.S Naipaul who, having obtained the flashy white man’s education have gone on to claim the contempt of the white man’s lens of Africa as a true reflection of their home, saying:

“An erosion of self-esteem is one of the commonest symptoms of dispossession. It does not occur only at the naive level such as we have alluded to; even more troubling is when it comes in the company of sophistication and learning. It may then take the form of an excessive eagerness to demonstrate flair and worldliness; a facility to tag on to whatever the metropolis says is the latest movement, without asking the common sense question: later than what?”

And finally the journey to Africans owning their narratives and seeing themselves in the humanity of their characters reaches its end, and here Achebe has only inspiring words. In the pages when he briefly introduced me to African writers I hadn’t heard of before, I was grateful for the palette cleanser, but I was also filled with such joy and hunger to read and know them as he had. As I must. I was also glad that the initial haziness gave birth to one of the best stimulating books I have ever read.

To say nothing of the language, the mastery, the skill, the storytelling, the imagery, the wit! The only problem with this book is it wasn’t nearly long enough (and I acknowledge how much this limits its scope and depth, but these are only 3 lectures, I am wary to judge it on a promise it didn't make). There are so many morsels on the way to the main thesis that I would have loved to hear more from Achebe on- the irony of devaluing African education that is a pleasure to acquire and dispense and venerating the western education that is cloaked in both physical and emotional pain, his denunciation of the word ‘tribe’ in favor of ‘nation’ when referring to the Igbo people, religious imperialism, his own journey to being a writer...

I will hopefully read this many times in my lifetime, speechless!

[Eric 'siggy' · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must say, the man is absolutely amazing and brilliant. The book, which is beautifully written, short, and easy to follow (I mean, it's Achebe, what else would you expect?), discusses the history of literature about Africa -- the British literature before and during the colonial period, and the African literature emerging in the 50's and 60's. It is a polemic not only against shallow treatments of African culture in the literature, but in favor of African yuppies holding true to their roots and developing an identity for the African academic beyond assimilation into Western culture.

I found the book valuable mostly as a telling of the story of the encounter with the Other. "Until the lions produce their own historians, the story of the hunt will glorify only the hunter," Achebe quotes the proverb of unknown origin on p. 73. In my opinion, well-written and story-filled discussions of this matter like Achebe's are an order of magnitude more valuable (and probably more true) than the abstract, unstructured drivel of the postmodern philosophers.

See my full reaction here.

[Crazytourists_books · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, it is quite interesting and through it I realised how much "literature" helped slavery bloom.
I quote, from the back page of the book, a comment by the Observer, which totally reflects how I feel "Delves deep into the psyche of oppressed peoples and concludes that its vital for them to take back their own stories"

[Oreoluwa Oyinlola · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just might write a paper on the reviews of Amos Tutuola’s The Palmwine Drinkard and what it reveals about the reception of African literature.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short book is based on a series of lectures given at an American University after the author had moved to this country. It's a primer for anyone, like me, woefully unfamiliar with fiction written in Africa by Africans about Africans in Africa.

It examines how colonialism first suppressed, then condescended to, novels and stories from or about Africa unless they were written by whites. Good education was available to at least a few in a [then] colony like Nigeria, but it was all based on English literature, as if London were more important to a young African than his own home. Heart of Darkness was about all there was until the publication of Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson in the early 1950s. Achebe is critical of both books, more so of Mister Johnson, as he is of the writings of V.S. Naipaul, whom he sees as contemptuous of Black Africa even in writings not (as is A Bend in the River set there. He finds an ally in Salman Rushdie in the struggle for novelists to break out of the colonial oppression of local culture and sensibility.

Mr Achebe reviews briefly the emergence of black African fiction writers starting in the 1950s, making clear that one huge hindrance (among others) was the necessity (if one wanted to get published) to write what would sell in England and, later, in North America.

These lectures were meant to be eye-openers to Americans. This book motivates additions to my shelves that are long long overdue. There is a poignant personal message in our copy: it is inscribed by the author to "Elizabeth and Stephen." The Achebes were friends of my parents during Chinua Achebe's time of teaching at Bard College.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Sometimes one of [the Igbo] would, believe it or not, actually name his son Ezebuilo: A king is an enemy. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to contemplate a society wherein a man might raise his voice in his compound of an afternoon and call out to his son: "A-King-Is-An-Enemy, get me some cold water to drink, will you!"

This book would almost be worthy my having spent ten times that I actually did on it in order to match the original cover price. This is a gratifying revelation, as the last time I encountered Achebe was in high school between a decade to a decade and a half ago, ant he obscenely inflated rating numbers of his when compared to those of other Nigerian, or even other African (leastwise the actually African ones) writers, casts a pall of suspicion over the reading proceedings, the niggling idea that people only come to the writing out of assignment, not out of appreciation of general worth. Fortunately, this slim, elegantly covered tome is as witty a joy as is encompassed by Soyinka, melding as it does fact with fiction, cultural exposé with literary analysis, the reconciliation of a vast spread of movings and shakings of the 20th century with the hopes and fears of the burgeoning 21st. Achebe doesn't teach me anything new (beyond certain noted reading evaluations) as much as he renders credible suspicions I have towards writing, reading, and the sociopolitical landscape at stake in such matters of seemingly effervescent words and motivations. A revitalizing text, for all its brevity, and I'm very glad I chose to pick it up when I did, for now is a good time for a literary pick me up: pun intended.

I will merely say that a tradition does not begin and thrive, as the tradition of British writing about Africa did, unless it serves a certain need.

This is a trio of speeches wrapped up in very pretty packaging, so I wouldn't blame the vast majority of book buyers who pass this one by unless they are already heavily invested in Achebe, or Oxford University Press, or postcolonial literature as a whole. What Achebe manages to accomplish in an erudite, yet conversational tone in the space of 100 or so pages is rather delightful, and the judgment he passes on various writers is both insightful and inspiring, seeing as how I'm newly resolved to pick up the works of certain names I'd been heretofore passing over and avoid others that regularly tempt. Censorship of choice and blah de blah, de blah, but freedom of choice powers the most of white of literary diets without much publicly approved self awareness on a day to day basis, and the desire to not waste one's time on vacuous hate is as good a decision as to not drink too much while out on the town. All in all, this tidy tome was a breath of fresh wisdom from a corner of the publishing market that I feel I haven't been delving into of late, and it's a welcome reminder of all the wonderful literature that awaits me so long as I am careful about my choices and cultivate my tastes accordingly. Achebe was admirably committed to his plan of literary action on a holistically sociopolitical level, and I wish to achieve the same measure of confidence in the same realm in my lifetime.

Here was a whole class of young Nigerian students, among the brightest of their generation, united in their view of a book of English fiction in complete opposition to their English teacher, who was moreover backed by the authority of metropolitan critical judgment. The issue was not so much who was right as why there was that absolute divide. For it was not my experience that Nigerians, young or old, were much inclined to be unanimous on anything, not even on the greatest issue of the day—the timing of their independence from British rule.

[T]he British might boast that they had the first empire in history on which the sun never set; to which an Indian would reply: Yes, because God cannot trust an Englishman in the dark!

I didn't think I'd enjoy this work as much as I did, so now I've almost solidified plans to give Things Fall Apart a reread, and if that goes well, embarking on a more thorough perusal of Achebe's fiction. it makes me glad that I got over my lack of interest in nonfiction a while ago, as engaging in that of various authors tends to revitalize my interest in their fiction. Achebe certainly isn't for everyone, and I can imagine a number of readers who I've recently disfavorably interacted with throwing up their hands in disgust at his commentary, but each to their own, and their loss is my gain. I'm not sure if I've been fully convinced to pick up My Sister Killjoy or Ambiguous Adventure, but these are some of the more qualified literature recommendations one can get on the fly, and I'll certainly be considering the and a number of other titles should they come to cross my path. Until then, it's good to revisit a familiar name and find reasons to appreciate them, as that unfortunately doesn't happen nearly as often as it should.

I am gladly to reassure everyone about my abiding faith in the profession of literature, and further to suggest that the kind of careful and even cautious mode of reading that I am impliedly advocating does not signal despair; rather it is the strongest vote of confidence we can give our writers and their work—to put them on notice that we will go to their offering for wholesome pleasure and insight, and not for a rehash of old stereotypes which gained currency long ago in the slave trade and poisoned, perhaps forever, the wellsprings of our common humanity.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Achebe is a great novelist, and I expected to learn a lot from reading this selection of lectures. But I was disappointed. First, Achebe goes over well-worn and familiar ground; most of what he discusses was cutting edge in the sixties and seventies, not the nineties,when this book was published. Second, he chooses two writers for specific ridicule, Elspeth Huxley and Buchi Emecheta. Call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever, but I wonder why both of his poster children for imperialism and African self-hatred respectively are women? Specific examples are okay, but he could have spread the blame around a bit. Achebe is an elderly man, and the thinking in this book illustrates that, sadly enough.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sharp, insightful, and concise while still leaving room for intriguing tangents about literature by and from Africa. I appreciate Achebe's balance between personal storytelling and literary essaying. The book moved more briskly than I liked, undercutting opportunities for deeper questioning and thinking, finally settling this book in the range of "overview." It definitely feels like what it is: lectures adapted into text.

[Kelly (imaginemorebooks) · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first started this book I surprisingly liked it. It is far from the normal book I read, but I was surprised how easy it was to follow and enjoy. However, about half way through I lost momentum and started questioning what I was reading. To keep it short, I have different opinions on what we discussed and I started to feel like the book was contradicting itself quite a bit. But nonetheless, it's core message isn't the worst thing in the world.

[Moira McPartlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second time of reading. Three fantastic essay on the development of African writing from the arrogant colonial writing of white Europeans to the reclamation of the African story by the great African writers we know today.

[Lynecia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to come!

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To any writer who is working in the remote provinces of the world and may now be contemplating giving up his room or selling his house and packing his baggage for London or New York I will say: Don’t trouble to bring your message in person. Write it where you are, take it down that little dusty road to the village post office and send it!"

This is a handy little volume, written in Achebe's gently acerbic prose, discussing the role of literature in rebuilding from colonialism. He discusses the ways that language can shape and challenge colonialism, and how it is systematically undermined through ex-patriate cultures, and Western literature set in continents it views through a conquerors lens.

[Athul Domichen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and enlightening essays on the challenges and prejudices faced by African literature, evolving during and after the colonial era; the journey from stories that were about them through alien eyes who looked down upon them and refused to comprehend the varied cultures, to their own strong, true narratives and writers.

[Stefan Szczelkun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chapter 1. My home under imperial fire
He situates himself in the culture he came from. The West African Igbo nation was made of 800 or so independent towns. There was no overall chief or king.
The home of his parents has a front room - piazza in which lively discussions happen. It is clear this is a sophisticated society - even politically idea to those of us on democratic left of the political spectrum.
He speaks of the British religious imperialism. He notes; “The sheer audacity of some stranger wandering thousands of miles from home to tell them they were worshipping false god.”! p.13 But his father was christian minister - contradictions abide and Achebe is taking it all in.
Politics or resolution of conflicts was by "a popular assembly that is small enough for everyone who wishes to be present to do so and speak his mouth." p.15
British education was exported along with the English literary canon. The curricula of this education was rarely challenged (my own comment rather than from Achebe). Knowledge and the literary canon appear neutral / universal. Later VS Naipaul even argues for a ‘universal civilisation’ but what he means by that is the idea that Western high culture is a superior human achievement and should be referred by all. As Achebe notes education and discipline usually came together.
"The atmosphere of the classroom was always tense.”p.20

Joyce Cary's book set in Nigeria, ‘Mister Johnson’, was much celebrated in the West. It was even Time magazine’s ‘best novel about Africa’ in 1952. But Achebe’s class mates, reading it as a set text, found the Nigerian hero an embarassing nitwit, a bumbling fool. Nigerians usual do not agree, but the class was unanimous in rejecting the verity this book that purported to be set in their homeland. It was for Chinua a "landmark rebellion" p.22
What came over most strongly was Joyce's aversion to the people he was describing and the places they lived!

Gradually it became clear to Achebe that Cary’s book was part of a long English literary tradition of degrading representations of Africa that reached all the way back to the reports of the early visits of Europeans in the mid 1500s. Chinua observes that such writing on Africa was not just inaccurate - it served a certain need.
 With the advent of the Atlantic slave trade African humans had become commodities.
“As early as the 1700s British trade in Africa shifted entirely to slaves" p.28
This produced "an abundance of literature tailored to explain or justify that spectacle." In this literature African society was presented as"the negation of all human decencies." It was a ‘Iiterature of devaluation'. (quoting Hammond and Jablow, 1992)
Although it was initially motivated to serve the needs of slavery, when slavery was ended imperialism continued to need the violence of its raw exploitation to be dressed up in the literary garb of civilisation.

The case eloquently made by Achebe, it seems to me, lays our principles that can be applied more widely to other oppressed people. When a nation of any kind, a whole class of people, is oppressed then the literature/ culture of the ruling group must tend to serve a role in justifying and obscuring the oppression.
One thing that is remarkable about Achebe’s argument is that he recognises that there is a cost to the oppressor as well as the oppressed.

It was interesting to read about Joyce Cary on Goodreads. e.g. He was all for African independence, but it is the representation of his main character in ‘Mister Johnson’ that the young Nigerian students were outraged about. They didn't want the first African literary hero they were given to read to be a nitwit!  Interestingly Achebe doesn't call Cary a racist. An imperialist yes!

Achebe also describes what I call ‘internalised racism’. Amos Tutuola’s ground breaking novel of modern West African literature was written in English rendered with Yoroba grammar by someone trained as a coppersmith. - it  caused controversy. Dylan Thomas loved it but others in the English establishment like Elspith Huxley hated it. Tutuola’s 1952 book was the signal to end of "Europe's imposition of a derogatory narrative upon Africa, a narrative designed to call African humanity into question."p.45
Some Nigerian students in London at the time were ashamed it was not written in the correct English they had been taught to value. Achebe puts this down to their "badly damaged sense of self" resulting from not having had a literature of their own. p.81.

Chapter 2. The Empire fights back
Achebe sees his “home was under attack.” by the British literary world. p.38
Joyce Cary was caught up in a historical tradition of representing Africa that permeated British society by end of C19th. Achebe’s argument is against that huge literary formation rather than Cary an individual. He points out that stereotypes and malice are bad enough, but when they are arrogantly served up to you as ‘your story’ the hurt is doubled.
There was a least one white writer in the 1950s that recognised the importance of self-representation who is mentioned by Achebe, who is always even handed! (E.J.Pedler West Africa. Pedler argued for people to take back their own narrative.), p.42
But he is very clear that the colonisation of one people’s ‘story’ by an arrogant oppressor class is a form of abuse. This has all the psychological consequences that any form of abuse has, as we are gradually learning.

Achebe talks about 'Dispossession of culture and its consequences' as being a central question of the day. So it would seem that the working classes in the Europe and other oppressed groups can be encompassed by these more general terms. What I am getting at is that Achebe is making a case that has a universal application and value.

On page 60 he writes more about the need to justify oppression, to deflect from banal motives of greed or bullying that would undermine the idea of imperialists having a superior civilisation. The oppressors literature will make up stories that often blame the oppressed nations. Low iQ being a favourite. Achebe does not mention Eugenics whilst quoting Huxley on p.61, in spite of her living in Kenya where Eugenic discourses were circulating around that time. He does say she was in fact: “Spinning stories to validate the transfer of African lands to white settlers." p.68
There are consequences for the spinners of such stories - a blunting of integrity; of creative response to all the world." p.69
An act of cultural dispossession causes widespread pain and the diminished existence it gives rise to, causes trauma giving rise to aberrant behaviours, like class shame. p.71
He quotes Bucho Emecheta, a Nigerian author living in London. She wants her writing not to be recognizably African. She finds African writing ‘plodding’. This is internalised oppression!

"The psychology of the dispossessed can be truly frightening." p.72

Chapter 3. The balance of stories
"Strong language is in the very nature of the dialogue between dispossession and its rebuttal. The two sides never see the world in the same light." p.77
Cultural dispossession can also simply 'knock people silent'. p.79
“The ferocity occasioned by the act of dispossession and its continuing aftermath of cultural loss and confusion can usher in a season of anomy.”p.80
(A Wole Soyinka novel title). He suggests African writers are aware of this and he references Nadine Gordimer ‘July's People’ about apartheid South Africa.
Erosion of self-esteem is perhaps the most common symptom of cultural dispossession. p.81

He rips into V.S.Naipaul, who has taken on the oppressors mantle. Naipaul is contemptuous of Africans. He would hammer the poor into the ground with his "well crafted Mallet of deadly prose." p.95

The problem of where the artist can live is discussed but not resolved. There is a terrible pull to drawn to the old imperial metropolis, which reminds me of the pressure for upward mobility amongst artists and the academicisation of working class intellectuals. He argues that people should not leave their ‘home’ culture but its not very convincing as he lives in the USA.
The "discovery that one is somehow superfluous is there, waiting at journeys end, for the weary traveller from the provinces." p.98
Wow do I feel this!
Achebe argues mainly about 'story telling’, but I suspect that cultural expression in every sense media must be subject to this systematic denigration to support oppression.

[Arthur Cravan · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the back of the book, Home and Exile is described as "his first fully autobiographical work... Achebe recalls his childhood and early adulthood and reveals the man behind the writing." I don't know about you, but that got me thinkin' it was ol' Achebe spilling his story... it is not. There's a cringeworthy quote on the back by some tool named Richard Flanagan, who deems it necessary to say "Home and Exile shines through the cold cant of our winter of new empires, doing for stories what spring does for apricot trees." That, unfortunately, set a much truer tone for this small examination of the literature of the dispossessed & their imperial bff's.

I picked this book up as a bit of an apology. I read Things Fall Apart in college & haven't read any of his works since. That's because I couldn't stand Things Fall Apart, though I've always remembered Okonkwo & the overall vibe of the work. Getting a bit older, I realized I was really probably rather biased against the work due to the class itself, & meant to read it again to confirm whether or not the book's for me. Instead, I saw this in the library & thought that maybe some insight into the man behind the book would do me good. Na-uh.

First of all, I don't really like Achebe's tone. I really don't. I find it absolutely appalling what some of the English authors got away with saying in the excerpts he gives in the book, & some of his recollections of life back in his home town were rather charming, & he gets in some nice proverbs/metaphorical tales... but overall, I can imagine this book being a very dry lecture with the old man himself up on stage with one of his little hats on, giving joking smiles while my mind wanders.

I don't know. I currently don't have much reason to be interested in the stuff this book talks about, so it limits my possible enjoyment. I will still re-read Things Fall Apart, & then whether or not I like it, I will read its sequel. After that, I can consider myself as having given him a fair shot - here's to hoping the fiction finds a warmer place in my heart than Home and Exile!

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Chinua Achebe presents the case of why the African voice is needed to tell the African story. He does this effectively through inviting the reader to explore the times where the African voice was largely absent in literature which told the story of the African continent. He largely criticises writers such as Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Elspeth Huxley's demeaning portrayal of Africa. However, in 'The Empire fights back', Achebe praises and encourages the emergence of African writers to the literary scene, this he feels provides a balance of stories. It presents the story of a people, from the people themselves.

I believe the perfect summary for this book lies in this statement: 'Until the lions produce their own historian, the story of the hunt will only glorify the hunter'.

To conclude, Home and Exile clearly explains why Achebe is one of the greatest literary voices to emerge from Africa - and, I dare say, one of the best voices in literature the one has ever seen! It is very encouraging to see other African writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche carrying the torch of African literature lit in the 1950s by Achebe and his contemporaries to our generation today. I will definitely be reading more African literature.

[Ashish]

A book written by an African of his own Africa and of his own natives. The first lecture was moving with which I was able to smell the fragrance of African soil, culture & innocence of people, which was indicated by terms like Ezebuilo which means a King is an Enemy, an intense feeling of not wanting a king or leader which was very different than the west like Germany & the east like in India, where people always looked for a Hero or a Savior. Achebe not only tells about his Africa but tells about how through literature people has surpassed poisonous thoughts from one generation to another in the west about Africans as naked, beast and mean people, just for the sake of their economical capital and for their higher dominance over other race people. The most important thing which Achebe talks about is, how to be a good reader & writer and at various point of time is guidelines to his reader of reading the text again & again with awareness & carefully.

[Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1958 Chinua Achebe published Things Fall Apart, the novel that helped usher in a new wave of African literature. Until that point literature concerning African had been written by European colonials, and was rife with derogatory depictions of African people and their varied cultures. With the contributions of Camara Laye, Amos Tutuola, and Chinua Achebe, amongst others, there came a rebellion of sorts - the African novel, going against “an age-old practice: the colonization of one people’s story by another.”

Read my full review here.

[Hanaan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice, short essay. Achebe muses about why he became a writer, the evolution of British and African writing about Africa, and what he thinks of other "post-colonial" writers. It includes nice anecdotes such as how he watched the opening of the first post office in his village in Nigeria, and therefore its incorporation into the vast postal system of the British empire. It also describes his first visit to London, where he, just like nearly everyone else from the British Commonwealth, witnessed for the first time the spectacle of "white man working"...

[Jenny Yates · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short essay by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe is all about the need of a people to tell their own stories. Achebe writes about the books he read in school, including books about Africa by European writers. In a mellow, humorous style, he describes the melodramatic image of the African that he kept coming across. Then he discusses the explosion of new African writers in the 50s and 60s, and the reactions to this writing. Achebe tells us very little of his own story, but he does tell us why he writes.

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of three essays, this is a must-read for readers interested in Achebe's work or in African literature. Though the collection goes quickly, Achebe's works are packed with a depth of thought and passion for the history behind the developments and literatures he discusses. Absolutely worthwhile for all those who think they might have a slight interest in the work, and certainly for all those engaged in writing and teaching literature.

[sheena d! · Rating 4 out of 5]

He took a parcel to the post office for dispatch to his people in Nigeria. A lady at the counter took it from him and weighed it. To do the calculation for postage she looked again at the address and said: "Nigeria... Is Nigeria ours or French?" To which Solarin, a very austere man, replied: "Nigeria is yours, madam."

[Morgan]

Three lecture lectures that Chinua Achebe gave at (for better and for worse) Harvard. His analysis of the distinction between "nations" and "tribes" alone made it worth pulling off the Shakespeare shelf at the Walnut Street Library.

[Claire S]

Interesting, includes criticque of V.S. Naipul, who was compared to writer of 'Maximum City'.

Chinua Achebe is among those writers mentioned early on by President Obama in his book, 'Dreams From my Father.'