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Africa's Tarnished Name
He needed to hear Africa speak for itself after a lifetime of hearing Africa spoken about by others
Electrifying essays on the history, complexity, diversity of a continent, from the father of modern African literature.
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.
Electrifying essays on the history, complexity, diversity of a continent, from the father of modern African literature.
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.
56 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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4398 people want to read
About the author
Chinua Achebe
161 books4,236 followersWorks, 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 283 reviews
October 4, 2022
Chinua Achebe is one sassy motherfucker and I could listen to him roasting Joseph Conrad all day. Okay, but for real, angry Chinua is my favorite Chinua. I totally didn't expect him to let his guard down in this way in these essays and speeches. Chinua Achebe, the man, really shines through his words. You feel his anger, his frustration, he is so much more relatable because he is so human and vulnerable in here. Africa's Tarnished Name is a superb collection on the theme of the misrepresentation of Africa by Western eyes.
Chinua Achebe was born in Eastern Nigeria in 1930. He went to the local public schools and was among the first students to graduate from the University of Ibadan. After graduation, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation as a radio producer and Director of External Broadcasting, and it was during this period that he began his writing career.
In Traveling White, he tells of an excursion to Victoria Falls on a segregated bus in the Northern Rhodesia of the early 1960s. Not noticing that there were separate entrances for Blacks and whites, he’d sat down at the front among the Europeans — and remained with them, despite their obvious hostility, even after realizing his mistake. Playing down his part in his very own “Rosa Parks moment", Achebe merely relates the bare facts of the incident, emphasizing instead his despair when the Black passengers rushed to congratulate him after they all disembarked at the falls. “I was not elated,” he recalls. “A monumental sadness descended on me. I could be a hero because I was in transit, and these unfortunate people, more brave by far than I, had formed a guard of honor for me!”
In his superb essay Africa’s Tarnished Name, Chinua Achebe asserts that “colonisation gave the world… a particular way of looking (or, rather, not looking) at Africa that endures, alas, into our own day”. You can see this way of looking every day if you just open your eyes; take university for example, Africa in most curriculums appears only in relation to those topics that are most exotic to the Western consciousness — like witchcraft and magic — and those of strife and poverty that too often dominate the discourse around the continent.
Chinua Achebe explores how Africa came to exist in the “European psychological disposition [as] the farthest point of otherness… Europe’s very antithesis”, despite its closeness to Europe geographically. Achebe, his writing being rooted in colonial critique and postcolonial discourse, stresses that Africa’s existence as “other” is by no means in its “origin the result of ignorance… it is a deliberate invention devised to facilitate two giant historical events: the Atlantic slave trade and the colonisation of Africa by Europe”. I mean, CALL 'EM OUT! Achebe really doesn't hold back and hits with the harsh truths a lot of people don't want to hear. This rawness and honesty makes the titular essay by far the strongest of the bunch.
The last piece of writing, Africa is People, comes from a speech given at the OECD in 2011. It features one of the most heartfelt moments of this collection, as Achebe's despair and hopefulness shine through: “Our humanity is contingent on the humanity of our fellows. No person or group can be human alone. We rise above the animal together, or not at all. If we learned that lesson even this late in the day, we would have taken a truly millennial step forward.”
Overall, Africa's Tarnished Name is a very accessible collection of one of Achebe's most witty and passionate writings. I'd highly recommend grabbing your own copy and reading it!
Chinua Achebe was born in Eastern Nigeria in 1930. He went to the local public schools and was among the first students to graduate from the University of Ibadan. After graduation, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation as a radio producer and Director of External Broadcasting, and it was during this period that he began his writing career.
Nigeria needs help. Nigerians have their work cut out for them – to coax this unruly child along the path of useful creative development. We are the parents of Nigeria, not vice versa. A generation will come, if we do our work patiently and well – and given luck – a generation that will call Nigeria father or mother. But not yet.In the first speech, What Is Nigeria to Me?, Achebe looks back on his troubled relationship with his country: "Being a Nigerian is abysmally frustrating and unbelievably exciting. I have said somewhere that in my next reincarnation I want to be a Nigerian again; but I have also, in a rather angry book called The Trouble with Nigeria, dismissed Nigerian travel advertisements with the suggestion that only a tourist with a kinky addiction to self-flagellation would pick Nigeria for a holiday. And I mean both."
In Traveling White, he tells of an excursion to Victoria Falls on a segregated bus in the Northern Rhodesia of the early 1960s. Not noticing that there were separate entrances for Blacks and whites, he’d sat down at the front among the Europeans — and remained with them, despite their obvious hostility, even after realizing his mistake. Playing down his part in his very own “Rosa Parks moment", Achebe merely relates the bare facts of the incident, emphasizing instead his despair when the Black passengers rushed to congratulate him after they all disembarked at the falls. “I was not elated,” he recalls. “A monumental sadness descended on me. I could be a hero because I was in transit, and these unfortunate people, more brave by far than I, had formed a guard of honor for me!”
In his superb essay Africa’s Tarnished Name, Chinua Achebe asserts that “colonisation gave the world… a particular way of looking (or, rather, not looking) at Africa that endures, alas, into our own day”. You can see this way of looking every day if you just open your eyes; take university for example, Africa in most curriculums appears only in relation to those topics that are most exotic to the Western consciousness — like witchcraft and magic — and those of strife and poverty that too often dominate the discourse around the continent.
Chinua Achebe explores how Africa came to exist in the “European psychological disposition [as] the farthest point of otherness… Europe’s very antithesis”, despite its closeness to Europe geographically. Achebe, his writing being rooted in colonial critique and postcolonial discourse, stresses that Africa’s existence as “other” is by no means in its “origin the result of ignorance… it is a deliberate invention devised to facilitate two giant historical events: the Atlantic slave trade and the colonisation of Africa by Europe”. I mean, CALL 'EM OUT! Achebe really doesn't hold back and hits with the harsh truths a lot of people don't want to hear. This rawness and honesty makes the titular essay by far the strongest of the bunch.
This tradition has invented an Africa where nothing good happens or ever happened, an Africa that has not been discovered yet and is waiting for the first European visitor to explore it and explain it and straighten it up, or, more likely, perish in the attempt.As he posits that fundamental to these operations was the dehumanisation and simplification of Africa and its people, Achebe offers specific examples of this “poisonous” perception and representation of our continent. From his fierce critique of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, to a thoughtful comparison of two painterly depictions of African men by 18th century painters, to his rebuking of a late 20th century PBS documentary, Achebe’s essay makes clear the ubiquitous and persisting nature of Africa’s tarnished name.
The last piece of writing, Africa is People, comes from a speech given at the OECD in 2011. It features one of the most heartfelt moments of this collection, as Achebe's despair and hopefulness shine through: “Our humanity is contingent on the humanity of our fellows. No person or group can be human alone. We rise above the animal together, or not at all. If we learned that lesson even this late in the day, we would have taken a truly millennial step forward.”
Overall, Africa's Tarnished Name is a very accessible collection of one of Achebe's most witty and passionate writings. I'd highly recommend grabbing your own copy and reading it!
July 10, 2018
Achebe is an angry man and in everything he writes he is full of rage and frustration at a world that denies the voice of his brothers. This passion is persuasive and powerful: his voice is commanding.
He doesn’t play around with words, instead preferring to cut straight towards the harsh truth of reality. Africa is dramatically unrepresented in Western media, literature and politics. White men and European leaders gather to discuss the economic future of Africa; they put into place action plans that seek to alter the future of the continent. The ideas are cold and will cause suffering to the people, a fact the white man cares not for.
"Africa is people"
Simple words, but when delivered to such a gathering of leading authorities Achebe silenced the room. The white man is so detached from the realities of the people that he has forgotten (or simply doesn’t care?) about this simple truism. Again, western representation of Africa is to blame. People have become so desensitised to African culture.
And it is because of this that Achebe writes so strongly against Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It is a book that portrays the blacks as primitive and incapable of any sense of sophisticated society. What these writers don’t seem to understand is that technological advances are not necessarily the same as civilisation, morality and simple human decency.
This is a great edition, full of many of Achebe’s most powerful pieces. They are not words to be missed.
He doesn’t play around with words, instead preferring to cut straight towards the harsh truth of reality. Africa is dramatically unrepresented in Western media, literature and politics. White men and European leaders gather to discuss the economic future of Africa; they put into place action plans that seek to alter the future of the continent. The ideas are cold and will cause suffering to the people, a fact the white man cares not for.
"Africa is people"
Simple words, but when delivered to such a gathering of leading authorities Achebe silenced the room. The white man is so detached from the realities of the people that he has forgotten (or simply doesn’t care?) about this simple truism. Again, western representation of Africa is to blame. People have become so desensitised to African culture.
And it is because of this that Achebe writes so strongly against Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It is a book that portrays the blacks as primitive and incapable of any sense of sophisticated society. What these writers don’t seem to understand is that technological advances are not necessarily the same as civilisation, morality and simple human decency.
This is a great edition, full of many of Achebe’s most powerful pieces. They are not words to be missed.
October 17, 2019
Delving deeper into the throes of artists, Okri writes in his novel,
Dangerous Love
, "If you tell the truth you are in trouble. But if you see the truth and you keep quiet your spirit begins to die. The position of the artist is a terrible one." This made me think of Achebe. How difficult it must had been for him to live and to think and yet feel helpless because of the stagnancy or maybe, the snail's pace, of the world. I had to pick up Achebe after Dangerous Love and what could be better than his collection of essays?
Africa's Tarnished Name is a collection of two speech adaptations and two essays. The collection begins with "What is Nigeria to Me?" where Achebe talks about "an acquired taste" of his generation towards Nigerian nationality. His love for his country is evident from his rich knowledge of Nigerian history and the sharp criticism that he has for the country. "Nigeria is a country", Achebe says, "where nobody can wake up in the morning and ask: what can I do now? There is work for all?"
In his next essay titled "Travelling White", he writes about his experiences of travelling anywhere in Africa as a Rockefeller fellow. He felt the reality of segregation which was shocking to him. In the essay, he presents us with "the story of the judge, Wolfgang Zeidler, as a companion piece to the fashionable claim made even by writers that literature can do nothing to alter our social and political condition." The eponymous essay questions the "poisonous writing(s)" and arts that paints Africa with various monochromatic colours when it is indeed a rainbow which is sometimes bright and at times, absent.
The last essay in this collection, "Africa Is People" states a fact as simple as "Africa is people" while showing how "the most simple things can still give us a lot of trouble". Achebe is someone I often turn to when I feel an intense desire to actually feel how, as human beings, it is us who are almost always responsible for the happiness and grief of others. The Bantu declaration that Achebe ends "Africa Is People" with, 'Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu', represents the reality of human suffering and contentment: "A human is human because of other humans."
Africa's Tarnished Name is a collection of two speech adaptations and two essays. The collection begins with "What is Nigeria to Me?" where Achebe talks about "an acquired taste" of his generation towards Nigerian nationality. His love for his country is evident from his rich knowledge of Nigerian history and the sharp criticism that he has for the country. "Nigeria is a country", Achebe says, "where nobody can wake up in the morning and ask: what can I do now? There is work for all?"
In his next essay titled "Travelling White", he writes about his experiences of travelling anywhere in Africa as a Rockefeller fellow. He felt the reality of segregation which was shocking to him. In the essay, he presents us with "the story of the judge, Wolfgang Zeidler, as a companion piece to the fashionable claim made even by writers that literature can do nothing to alter our social and political condition." The eponymous essay questions the "poisonous writing(s)" and arts that paints Africa with various monochromatic colours when it is indeed a rainbow which is sometimes bright and at times, absent.
The last essay in this collection, "Africa Is People" states a fact as simple as "Africa is people" while showing how "the most simple things can still give us a lot of trouble". Achebe is someone I often turn to when I feel an intense desire to actually feel how, as human beings, it is us who are almost always responsible for the happiness and grief of others. The Bantu declaration that Achebe ends "Africa Is People" with, 'Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu', represents the reality of human suffering and contentment: "A human is human because of other humans."
July 30, 2022
These are strong essays, mostly about the misrepresentation of Africa by white writers. I loved Achebe's scathing critique of Joseph Conrad. This short collection makes me want to read more of Achebe.
December 20, 2020
they really should have made us a read this on comp lit
April 6, 2021
Do not fuck with Chinua Achebe because he will drag you
June 27, 2018
Originally posted on A Frolic Through Fiction
After reading Achebe’s Things Fall Apart for uni and needing to write an essay on postcolonialism, I figured this was the perfect time to pick this one up and get a little extra background knowledge for my essay in the process. Way to multitask, amiright? Reading and studying in one.
Anyway, this is a collection of really short essays written by Achebe about – you guessed it – Africa’s tarnished name, and how the representation of Africa has been created by Europe (specifically, Britain). I’ve found that I really get along with Achebe style of essay writing, as he’s not overly academic and includes anecdotes to support his claims, making them more personal and humane than just having words thrown at your face (as most essays feel). You can sense his personality through his writing, hear his disdain at the world and it just works. Granted, sometimes he would go off on a tangent and I’d get lost somewhere along the way, but it soon realigned to what he was trying to say. I suppose it also helps that he always absolutely slates Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, one of my least favourite books of recent years. Good on ya, Achebe. I’ll read your rants anytime.
September 17, 2021
love the parts where he bullies Joseph Conrad ☕
July 25, 2020
"Our humanity is contingent on the humanity of our fellows. No person or group can be human alone."
Chinua Achebe is an incredible writer. This little collection is the first I've read from him, but it certainly won't be the last. Achebe litters his writing with wit and humour that only he could pull off, and his pure hatred for Joseph Conrad was more than amusing (do yourself a favour and don't ever read anything that man has written.. I haven't and I won't be unless I’m forced at gunpoint, and then I'll come on here and write a 1-star review). Reading this made me realise how little I know of history in general? I didn't take history in the last few years of high school, and before that the only thing on the curriculum was WW2. When it comes to the history of certain African countries, I know extremely little, which I'm determined on changing. If anyone reading this has any book recommendations on African history, I would be really appreciative! But other than that, I really enjoyed these essays and I think it was a good place for me to start with Achebe!
Chinua Achebe is an incredible writer. This little collection is the first I've read from him, but it certainly won't be the last. Achebe litters his writing with wit and humour that only he could pull off, and his pure hatred for Joseph Conrad was more than amusing (do yourself a favour and don't ever read anything that man has written.. I haven't and I won't be unless I’m forced at gunpoint, and then I'll come on here and write a 1-star review). Reading this made me realise how little I know of history in general? I didn't take history in the last few years of high school, and before that the only thing on the curriculum was WW2. When it comes to the history of certain African countries, I know extremely little, which I'm determined on changing. If anyone reading this has any book recommendations on African history, I would be really appreciative! But other than that, I really enjoyed these essays and I think it was a good place for me to start with Achebe!
August 23, 2022
How we understand history sets the stage for our social imagination to build the future…
The Good:
--The centerpiece essay “Africa’s Tarnished Name” connects the change in English literature of Africa (from indifferent accounts to judgmental devaluation) to the rising Atlantic Slave Trade.
--This essay includes Achebe’s critique of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, focusing on:
1) Conrad’s fanciful portrayal of being the first explorers to an undiscovered Congo, which Achebe counters with the interactions (some 400 years before Conrad) between Afonso I of Kongo and the Portuguese.
2) Excusing Conrad’s racism and “militant geography” as just the norm of the time is countered with comparisons of the time (I felt this was too brief).
--Elsewhere, Achebe acknowledges that he is not functioning as a scholar but as a writer; I take this to mean his focus is on communication (i.e. fluency and reach). Thus, the brevity of his essays may be an advantage at times.
--I’ll review the other essays in the larger collection: The Education of a British-Protected Child
The Missing:
--My go-to essay on colonialism is still Discourse on Colonialism.
--Still looking for an in-depth historical analysis of the slave trade and colonialism. King Leopold's Ghost is a specific account, and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is a useful start. I’ve been following Gerald Horne's lectures and hyped for The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean.
--On top of history is systems-level theories on political economy. This is not to blatantly dismiss culture and public discourse as superfluous, but I find most people already engage with the more visible; meanwhile, the temporal and spatial flows of value, accumulation of power, and the moments of crisis remain obscure. Yes, this sounds like Marx, but as Utsa Patnaik puts it this is an extension of Marx to encompass areas he did not get to in his lifetime (esp. global trade): https://youtu.be/HhjWT5W5c0Y
The Good:
--The centerpiece essay “Africa’s Tarnished Name” connects the change in English literature of Africa (from indifferent accounts to judgmental devaluation) to the rising Atlantic Slave Trade.
--This essay includes Achebe’s critique of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, focusing on:
1) Conrad’s fanciful portrayal of being the first explorers to an undiscovered Congo, which Achebe counters with the interactions (some 400 years before Conrad) between Afonso I of Kongo and the Portuguese.
2) Excusing Conrad’s racism and “militant geography” as just the norm of the time is countered with comparisons of the time (I felt this was too brief).
--Elsewhere, Achebe acknowledges that he is not functioning as a scholar but as a writer; I take this to mean his focus is on communication (i.e. fluency and reach). Thus, the brevity of his essays may be an advantage at times.
--I’ll review the other essays in the larger collection: The Education of a British-Protected Child
The Missing:
--My go-to essay on colonialism is still Discourse on Colonialism.
--Still looking for an in-depth historical analysis of the slave trade and colonialism. King Leopold's Ghost is a specific account, and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is a useful start. I’ve been following Gerald Horne's lectures and hyped for The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean.
--On top of history is systems-level theories on political economy. This is not to blatantly dismiss culture and public discourse as superfluous, but I find most people already engage with the more visible; meanwhile, the temporal and spatial flows of value, accumulation of power, and the moments of crisis remain obscure. Yes, this sounds like Marx, but as Utsa Patnaik puts it this is an extension of Marx to encompass areas he did not get to in his lifetime (esp. global trade): https://youtu.be/HhjWT5W5c0Y
April 29, 2020
This was very enlightening and well written! Would highly recommend
May 24, 2021
Clear, well written and powerful indeed. Not whiney (his words), just well written honesty about Africa.
Beautiful observations. Highly recommended.
Beautiful observations. Highly recommended.
October 16, 2021
მჯერა რომ რაღაცეებში უფრო წინ წავიწევთ როგორც ქვეყანა როცა ვაღიარებთ რამდენად მეტი საერთო გვაქვს ე. წ. მესამე სამყაროს ქვეყნებთან ვიდრე ევროპულ ფენსი სახელმწიფოებთან
July 8, 2021
Africa is not fiction. Africa is people, real people. Have you thought of that?
Chinua Achebe is regarded as a giant not just of African but of world literature, yet it has taken me a while to read anything by him. Being an academic as well as a man of letters his is a legacy of factual writings as well as of fiction and so for me provides a legitimate way into his body of work.
This volume in Penguin’s Modern Classics is a selection of essays and speeches taken from a collection entitled The Education of a British-Protected Child, published in 2011, two years before his death. The four pieces range in date from 1989 to 2008, and I propose discussing them in chronological order rather than the order published here. This way I hope to get a sense of any common themes spread over a score of years as well as any changes of emphasis.
‘Travelling White’ first appeared in The Guardian in 1989, and describes a tour of east, central, and southern Africa undertaken soon after Nigerian independence in 1960, achieved with the help of a Rockefeller Fellowship. Or rather, it indicates that a tour did take place but the itinerary is very sketchy; instead Achebe highlights a handful of incidents that underline a racism that he, as a Nigerian, had largely been spared in his country and one that at first amused then saddened him. This racism manifested in what was then called Rhodesia, where segregation was practised on buses, for example, and in form-filling (where Africans fell under the category of ‘Other’). Another instance occurred after his novel, When Things Fall Apart, was lent to a German judge who’d intended to retire to Namibia. The book proved to be instrumental in that the judge chose to retire elsewhere: it had made him realise harsh truths not just about Nigeria’s colonial legacy but also South Africa’s then situation. Achebe considered this situation.
But how was it that this prominent jurist carried such a blind spot about Africa all his life? Did he never read the papers? Why did he need an African novel to open his eyes? My own theory is that he needed to hear Africa speak for itself after a lifetime of hearing Africa spoken about by others.
This notion — listening to Africa speak for itself — is taken up in ‘Africa Is People’, adapted from a speech Achebe gave to the OECD in 1998. In it he points to the continued othering of the African experience by rich, mostly white nations and by prominent white individuals. He instances the imperialist, colonialist attitudes that persist in First and Second World governments and international agencies, attitudes that he quotes Albert Schweizer and Joseph Conrad uttering, attitudes that continue to ensure many African countries remain plundered and exploited, to the impoverishment of millions. The point of his argument, he says after quoting James Baldwin,
is to alert us to the image burden that Africa bears today and make us recognize how that image has molded contemporary attitudes, including perhaps our own, to that continent.
Africa is people, not the collective image non-Africans might casually picture: “Our humanity is contingent on the humanity of our fellows. No person or group can be human alone.” This is a thread he picks up in ‘Africa’s Tarnished Name’, also from 1998, which is the longest piece here and which gives to this selection its overall title. Achebe takes a long view of the relationship held by Africa and Europe, from when the European perception of its neighbouring continent changed from a degree of ignorance to “a deliberate invention” of alienness, dating from its pursuit of enslavement and then colonisation over the last half millennium.
Centuries of pejorative and derogatory value judgements were thought to provide justification for Europeans to regard and treat Africans as somehow lesser beings, a viewpoint which, only slightly modified, “has been bequeathed to the cinema, to journalism, to certain varieties of anthropology, even to humanitarianism and missionary work itself.” Achebe again levels his criticism at Albert Schweitzer and particularly at Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness, whose protagonist in that novel characterised Africa somehow as Europeans’ “accursed inheritance.”
Conrad was at once a prisoner of this tradition [of seeming ambivalence towards Africans’ nature] and its most influential promoter, for he, more than anyone, secured its admission into the hall of fame of ‘canonical’ literature.
And yet, four centuries before Conrad’s portrayal of Africa as Europeans’ “accursed inheritance”, the Portuguese were on equal terms with Nzinga Mbemba, the Mweni-Congo or Congolese king, whose son became Dom Henrique, the country’s first bishop, who addressed the pope in Latin at his consecration. Nzinga Mbemba, as Dom Alfonso I of the Congo, was, addressed by the Portuguese king as his ‘royal brother’. Achebe contrasts Conrad’s infamous words with Livingstone’s observation that Africans “are just a strange mixture of good and evil as men are everywhere else;” he also contrasts a crude caricature of an 18th-century Jamaican and Cambridge graduate, Francis Williams, with Gainsborough’s sensitive portrayal of Ignatius Sancho, an African man of letters. How to account for such different responses? “Perhaps this difference can best be put in one phrase: the presence or absence of respect for the human person.”
Achebe’s stringent criticism of Conrad’s racism first appeared back in 1975 in his essay ‘An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness', and it’s clear that the novel epitomised what he saw as a white supremicist attitude. However, in the 2008 speech entitled ‘What Is Nigeria to Me?’ (the latest in date but the first published here) he shows that “the presence or absence of respect for the human person” applied equally to fellow Nigerians in the newly emergent African state of the 1960s, when the country erupted into bloody civil war. Achebe, from the Igbo people in the nascent but doomed state of Biafra, soon found his feelings of pride for Nigeria severely tested when around two million Africans from both sides lost their lives. “Being a Nigerian is abysmally frustrating and unbelievably exciting,” he said in 2008, but the previously “hard words Nigeria and I have said to each other begin to look like words of anxious love, not hate.”
These four essays have proved enlightening and informative for me, showing Achebe to have been a complex, talented and thoughtful man, proud of the culture and history that shaped him, fearless in criticism but fair-minded when being fair-minded was called for. This selection has succeeded in doing what it set out to do — to introduce a writer and storyteller to a new audience using his own words, and offer us a man who showed respect to his fellow humans. I look forward to reading more by him.
February 23, 2018
I’m very interested in postcolonial literature (fiction and nonfiction), but it’s been some time since I’ve read any since my studies have been focused elsewhere. How convenient to have four of Chinua Achebe’s essays about postcolonial Africa in one inexpensive volume! Achebe writes with such electrifying power. The last two essays were the most impressive to me, as they grappled with colonial impositions of representations of Africa. (This automatically makes me think of Spivak’s essay “Can The Subaltern Speak?”, though written a bit more accessibly...) A quick but extremely thought-provoking read filled with zingers.
September 27, 2021
"If the philosophical dictum of Descartes 'I think therefore I am' represents a European individualistic ideal, the Bantu declaration 'Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu' represents an African communal aspiration: 'A human is a human because of other humans'. Our humanity is contingent on the humanity of our fellows."
January 13, 2023
It’s really only been in the past ten years or so that I’ve realised how whitewashed our education is. Although already deeply aware of this, Achebe has taught me in these essays that I was not entirely aware of how deeply this whitewashing runs, and his words rival anything I learned about Africa in school. Most notable of all is that Achebe mentions David Livingstone at various points - a man born a few towns over from me, and a hero of the area. I remember learning about him in school, and his explorations in Africa; I don’t remember learning anything about Africa.
Achebe’s style is natural and almost comforting, as though being taught a lesson by an older relative where they make it seem as though it isn’t a lecture. It’s there to allow you to learn about the world you’re living in, without depending on instruction but instead allowing you to work things out on your own, to make realisations, and most importantly, for me anyway, to think about your own prejudices, and wonder where they came from.
He shows us his world, his Africa, far apart from anything we’ve been fed by media or biased textbooks - a country of people who have been caricatured, stereotyped, and shown to be anything other than what they actually are - human.
“It was not so much a question of the times in which they lived as the kind of people they were.”
Achebe’s style is natural and almost comforting, as though being taught a lesson by an older relative where they make it seem as though it isn’t a lecture. It’s there to allow you to learn about the world you’re living in, without depending on instruction but instead allowing you to work things out on your own, to make realisations, and most importantly, for me anyway, to think about your own prejudices, and wonder where they came from.
He shows us his world, his Africa, far apart from anything we’ve been fed by media or biased textbooks - a country of people who have been caricatured, stereotyped, and shown to be anything other than what they actually are - human.
“It was not so much a question of the times in which they lived as the kind of people they were.”
January 3, 2022
Brilliant collection of essays
May 10, 2021
Well written.
July 4, 2021
Considering the shortness of the book, it was really interesting and brought me to new insights. The book definitely made me interested in reading more of the author’s work.
August 19, 2021
It was way too short, I wanted him to keep teaching me with so much passion and simplicity. A true lover of Africa through thick and thin.
June 10, 2020
Amazingly enlightening. I had no idea of American intereference in post-independence African nations during the Cold War, and the absolute destruction it caused. Even now, America has an overwhelming military engagement in Africa. Time and again, throughout history, USA will perhaps be one of the most trash nations to prosper.
January 30, 2023
diciamo che joseph conrad può andarsene a fanculo
July 28, 2018
I am a prime example of the paradox of proximity. Africa is the closest continent to Europe but in my mind it feels so distant and different. This little collection of essays looks at how that idea took root in the white European psyche over centuries and how it still manifests today through policy and practice. It also takes the danger of relying on these colonial mythologies when reporting in the post colonial sphere, much like Adiche's danger of a single story. The best non fiction exposes our own assumptions and prejudices, diminishing our ignorance if we let it and I think that this little book had given me a more realistic impression of one little piece of Africa and all the complexity it contains. Now it's my job to follow up and educate myself.
August 29, 2022
"Our humanity is contingent on the humanity of our fellows. No person or group can be human alone." - Africa Is People.
August 28, 2018
The twenty-eighth book on the Penguin Modern list is 'the father of modern African literature' Chinua Achebe's Africa's Tarnished Name. Of Achebe's work, the only book of his which I had read before picking this up is Things Fall Apart, which I very much enjoyed. I was really looking forward, therefore, to reading some of his non-fiction, and this collection of 'electrifying essays on the history, complexity and appropriation of a continent' felt like the perfect way in which to begin his oeuvre.
Africa's Tarnished Name is comprised of four essays: 'What's Nigeria to Me?', which is adapted from a speech given in Lagos in 2008; 'Travelling White', which was first published in The Guardian in 1989; the titular essay, published in Another Africa in 1998; and 'Africa is People', which has been adapted from a speech delivered in Paris in 1998. All of these essays can be found in the 2011 collection entitled The Education of a British-Protected Child.
Achebe was born into the 'Igbo nation', one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, and the largest in Nigeria. In 'What's Nigeria to Me?', Achebe discusses nationality, and the granting of independence to Nigeria in 1960. He goes on to point out the governmental issues which came with this independence, and the subsequent coups and massacres of citizens, which led to a bloody Biafran civil war. He discusses, quite openly, his difficult relationship with Nigeria. He writes that his feeling toward the country 'was one of profound disappointment', before going on to say: 'I found it difficult to forgive Nigeria and my countrymen and -women for the political nonchalance and cruelty that unleashed upon us these terrible events, which set us back a whole generation and robbed us of the chance, clearly within our grasp, to become a medium-rank developed nation in the twentieth century.'
Achebe's essays feel immediately warm and amusing, particularly with regard to their tongue-in-cheek humour. The first essay begins: 'Nigerian nationality was for me and my generation an acquired taste - like cheese. Or, better still, like ballroom dancing. Not dancing per se, for that came naturally; but this titillating version of slow-slow-quick-quick-slow performed in close body contact with a female against a strange, elusive beat. I found, however, that once I had overcome my initial awkwardness I could do it pretty well.'
He discusses, amongst other things, the portrayal of Africa in fiction, and Western perceptions of the continent. Achebe makes some very interesting points throughout. 'Africa's Tarnished Name', for instance, begins: 'It is a great irony of history and geography that Africa, whose landmass is closer than any other to the mainland of Europe, should come to occupy in the European psychological disposition the furthest point of otherness, should indeed become Europe's very antithesis.' The second essay, 'Travelling White', details Achebe's travels in other African countries during 1960, and the racism which he encountered along the way.
In each of these essays, Achebe has packed so much into such a compact space, without sparing his reader explanations. He writes with brevity, and with confidence, and speaks with both authority and intelligence. These essays are filled with wisdom and measured arguments, and are often quite profound. There is so much which can be learnt from this important collection, and it is clear to see why the author is so revered. Achebe is a gifted essayist, and I certainly do not want to leave it too long before I read more of his work.
Africa's Tarnished Name is comprised of four essays: 'What's Nigeria to Me?', which is adapted from a speech given in Lagos in 2008; 'Travelling White', which was first published in The Guardian in 1989; the titular essay, published in Another Africa in 1998; and 'Africa is People', which has been adapted from a speech delivered in Paris in 1998. All of these essays can be found in the 2011 collection entitled The Education of a British-Protected Child.
Achebe was born into the 'Igbo nation', one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, and the largest in Nigeria. In 'What's Nigeria to Me?', Achebe discusses nationality, and the granting of independence to Nigeria in 1960. He goes on to point out the governmental issues which came with this independence, and the subsequent coups and massacres of citizens, which led to a bloody Biafran civil war. He discusses, quite openly, his difficult relationship with Nigeria. He writes that his feeling toward the country 'was one of profound disappointment', before going on to say: 'I found it difficult to forgive Nigeria and my countrymen and -women for the political nonchalance and cruelty that unleashed upon us these terrible events, which set us back a whole generation and robbed us of the chance, clearly within our grasp, to become a medium-rank developed nation in the twentieth century.'
Achebe's essays feel immediately warm and amusing, particularly with regard to their tongue-in-cheek humour. The first essay begins: 'Nigerian nationality was for me and my generation an acquired taste - like cheese. Or, better still, like ballroom dancing. Not dancing per se, for that came naturally; but this titillating version of slow-slow-quick-quick-slow performed in close body contact with a female against a strange, elusive beat. I found, however, that once I had overcome my initial awkwardness I could do it pretty well.'
He discusses, amongst other things, the portrayal of Africa in fiction, and Western perceptions of the continent. Achebe makes some very interesting points throughout. 'Africa's Tarnished Name', for instance, begins: 'It is a great irony of history and geography that Africa, whose landmass is closer than any other to the mainland of Europe, should come to occupy in the European psychological disposition the furthest point of otherness, should indeed become Europe's very antithesis.' The second essay, 'Travelling White', details Achebe's travels in other African countries during 1960, and the racism which he encountered along the way.
In each of these essays, Achebe has packed so much into such a compact space, without sparing his reader explanations. He writes with brevity, and with confidence, and speaks with both authority and intelligence. These essays are filled with wisdom and measured arguments, and are often quite profound. There is so much which can be learnt from this important collection, and it is clear to see why the author is so revered. Achebe is a gifted essayist, and I certainly do not want to leave it too long before I read more of his work.
June 28, 2018
Razor sharp essays on the misrepresentation of Africa by vested interests and how this can perpetuate even subconsciously. Full of exact detail with which to stake its claim, the three word mantra that resonates most memorably comes from the title of the third of these four essays Africa is People.
The whole thing put me in mind of Birling’s nonsense comment in An Inspector Calls “except Russia, which will always be behind, naturally.” Achebe shows there is nothing natural about the development of Africa, but rather a question of Western foreign policy supported by art and literature, i.e. Conrad. His searing intelligence makes the point of itself, if it needed proving, and urges white European readers like myself to be on the alert for unwitting prejudice.
The whole thing put me in mind of Birling’s nonsense comment in An Inspector Calls “except Russia, which will always be behind, naturally.” Achebe shows there is nothing natural about the development of Africa, but rather a question of Western foreign policy supported by art and literature, i.e. Conrad. His searing intelligence makes the point of itself, if it needed proving, and urges white European readers like myself to be on the alert for unwitting prejudice.
May 14, 2018
This tradition has invented an Africa where nothing good happens or even happened, an Africa that has not been discovered yet and is waiting for the first European visitor to explore it and explain it and straighten it up, or more likely, perish in the attempt.
Η πρόζα του Achebe, ειλικρινής και καταγγελτική, αποτελεί τροφή για σκέψη.
April 2, 2020
The way he criticizes Joseph Conrad made me clap out loud.
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