Here I am, doing my well-intentioned liberal-white-guy best to discover other voices, and (adhering to my resolution to read at least one African author each month) I start with Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. When I finish the book, I google it and discover (assuming google’s search returns can be believed) that half the English-speaking universe has read Things Fall Apart. I seem to be the only well-intentioned liberal-white-guy who hasn’t read the book. So much for giving over space on my reading list to marginalized voices. It turns out Achebe is widely published, has received numerous literary awards, has a boatload of honorary degrees, and, although retired, holds a teaching post at Brown University in Rhode Island.
Looking at the blurbs on the book, I find that Things Fall Apart is the first African novel to gain a popular following outside of Africa, or something to that effect. Part of that popularity may have to do with Achebe’s decision to write in English, a decision which has attracted criticism from peers in his native Nigeria. He has chosen the language of the colonizers. But if writing in English were the only explanation for his popularity, then I would have the Nobel prize in literature by now. It may also have something to do with the fact that his writing, regardless of its tongue, is well-crafted.
Things Fall Apart tells the story of Okwonkwo, a fiercely proud man of Umuofia who has struggled to establish himself within the social hierarchy of his people. Despite the handicap of a father with a reputation for indolence, and despite setbacks beyond his control, he is a man of standing with three wives, many children, titles, and a barn full of yams. In the first half of the book, Achebe gives an intimate look at Okwonkwo’s world, his culture and his aspirations. In the second half of the book, the missionaries arrive. Here, Achebe meticulously documents the ways in which Christian evangelism is deployed to alienate a man from his own culture and to leave him feeling meaningless. This is a tragedy in the true sense of the word. We who sit on the other side of history know how events must play out: Okwonkwo, and those like him who cling to their old ways, will be destroyed as white missionaries make way for white guns and white government.
But why would a story like this be popular in the west? It’s not as if the west comes off smelling like roses here.
I’m reminded of the short story “Weights & Measure” from “Albanian” writer, Jiri Kajane. An English editor of a literary press has asked Leni, an Albanian native, to “curate” authentic Albanian stories for a proposed anthology. Leni writes the stories himself, passing them off as products of a vibrant Albanian literary scene. But the editor rejects the stories because they aren’t “real” enough. What he means is that the stories don’t satisfy English expectations of what counts as Albanian. Leni has given him stories about mundane concerns like relationships and earning a living. The editor wants stories of political strife and resistance movements fighting from the hills. Leni sets about writing a new batch of stories by imagining what an English editor must think life in Albania is like. Although the results bear no resemblance to life as Leni experiences it in Tirane, the editor is delighted with the second batch of stories. [Note: Jiri Kajane has been exposed as an American hoax.]
Maybe that’s why Things Fall Apart is so popular in the west, even after fifty years. It meshes perfectly with the well-intentioned liberal-white-guy’s beliefs about what life must have been like in Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. It doesn’t matter where in Africa, because it’s all the same. And it doesn’t matter who the missionaries are, because they’re all the same too. We let the story of colonialism devolve into a tale of black and white.
And what are we to make of the book’s title? Things Fall Apart. Drawn from the epigraph – lines from Yeats. An authentic African voice introduces his story with words from an Irish poet.