Chinua Achebe, the father of African literature?

“For many people all around the world, Chinua Achebe was their first African writer”
-Kwame Anthony Appiah

There is a report that Prof. Soyinka just repeated his stance about Achebe not being “the father of Africa literature.”

Well, we all could remember that just few weeks after Achebe’s demise, Soyinka had this to say; “Chinua himself repudiated such a tag—he did study literature after all, bagged a degree in the subject…Those who seriously believe or promote this must be asked: have you the sheerest acquaintance with the literatures of other African nations, in both indigenous and adopted colonial languages? What must the francophone, lusophone, Zulu, Xhosa, Ewe literary scholars and consumers think of those who persist in such a historic absurdity?”

He maybe right there. That’s his opinion. Just like everyone else has their own.
Of course, I have my own opinion on this issue but will mostly be sighting the opinions of great minds and institutions on the place of Achebe in African literature.

I think it was Noble Laureate Nadine Gordimer, the South African author that first called Achebe “the father of African literature when in 2007 he won the Man Booker International Price.

Writing on this issue, Kwame Appiah would say; “It would be impossible to say how “Things Fall Apart” influenced African writting. It would be like asking how Shakespeare influenced English writers or how Pushkin influenced Russians.”

Ainehi Edoro, a Nigerian from Akure and a professor of Global Black Literature at University of Wisconsin-Madison, writing in the Brittle Paper, an online literary magazine for readers of African Literature, had this to say on the topic; “The first mistake that Soyinka makes.. is taking the idea of “the father” or “the inventor” way too literally. Achebe is the father of African literature only in a metaphorical sense. No one is saying that Achebe was physically present when African literature came into being—like he was some kind of god who stood before the expanse of Africa’s literary nothingness and said “let there be African literature, and then there was African literature.” She continued; “Before Achebe, if you were black and you were African, the world most likely did not see your work as literary. They would evaluate your work as folklore, myth, or things that should interest an anthropologist, but not literature. This affected the way African writing was circulated globally. Instead of African fiction to be reviewed by the New York Times or shelved alongside Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf, it was published by religious presses and reviewed in anthropological journals.

Things began to change in a big way after the global success of Things Fall Apart. It took a novel like Things Fall Apart for the global literary market, readership, and literary institution to see African writers the same way they saw Virginia Woolf or James Joyce or William Shakespeare—people writing things called literature and not myth, or folklore or historical documents or anthropological texts.”
Simon Gokandi, a Kenyan, Chair, Department of English, Class of 1943 University Professor of English at Princeton University has this to say; “Achebe is the man who invented African literature because he was able to show… that the future of African writing did not lie in the simple imitation of European forms but in the fusion of such forms with the oral tradition.”

As the founding editor of Heinemann's African Writers Series from 1958, Achebe was managing editorial operations and the refinement of books published under this label. Under Achebe’s editorship, many of the great literary works of great African minds and leaders went through him and this includes Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Keneth Kaunda, Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkuruma, Flora Nwakpa, Aluko T. M, Ekwensi Cyprian, Ferdinand Léopold Oyono, La Guma Alex, John Munonye and many more. After Achebe left Heinemann’s in 1972 works of people like Mandela, Soyink and Obasanjo also came to Heinemann’s.

It’s not just for his great books that Achebe is called by many all over the world “The father of African Literature” but also for his person and his overall contribution to the development of African Literature.

Perhaps that was why while writing in The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch, an American author and journalist and a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker has this to say; “the fact that [Achebe] must be remembered as not only the father but the godfather of modern African literature owed at least as much to the decades he spent as the editor of Heinemann's African Writers Series.”

Ngugi wa Thiongo would say; “There’s hardly any African writer of my generation who has not been mistaken for Chinua Achebe. Every African novel became Things Fall Apart, and every writer some sort of Chinua Achebe. He never bragged about it, even refusing the unofficial title of father of African literature.” Writing in his tribute to Chinua Achebe, Ngugi also said that Soyinka agreed that he had been mistaken for Achebe in many occasions by so many in many country.

Certainly, it made not little sense when Mandela told Achebe what his novels brought to him among all the African literature he had while in prison: “There was a writer named Chinua Achebe in whose company the prison walls fell.”

Great man. Eniti o ni irú ẹni........

Soyinka is an envious man, period.

Oga leave story.

Even if Achebe invented literature, he did not win the highest award in literature.


Achebe can take the father of African literature honour, Soyinka will take the greatest African writer.


A football player that didn't win the Balon'dor cannot be the greatest.

JAMO84:
Oga leave story.

Even if Achebe invented literature, he did not win the highest award in literature.


Achebe can take the father of African literature honour, Soyinka will take the greatest African writer.


A football player that didn't win the Balon'dor cannot be the greatest.

Let them console themselves in peace.

Achebe is a tribal bigot and ethnic fanatics he will always be remembered as a hateful tribalistic.

Most of his book centered around hate for fellow tribesmen or racism towards the European.

Hateful soul like him belong to the trash of literature history.

Notfogotten:
Soyinka is an envious man, period.

Soyinka is envious of someone he is greater than.

You people are comedians.

ariesbull:


Chinua Achebe, the father of African literature?

“For many people all around the world, Chinua Achebe was their first African writer”
-Kwame Anthony Appiah

There is a report that Prof. Soyinka just repeated his stance about Achebe not being “the father of Africa literature.”

Well, we all could remember that just few weeks after Achebe’s demise, Soyinka had this to say; “Chinua himself repudiated such a tag—he did study literature after all, bagged a degree in the subject…Those who seriously believe or promote this must be asked: have you the sheerest acquaintance with the literatures of other African nations, in both indigenous and adopted colonial languages? What must the francophone, lusophone, Zulu, Xhosa, Ewe literary scholars and consumers think of those who persist in such a historic absurdity?”

He maybe right there. That’s his opinion. Just like everyone else has their own.
Of course, I have my own opinion on this issue but will mostly be sighting the opinions of great minds and institutions on the place of Achebe in African literature.

I think it was Noble Laureate Nadine Gordimer, the South African author that first called Achebe “the father of African literature when in 2007 he won the Man Booker International Price.

Writing on this issue, Kwame Appiah would say; “It would be impossible to say how “Things Fall Apart” influenced African writting. It would be like asking how Shakespeare influenced English writers or how Pushkin influenced Russians.”

Ainehi Edoro, a Nigerian from Akure and a professor of Global Black Literature at University of Wisconsin-Madison, writing in the Brittle Paper, an online literary magazine for readers of African Literature, had this to say on the topic; “The first mistake that Soyinka makes.. is taking the idea of “the father” or “the inventor” way too literally. Achebe is the father of African literature only in a metaphorical sense. No one is saying that Achebe was physically present when African literature came into being—like he was some kind of god who stood before the expanse of Africa’s literary nothingness and said “let there be African literature, and then there was African literature.” She continued; “Before Achebe, if you were black and you were African, the world most likely did not see your work as literary. They would evaluate your work as folklore, myth, or things that should interest an anthropologist, but not literature. This affected the way African writing was circulated globally. Instead of African fiction to be reviewed by the New York Times or shelved alongside Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf, it was published by religious presses and reviewed in anthropological journals.

Things began to change in a big way after the global success of Things Fall Apart. It took a novel like Things Fall Apart for the global literary market, readership, and literary institution to see African writers the same way they saw Virginia Woolf or James Joyce or William Shakespeare—people writing things called literature and not myth, or folklore or historical documents or anthropological texts.”
Simon Gokandi, a Kenyan, Chair, Department of English, Class of 1943 University Professor of English at Princeton University has this to say; “Achebe is the man who invented African literature because he was able to show… that the future of African writing did not lie in the simple imitation of European forms but in the fusion of such forms with the oral tradition.”

As the founding editor of Heinemann's African Writers Series from 1958, Achebe was managing editorial operations and the refinement of books published under this label. Under Achebe’s editorship, many of the great literary works of great African minds and leaders went through him and this includes Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Keneth Kaunda, Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkuruma, Flora Nwakpa, Aluko T. M, Ekwensi Cyprian, Ferdinand Léopold Oyono, La Guma Alex, John Munonye and many more. After Achebe left Heinemann’s in 1972 works of people like Mandela, Soyink and Obasanjo also came to Heinemann’s.

It’s not just for his great books that Achebe is called by many all over the world “The father of African Literature” but also for his person and his overall contribution to the development of African Literature.

Perhaps that was why while writing in The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch, an American author and journalist and a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker has this to say; “the fact that [Achebe] must be remembered as not only the father but the godfather of modern African literature owed at least as much to the decades he spent as the editor of Heinemann's African Writers Series.”

Ngugi wa Thiongo would say; “There’s hardly any African writer of my generation who has not been mistaken for Chinua Achebe. Every African novel became Things Fall Apart, and every writer some sort of Chinua Achebe. He never bragged about it, even refusing the unofficial title of father of African literature.” Writing in his tribute to Chinua Achebe, Ngugi also said that Soyinka agreed that he had been mistaken for Achebe in many occasions by so many in many country.

Certainly, it made not little sense when Mandela told Achebe what his novels brought to him among all the African literature he had while in prison: “There was a writer named Chinua Achebe in whose company the prison walls fell.”

Achebe is like any footballer than could not win balon d or or world footballer of the year.

History will not remember him among the literary icon. That is fact.

Pls mention one of Soyinka's books that you have read

JAMO84:
Oga leave story.

Even if Achebe invented literature, he did not win the highest award in literature.


Achebe can take the father of African literature honour, Soyinka will take the greatest African writer.


A football player that didn't win the Balon'dor cannot be the greatest.

JAMO84:
Oga leave story.

Even if Achebe invented literature, he did not win the highest award in literature.


Achebe can take the father of African literature honour, Soyinka will take the greatest African writer.


A football player that didn't win the Balon'dor cannot be the greatest.

He rejected that award. He wrote


Achebe in a letter rejected the invitation to submit his work for Nobel prize consideration.

Refer to pages 152-153 of STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART, edited with an introduction by Ezenwa-Ohaeto.

The Noble Prize Committee invited many African writers including Chinua Achebe to submit their works for consideration. Achebe rejected the invitation through a letter which took him out of the running for the Nobel.
Here is the content of the letter to the Conveners of the 2nd African Writers Conference in Stockholm:

"I regret I cannot accept your generous invitation for the simple reason that I do not consider it appropriate for Africans to assemble in European capitals in 1986 to discuss the future of their literature. In my humble opinion, it smacks too much of those constitutional conferences arranged in London and Paris for our pre-independence political leaders. Believe me, this is not an attempt to belittle the efforts and concern of your organization or indeed, of the Swedish people who have repeatedly demonstrated their solidarity with African aspirations in many different ways. But I strongly believe that the time is overdue for Africans, especially African writers, to begin to take the initiative in deciding the things that concern them."

CHINUA ACHEBE'S REACTION TO SOYINKA'S NOBEL PRIZE

"Wole Soyinka has stupendous energy and vitality, eminently deserving of any honour. In terms of what it means for African literature, it's simply an indication that the Western European literary establishment is now aware of African literature. I said as president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) that it was very interesting that one of us had shown that we could beat the white man at his own game..."



.

Judgementa1:


Achebe is like any footballer than could not win balon d or or world footballer of the year.

History will not remember him among the literary icon. That is fact.

says who

Achebe has the most translated literary work coming from Africa after the Bible


Things fall apart has been translated in Over 50 languages

.how many of Soyinka's work was translated in Yoruba to start with

ariesbull:


He rejected that award. He wrote


Achebe in a letter rejected the invitation to submit his work for Nobel prize consideration.

Refer to pages 152-153 of STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART, edited with an introduction by Ezenwa-Ohaeto.

The Noble Prize Committee invited many African writers including Chinua Achebe to submit their works for consideration. Achebe rejected the invitation through a letter which took him out of the running for the Nobel.
Here is the content of the letter to the Conveners of the 2nd African Writers Conference in Stockholm:

"I regret I cannot accept your generous invitation for the simple reason that I do not consider it appropriate for Africans to assemble in European capitals in 1986 to discuss the future of their literature. In my humble opinion, it smacks too much of those constitutional conferences arranged in London and Paris for our pre-independence political leaders. Believe me, this is not an attempt to belittle the efforts and concern of your organization or indeed, of the Swedish people who have repeatedly demonstrated their solidarity with African aspirations in many different ways. But I strongly believe that the time is overdue for Africans, especially African writers, to begin to take the initiative in deciding the things that concern them."

CHINUA ACHEBE'S REACTION TO SOYINKA'S NOBEL PRIZE

"Wole Soyinka has stupendous energy and vitality, eminently deserving of any honour. In terms of what it means for African literature, it's simply an indication that the Western European literary establishment is now aware of African literature. I said as president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) that it was very interesting that one of us had shown that we could beat the white man at his own game..."



.

Achebe accepted the International Booker prize in the UK

Peace prize for the international book trade in Germany

And several others from the whites, but somehow, you want me to believe that he rejected the biggest of his life because of his hatred for the whites?


Make una dey deceive unaself

haffaze777:



Let them console themselves in peace.

Someone wrote, "Soyinka is Envious..." I have to go search for the current meaning of envy again! Who knows, the meaning might have been changed while I slept! This is the paradox of people who crave the Nobel prize for Literature!
Why is it that Southwest always already have everything they aspire?!

SporaD8:

Someone wrote, "Soyinka is Envious..." I have to go search for the current meaning of envy again! Who knows, the meaning might have been changed while I slept! This is the paradox of people who crave the Nobel prize for Literature!
Why is it that Southwest always already have everything they aspire?!

That's why we should allow them to console themselves in peace,they pray every day to be where we are and when their prayers are not answered,they turn it to something else