Female Speaker: From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Bernadette Paolo: First of all, I want to compliment all of you, students. You listened intently this morning, and there was a lot of information covered. Thank you for that. You can give yourselves a round of applause, yes. [applause] Before I start my introduction, I promised you this afternoon that you would be in the presence of two great men -- one, Chinua Achebe, who was here, he'll be coming shortly, and the other is Professor Ali Mazrui, who is with me right here. [applause] So if I could ask all of you to be very quiet -- and we may stop our remarks briefly when Chinua Achebe comes. In the meantime, I'd like to introduce Professor Mazrui to you and tell you of his accomplishments. And then he will address all of you, as well. So, again, I would like to welcome the scholars, and educators, and students. The man whom I'm about to introduce was born in Mombasa, Kenya, the son of a judge of Islamic law, a scholar. The story of his life and career achievements would probably require spending the entire afternoon for me to tell you everything, and we don't have that time. So I'm going to provide you with some of the highlights. All of you should have programs with bios, and you will see a bio of Professor Mazrui in that. Do all of you have programs? Raise your hand. Okay, because I want you to take that bio with you. It's very important. First of all, Professor Ali Mazrui is known as one of the world's most prolific and respected writers on Africa. He has written over 30 books and published hundreds of articles on topics ranging from African politics, international political culture, political Islam in North-South relations. He has been nominated for the Living Legends Award by the Economic Community of West African states, ECOWAS, and the African Communications Association. He's been nominated by "Foreign Policy" magazine and "Prospect" magazine in London as one of the world's top 100 intellectuals. He received his master's degree from Manchester University in England -- his undergraduate degree, rather -- his master's degree from Columbia University in New York, and his Ph.D. from Oxford University. He is presently serving as the Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and is also the Andrew White Ambassador-at-Large, Emeritus at Cornell University. He has taught in Nigeria, he has taught in Kenya, he has taught in Uganda, he's a guest speaker at Harvard, in Baghdad, in places all over the world. He became internationally renowned, however, for something involving the media. He wrote a film, a series. Have any of you ever heard of -- well, this is the African's -- the title of it is, "The African's Triple Heritage," but it was on Africa what "Roots" was about African American history in the United States. And he took on the issue of colonialism, and he's continued through his writing to take on many issues, many governments, and many things that he perceives to be wrong in our society. This morning I told you that it would be a gift for you to document your thoughts, and your words, and your ideas so that you, too, can influence the world with the way you think for the better. Ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to present to you Professor Ali Mazrui. [applause and cheers] Ali Mazrui: Thank you very much, indeed. I was really moved by your enthusiasm and your warm welcome. It's a great honor for me to be participating at this event, and at this distinguished institution, and in honor of such a great man as Chinua Achebe. He will be joining us possibly in the course of my presentation, but at any rate, before the events are all over. Originally the title advertised envisaged my attempting to link the global economic meltdown with "Things Fall Apart," so that we deal with the literary side of things falling apart alongside the collapse in the real world, but then we decided that would require much more than that. Bernadette Paolo: Can you maybe hold on for just a moment, here he comes, here's your friend. [applause and cheers] Well, you've gathered that Chinua Achebe has just arrived. [applause] Ali Mazrui: So, welcome, welcome, Chinua. We are delighted. I was just finished saying to the audience that you'd be joining us before very long, and lo and behold, by magic, you appeared. [laughter] Welcome. And I was telling the audience how grateful and how humble I am, really, to be participating in this great event to mark the 50th anniversary of a major work of literature by Africa's towering literary figure, and at this distinguished institution. And I was at the celebration of Chinua Achebe's 70th birthday, and in a way I continue today where I left off then, because I think at that time I was complaining that the Western world was not recognizing our literary heroes enough, and I think in the course of the last 10 years there has been major improvement in that direction. This first decade of the 21st century has revealed probably greater recognition of the truly global stature of Chinua Achebe than the last decade of the 20th century. The international celebration of the 50th anniversary of "Things Fall Apart" is an important measure of that shift in global recognition. In 1998 -- was the 40th anniversary of the publication of "Things Fall Apart" -- there were incredible literary oversights during that 40th year of the great novel. In that year the Modern Library board, Random House, in the U.S.A., chose the 100 great books in English of the 20th century and ranked them. "Ulysses" by James Joyce, was ranked first and foremost, and "The Magnificent Ambersons" by Booth Tarkington, was number 100. The majority of the books were from the Commonwealth -- i.e., the former British Commonwealth -- and almost all the rest from the United States. No African novel in the English language made the first 100, not even Chinua Achebe's work of works, and indeed not even Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka's achievement, and our other Nobel Laureates at the time, Nadine Gorimer. So was this linguistic apartheid combined with racial apartheid, we asked ourselves? Not quite really. While Africa was completely out of the league at that time, the African Diaspora did make it. Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" made it for number 19. Richard Wright's "Native Son" made it as number 20. And James Baldwin's "Go Tell It On The Mountain" made it for number 39. Muslims were relieved that the list did not include Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses". [laughter] But the list did include Salman Rushdie's "Midnight Children," number 90. Books about Africa by non-Africans which made the list included Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," number 67, and V.S. Naipaul's "Bend in the River," number 83, both of which also feature in Commonwealth literature. I shall return later to Chinua Achebe's literary duel Now, should we be alarmed that none of the great African writers made it at that time? It certainly casts serious doubt on the seriousness of the endeavor by Random House to have excluded "Things Fall Apart," and generally the major concern that the list was too Anglo-Saxonic; that it didn't just use works in English -- although there were people to whom English was not the mother tongue, including Joseph Conrad -- but in general the list was excessively So I took that particular snub myself personally as an African, and when I was confronted with Africanist publishers at the book festival in Harare, Zimbabwe, I said, "Look, why don't we inaugurate a search for 100 great African books of the last 100 years?" Since these were publishers, at first I thought they might just be interested in the idea and nothing would happen. But, in fact, they took the idea seriously. Suddenly they sat up. They said, "Oh, there's something in that." And before long, a whole operation was underway, establishing the machinery for trying to identify great books from Africa that could be recognized as the last century was coming to an end and the new century was inaugurated. I was very pleased this morning to see that that list has been distributed here. So the list you have, in fact, emanated from first feeling snubbed by Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism, and then I taking advantage of a situation of addressing many publishers in Harare, Zimbabwe, and their taking me seriously, and before long machinery was established for studying the [unintelligible] of Africanist literature available, and making them subject to selection for recognition as 100 great African books of the last 100 years. We had a lot of interesting problems at the time. One, what made a book African? What was it that made it African? Was it the subject matter? Was it the language in which it was written? Is a book written in Icelandic, by an African, an African book? Should the book be accessible to African readers, written in one of the languages understood by Africans? Should the setting be relevant? Is a book by an African about Eskimos an African book? So "Hamelt" is an English play, though the character is a Prince of Denmark. So, could an African working on people distant from Africa produce a work that would be relevant for that list? We also worried about what made a writer African. Was it nationality or citizenship of the writer? Well, we discussed people like T.S. Eliot, born in Missouri in 1888, became British in 1927. "The Waste Land" was regarded as English literature rather than American, although in a posthumous essay he himself argued that American and British literature were two branches of the same tree. Joseph Conrad became British when he was nearly 30 years old. So "The Heart of Darkness" is part of English rather than Polish literature. So born in Poland in 1857, Conrad became a British subject in August, 1886. Sub-Saharan Africanity versus Trans-Saharan was another issue. Subcontinent -- that is, so-called Black Africa -- or should we include Arab Africa? Was Naguib Mahfouz, a winner of the Nobel Prize, an African writer or an Arab writer? Or is Mahfouz' "The Palace Of Desire" a work of both African literature and Arab literature? What about his beginning and end? And then we worried about indigenous Africans versus immigrant Africans. White South Africans are, of course, legitimate South Africans, but were they to qualify as African? So, of course, most of us are great admirers of Nadine Gordimer as a South African writer. She's always been African even in the days when most whites did not call themselves Africans in the English language. But in general we worried about that as to whether it should impel us to scrutinize more carefully those who are descended from recent entries into our continent. Should the project of 100 great African books accept as African literature a book by [unintelligible] on F.W. de Klerk and reject the 1999 book entitled "The Debt" by Randall Robinson, the African-American Director, at the time, of TransAfrica Forum in Washington, D.C.? In other word, did F.W. de Klerk qualify better as an African than Randall Robinson? So one solution to this dilemma was to accept a book by a Diaspora African, provided it was a book about the continental African experience rather than a book about the Diaspora experience. Tony Morrison's masterpiece, "Beloved", would not qualify as an African book, but Alex Haley's book, "Roots," would qualify because it was a strong book of strong African nostalgia. In addition, we argued whether we should distinguish between African-Americans and American Africans. African-Americans were those who were once primarily Africans, and then historical forces forced them into transforming themselves into Americans -- so Tony Morrison, Alex Haley, Randall Robinson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and a number of distinguished people in this audience who are African-Americans. For all of them, their books would then qualify for our project of 100 African great books. We decided that if the book by a Diaspora African was, in fact, about Africa, then of course it would qualify. It would be different from Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"; it was about Africa, but there also was not an African. So we scrutinized W.E.B. Du Bois, who became a citizen of Ghana under the presidency of Kwame Nkrumah. When Du Bois was an African-American, the noun was American. You ask, "What kind of American?" The adjective was African-American. When he transformed himself into a citizen of Ghana, then did Du Bois undergo a shift so that the American became the adjective? And you ask, "What kind of African?" American-African in that phase. Well, in the end, we found major compromises, but in the case of Du Bois, there were different -- the range of Du Bois's eligible works was wide. "The Philadelphia Negro" was published in 1899, just before the 20th century began. It therefore was regarded as falling outside the period of this particular project, in any case, of 100 great books of the last 100 years. But "The Soul of Black Folk," 1903, a classic, it was debated whether that qualified, or should we really only accept, from Du Bois's output, a book like "The World and Africa," published in 1947. So eventually we did come up with a series of books. You have the list over there. It included a book by Nelson Mandela. It turned out, that became the basis of compensating me. All my books were disqualified from the competition because I was the author of the project. [laughter] So instead, I was called the founding father of the project. And then, to compensate me for not being in the running at all, I was appointed to be the man who would present, to Nelson Mandela, the award in person. So if I received an award from Nelson Mandela, that would be great enough an honor; that I should be giving an award to him was really one of the heights of my glories, and I was delighted to turn up at the ceremony in Cape Town for that particular event. So we did compensate for what was regarded as a slighting of "Things Fall Apart" by Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism. And there has been attempt since then, in the last 10 years or so, to make amends and to recognize Achebe's masterpiece more realistically. Now, there are different ways in which we could look at what has been produced by Achebe over the years. One, you can look at it as a form of literature that belongs to the literature of postcoloniality, although the book was published before Nigeria became independent; that it was almost anticipatory in looking at the colonial experience, even from the very beginning, but from the perspective of someone who knew this thing began, and will be ending before very long. So it was whether the genre or school to which this book belonged was the school about imperialism and postcoloniality. Achebe himself has often spoken on "Things Fall Apart" as a response to the white racism imbedded in such works as Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Another genre or school to which the book might be placed was what has recently been called "a clash of civilizations." So this particular category overlaps, of course, in some cases with the literature on imperialism and postcoloniality. After all, although the concept of clash of civilization, as enunciated by Huntington, a professor at Harvard, assumed it was something which was just unfolding, in reality, a clash of civilization went back hundreds of years. It included the genocidal phase, when African-Americans were decimated, it included clash of -- I don't mean African-American, I mean Native Americans were decimated -- it included the slave phase when African-Americans were enslaved and exploited, it included the period of imperialism, when much of the world was colonized by the West, and it included more recent hegemonic phase of American power in the world. So the phase of imperialism was one of them. Should "Things Fall Apart" be also assigned to that literature of civilizations in conflict? Joseph Conrad's book, "Heart of Darkness," was one such overlap between the literature of imperialism and the literature of clash of civilization. And Achebe has himself held very strong views about Conrad, especially on the issue of race. More recent examples of clash of civilization concern the escalating conflict between Islam and the Western world, especially between the United States and such a radical Islamic movement as al-Qaeda. Okonkwo in "Things Fall Apart" is, of course, the defender of his own civilization against the encroachment of British colonization. So is "Things Fall Apart" a celebration of traditional Igbo culture, or is it -- and this is very controversial -- de facto an apology for Westernization? Is the book de facto, though not in intention, an apology for Westernization? Is Westernization an answer to some of the negative aspects of a flawed African culture in Igbo-land, for example, like the caste system among the Igbo, referred to only briefly in "Things Fall Apart"? There are Igbo traditions portrayed in the novel which the author knew were repugnant to Western sensibilities, such as Igbo mutilation of a dead child to deny the child's spirit a re-entry back into this life. Was the killing of Ikemefuna by Okonkwo, the father "whom the boy trusted," was the killing an act of barbarism, not because the father participated in it, but even because the oracle proclaimed that the boy must be killed? So it isn't just the guilt of the father, but the guilt of the society that has sentenced him. Did the dying child look at his dad in a shocked state of incomprehension? Does "Things Fall Apart" have more in common -- and here I'm sure Achebe will strangle me tonight -- [laughter] -- have more in common with the bad things that Joseph Conrad identified in the Congo in the "Heart of Darkness" than Chinua Achebe has been prepared to acknowledge? Achebe's chancellor lecture at Amherst in February, 1975, condemned Conrad as a thoroughgoing racist. Achebe accused Conrad's novel of Negrophobia, of dehumanizing Africans. Others have defended Conrad's novel about the Congo as being anti-imperialist rather that racist. Would "Things Fall Apart" have been accused of racism, had it been written by a white man? Does "Things Fall Apart" share with "Heart of Darkness" the quality of ambivalence, which when viewing the white man as intrusive and viewing the black man as primitive. A novel portraying a religion negatively is sometimes more offensive to believers if the novelist originally belongs to that religion. So in the case of religion, a novelist who is abusive about the religion to which he once belonged is more offensive as a result. On the other hand, a novel portraying a race negatively is often less offensive if the novelist is of the race to which he has been attacking in his literary work. "The Satanic Verses" was written by someone who was brought up a Muslim. The novel was therefore much more offensive to Muslims than if Salman Rushdie had been a Hindu. He was, of course, born in India. Among South Asians, negative writings by Hindus about Islam are commonplace, but a blasphemous diatribe by a Muslim against Islam verged on cultural treason, because that is the religion into which Salman Rushdie was born. It was because Salman Rushdie was once a Muslim which made "The Satanic Verses" so profoundly offensive to Muslims worldwide, and certainly much more offensive than if Salman Rushdie had been a Hindu; a Hindu attacking Islam, so what else is new? [laughter] But someone born into a Muslim family attacking Islam -- for money in the marketplace, to the applause of Westerners -- was very offensive. That's a novel about religion. With regard to a novel about ethnicity or race, a reverse phenomenon is often true. A novel by an African which portrays a seriously flawed African culture is far less offensive than a novel about such an African culture written by a white man. A major reason why the whole world has been able without hesitation to salute "Things Fall Apart" as a work of total cultural integrity is partly because the gifted author is himself an Igbo who was ready to write about his own people -- moles, pimples, scars, and all. So we have saluted Chinua Achebe not because the Igbo did not leave newly born twins to cry themselves to death in the forest, or did not mutilate the body of a child who had just died a natural death at home, but because pre-Christianized Igbo did do precisely those things. So we are told, in "Things Fall Apart," about domestic violence and spouse abuse, about an oracle that demands the death of a child, and the death is granted as a sacrifice. Of course, Chinua Achebe tells us about those negative things and positive things about his people with understanding and empathy. But what saved the novel from being denounced as racist is that it is a view from within, both ethnically and racially. "Things Fall Apart" is a work of ethnic and racial frankness, candor, honesty, and integrity. But had it been written by a white man, it would probably have been widely condemned, probably including by me, and would never have been accepted as a great contribution to world literature. [laughter] So such a situation is, of course, not the fault of the real author, Chinua Achebe, nor does it detract from the singular brilliance of "Things Fall Apart." The situation is a consequence of the history of racism and of the long record of negative portrayal of Africa and black people in so much of European and Caucasian literature across the centuries. In reality, Achebe's first novel, "Things Fall Apart," is less about issues of race, even of culture conflict, though they're two categories to which it could belong. And now I have my category to which I would place it: more about the passing of traditional society. That's a different subject from anti-colonialism and imperialism. It's a different subject from clash of civilizations. This is the subject of -- the "Things Fall Apart" is about the passing of traditional society. The subject like that doesn't need to have more than one civilization. It doesn't need to have more than one country. It could be the same people. So the relevant analogue in English literature, therefore, is not Joseph Conrad, but more the 18th century English poets who lamented the demise of the traditional English village in the wake of the first agrarian revolution and later the industrial revolution. So what changed rural England were major systemic changes within England rather than the coming of a foreign religion or a foreign civilization. "Things Fall Apart" is about the pains of systemic change and the agonies of paradigm shifts in society. In this first novel of his, Chinua Achebe is more concerned with the arrival of Christianity in Igbo-land than with the arrival of capitalism, although in reality colonialism was much more inspired by the lure of wealth than the quest for salvation. On the other hand, 18th century English and Irish poets attributed the passing of traditional society in their own country to their new preoccupation in pursuit of riches. Achebe's lament for the passing of traditional society lies somewhere between Oliver Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village," 1770, and George Crabbe's "The Village," 1783, but while Chinua Achebe is minimally sentimental about what pre-colonial Igbo culture was like, Oliver Goldsmith seems to be deeply pained by the disappearance of the English village in the wake of the agrarian and industrial change. Achebe is resigned to the Christian penetration of Igbo-land, while Goldsmith is disturbed by the relentless pursuit of wealth in the New English society. Goldsmith's lamentation is most famously captured in the following lines, familiar to many of you. Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed can never be supplied. And then imagine Okonkwo's grandson from the novel, "No Longer at Ease," becoming a product of the English village of Auburn instead of the Igbo village of Umuofia, then going to an urban civilization, and then returning to a desolate urban, if you like, Umuofia. Would Okonkwo's grandson, Obi, have lamented the disappearance of the old Umuofia in terms like the following? Now, back to Goldsmith: Remembrance wakes with all her busy train, Swells at my breast and turns the past to pain. In all my wanderings around this world of care, In all my griefs -- and God has given my share -- I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down; To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the flame from wasting, by repose. He's looking at the desolation of what had once been something he loved as a society, and then he had been traveling in more urbanized society, and while he'd travel: I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt and all I saw; And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, Runs to the place from whence at first she flew, I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return -- -- Umuofia -- -- and die at home at last. In fact, such sentimentality about Umuofia would have been totally alien to Obi, the protagonist in "No Longer at Ease" and grandson of Okonkwo from "Things Fall Apart." Indeed, Chinua Achebe himself is far less sentimental about the past than Goldsmith was. Achebe is much closer to that other British poet of rural life, George Crabbe, 1754 to 1832. Just as Achebe had been prepared to confront some of the great imperfections of Igbo culture, George Crabbe in 1783 explicitly rejected Goldsmith's idealization of the charms of the English village. Crabbe said: I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms For him that grazes or for him that farms; But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace The poor laborious natives of the place, And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray, On their bare heads and dewy temples play; While some with feebler heads and fainter hearts, Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts: Then shall I dare these real ills to hide In tinsel trappings of poetic pride? In general "The Village," which is virtually as long -- these are real long poems -- was a repudiation of the romanticization of "The Deserted Village" by Goldsmith, and what I'm suggesting is that Chinua Achebe's interpretation of the traditional society that was passing was more like Crabbe's -- that is, moles, imperfections and all -- rather than that like Goldsmith, with excessive idealization and abundant sentimentality. So if we looked at "Things Fall Apart" in this manner, although one is prose and a novel, others are poems, if we look at them and tear ourselves away from the constraints of debates about racism and about anti-colonialism, if we look at "Things Fall Apart" as a partial lament of the passing of traditional society, then you look at those imperfections in a different manner, because all societies have had traditional societies. And some of them have changed under the burden of industrialization, others under the onslaught of an agrarian revolution, still others under the penetration of Christianity and indeed colonialism. Therefore, the last of the genre -- that is, the passing of traditional society -- is where this great novel should belong. Let me conclude with a salute to two women, both of them wives of mine. [laughter] No, no, I wasn't claiming Okonkwo status, they were sequential. [laughter] They were not at the same time. [laughter] One was my first wife, Molly -- I learned a lot when we were both at Makerere University in Uganda. And she was teaching the French language there, but she was also interested in learning more and more about Africa. Molly is English. So she did a master's degree in African studies, and she decided to do her thesis for the master's degree on Chinua Achebe with special reference to "Things Fall Apart." So I used to spend hours listening to her interpretation on different aspects. She belongs more to the school which would place Chinua Achebe's novel into anti-colonialism rather than the passing of traditional society. But I learned a lot in the debates we used to have in Uganda, and I experienced my own growing admiration of Achebe just because my wife was such an ardent admirer of the man. Then much later our marriage ended much more peacefully than Okonkwo's marriages tended to end. [laughter] Indeed, Molly and I are still friends. [laughter] I'm now married to another great lady from whom I have learned a lot about Igbo culture. She's Nigerian and partially Igbo, who knows a lot about Igbo culture and speaks Igbo language fluently. Out of those two sources of wisdom who have graced my humble abode, I gradually began to understand this great man who is with us today, and to learn, from them, more and more about what he was bequeathing to the world. And today we salute him -- Chinua. [applause] Lanisa Kitchiner: Okay, I think we've got all our ducks in order. My name is Lanisa Kitchiner. And as Dr. Batiste mentioned, I am a doctoral student in the African Studies Department at Howard University under the direction of Dr. Mbaye Cham. I'm also Associate Director for Programs at Howard University's Ralph Bunche International Affairs Center, so I come to you today wearing two hats, but certainly a very, very pure heart, and that is a heart that's filled with love for Chinua Achebe's novel, "Things Fall Apart." I have to tell you that, over lunch, I was speaking with one of my colleagues in the African Studies Department, and we were talking about when we had first encountered the novel. She is of Nigeria, and I'm from California. And she first read the -- well, actually, she first read the novel yesterday -- yesterday -- but she saw the movie years and years and years ago, back in the '80s. I first read the novel -- I can't believe I'm admitting this here today, but I actually first read the novel while on a bus headed to Florida for spring break. It was an assignment -- it was a class assignment, and I was trying to hurry up and get my reading in before I got my suntan on. And what happened was that I encountered Ikemefuna. I tell you, I couldn't put the book down after that. So that was my spring break about, well, a little over 10 years ago. Oddly enough, my colleague said for the very same reason, she chose not to read the novel -- her encounter with Ikemefuna. Coming out of Nigeria, for her, his story was quite frightening. So in the earlier panel, we heard folk who had encountered the novel at a very young age, and we heard from high-schoolers who had encountered the novel. I think one of our panelists first read the novel when he was 13. We've been dealing with this novel a very long time and responding to it in very different ways, so our panelists today will share perspectives from the African Diaspora and also from the continent. We have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, lineup of panelists with us. We have Professor Simon Gikandi, who is Robert Schirmer Professor of English at Princeton University. We have Ama Ata Aidoo, who is -- yeah, let's -- we can pause to give her a clap. [applause] I mean, if I were to say that she's an author, a poet, a playwright -- did I say, "professor," already? I could go on and on and on, on all of the hats that she wears. But, indeed, we're privileged to have her with us here today. We have our very good friend, Philip Effiong, who's at the Africa Society and also at the University of Maryland, joining us. And then we have our very dear Dr. Eleanor W. Traylor, who's Chairperson of the English Department at Howard University. The structure of our panel is pretty straightforward. We're going to go a first round with perspectives from each of the panelists. And then we're going to go and open it up for a couple of questions posed to the panelists. And then after that we'll throw it open to the floor for a few other questions. In the interest of time, I'll ask you to refer to your printed program for a caption of the bios and the achievements of the panelists that we have here. We'll just go directly to you, Professor Gikandi. Simon Gikandi: All right. I've spent so many years discussing "Things Fall Apart" and thinking about its place in the history of African literature that I'm not sure I can add anything new to the conversation. But I'm going to make some comments which I hope can open up some issues for conversation. In looking back at my writings on "Things Fall Apart," I have noticed that I've been making a lot of extravagant claims about the book. Chinua is familiar with those, but I want to repeat a few. I have argued, for example, that after the independence of Ghana, the publication of "Things Fall Apart" is the most important political and cultural event to have taken place in Africa in the age of colonization. [applause] I have also argued that for people of my generation, coming of age in that cusp between colonialism and decolonization, "Things Fall Apart" represented a kind of generational awakening. I've said that, in fact, you can tell how old some of us are by simply asking us how old we were or where we were when we first read "Things Fall Apart." It's like that old American question, "Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?" in a sense. It takes you back to a specific moment in time and place. More importantly, I've argued that the book represents that moment of emergence of African literature. In fact, I've argued it's the book that invented African literature, which is not to say that there was no African literature before the book, but what the book did is create new parameters for thinking about African literature itself. I've argued that in this sense, if you're talking about the future of African literature in the 21st century, we have to see this text as foundational. It's a foundational text because it transformed the parameters of not only African literature, but modern literature, in general. In fact, it's very hard for me to think about what global world literature, modern literature would have been without this book. I can't imagine a geography of modern literature without "Things Fall Apart." I can't contemplate what it would look like. For other African writers, especially younger writers, the book established the tradition against which individual talents emerged and are measured. One of the most revealing moments was I was having a conversation with Chinua Achebe in London about two weeks ago, and I asked him how he responds to question when he hears among younger writers who complain that the books taught in schools in Africa, such as "Things Fall Apart," are too much obsessed with the past. And I want to quote Chinua's response because I think it's appropriate in terms of talking about tradition and individual talent. Chinua said that his response to people who complain about his books being concerned with the past is to say, "Well, I had to write about the past so that you people can write about daffodils." [laughter] Now, for those of you who remember the place of the daffodil in colonial education, of course, it's not just a joke because there was a way in which the daffodil represented the tyranny of English literature for colonial students because, of course, the daffodil appeared in the major poems, in the "Oxford Book of English Verse," in the "London Book of English Verse," but for students in Africa and the Caribbean this daffodil, you had to understand, did not exist in your world. [laughter] So how could you produce a literature in which the daffodil was a centerpiece? What I want to suggest today is that "Things Fall Apart" liberated a whole generation of Africans from the tyranny of the daffodils -- [laughter] -- so, in essence, they could start writing about other things. I want to make a few comments about something which came up most of the -- in the panel this morning, and also in Ali Mazrui's lecture, and that has to do with the singularity of "Things Fall Apart." "Things Fall Apart" is singular because it transgressed what one may call "the colonial mandate." In comparing "Things Fall Apart" to other African literatures before it, at least in the English languages and in the African languages that I read, one of the things I've noticed, it was perhaps the first book to seriously imagine an African future beyond colonialism and outside the structures of colonialism. All other writers before Achebe, or at least most of them, always assumed that the emergence of African futures was closely aligned to colonialism. And so, the work of literature was about how Africans could negotiate identities which could not be imagined without that colonial mandate. "Things Fall Apart" is the book which signals as it were the emergence of an African future which is outside, beyond, transcendental of what colonialism was all about, establishing a new horizon of expectations. So, I wanted to emphasis that thing, that freeing of that mandate. Second point I wanted to emphasize, and I hope we can come back to a discussion on this, is that "Things Fall Apart" leads to a realignment of African writing in terms of the institutions inherited from the European tradition, especially the idea of the novel. One of the most peculiar and singular aspect of "Things Fall Apart" is that it is a novel which is aware of what novels do, but is not defensive about its novelistic language or its novelistic style, and in the process it leads to a radical transformation of the English language itself. Now, again, one would have to go to books before "Things Fall Apart" to understand the problems the English language represented to African writers. If you look at the novels of an ealier generation -- Sol Plaatje, for example; Obeng in Ghana -- one of the things that's very startling is the struggle the writers have to master not only the queen's English but grammar school English, so much so that when a few years ago the Ghanaian publishers of Obeng's book, a new version, a new edition, decided to issue it maybe 10 years ago, they went back to the book, reedited it, because the English used by Obeng was too formalistic. It was a language which he was trying so hard to match what was taught in the grammar school that there's a way in which Obeng needed to be liberated from himself by editors, so to speak. Now, "Things Fall Apart" is unique in terms of its English language, because as we heard today it does many things with that English language. It vernacularizes that language to an extent that, for example, many of us thinking about that novel always assume that it is in Igbo. In fact, the reason why it has taken such a long time for the novel to be translated in Igbo is because its identity is essentially that of Igbo. How many people worry that when we listen to Okonkwo speaking, that he's speaking in English? Which English? Oxford English, Queen's English? The question never arises, because Okonkwo's English is "Our lady wearing the mask of Igboness" so that we think we are hearing him speaking and conversing in Igbo itself. So English is not only pluralized, English is also vernacularized, so that it no longer belongs to a certain locality in a small island somewhere in the North Sea. [laughter] Finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about the future in terms of writers emerging out of the tradition established by Chinua Achebe in "Things Fall Apart." My argument today has been that the book clears the ground for new [unintelligible] practices, and it leads to certain things which are now taken for granted, which are only possible because of its existence. For example, African writers today are concerned with the everydayness of African experiences, the diversity of African experiences, without worrying about the tradition to which they belong to. There's a sense in which most of the younger writers we heard this morning are already taking it for granted that there's a canon of African literature and they are part of that canon, either in revolt against it or in alignment with it. But if you go back to the moment in which "Things Fall Apart" was produced, one of the persistent problems was, what was the identity of African literature, which language was African literature produced in, which tradition did it belong to? These questions no longer arise precisely because of the existence of the book. It has established the foundations, and in a sense, younger writers, even when they are riffing off the book, already assume it represents the existence of a canon. And that enables these writers to be concerned with the thick fabric of African culture and African life without necessarily having to defend certain cultural positions. Two finer points to do with geography. I think one of the things "Things Fall Apart" has enabled, it has enabled the dilation or expansion of the boundaries of African literature. There is a sense in which now what we call African literature continues to expand because writers can cross moral geographies. There are Igbo writers writing in New York City. There are Ethiopian writers in Washington, D.C. There are Yoruba writers in Los Angeles. And the reason why this is possible, it's because one does not have to be in Africa to produce an African literature. And there is a way in which, again, by identifying an African presence and practice, "Things Fall Apart" has enabled the crossing of boundaries. And, indeed, that crossing of boundaries is important, I think, because one of the most unique aspects of the novel is, of course, we all know that it's set in a small village in Eastern Nigeria. But everybody I've talked to over the years says that they don't feel as if they have been taken back to a small village in Nigeria. Except for a few people from those villages who keep on arguing about which one has the caves -- [laughter] -- there is a sense in which what most of us have done is assumed that that village in Eastern Nigeria is also our village -- in my case, in central Kenya. Thank you very much. [applause] Lanisa Kitchiner: Thank you, Professor Gikandi. I guess we'll just follow the path. Professor Aidoo. Ama Ata Aidoo: Thank you. Thank you, LaNisa. First of all, I have -- I mean, I didn't know that Professor Achebe was going to be here this afternoon. [laughter] I thought it was this evening. So please help me to welcome him all over again. Yeah. [applause] It is an enormous pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, students, all of us, it is an enormous pleasure and honor for me to be here this afternoon. And seriously, I suspect that the two people in this world who know what an honor I consider an invitation to participate in any conversation on the 50th anniversary of "Things Fall Apart" are Chinua Achebe, himself, and his wife, Professor Christine Achebe. [applause] Because the Achebes have a story, they tell the world about how much they think I value him, but that story is not mine to tell. I suppose Professor Mazrui and Professor Gikandi have so ably reminded us, and maybe other panelists this morning too, there was a time when the English Departments in the Universities of the British Empire concentrated on a list of books for the study of English literature -- not literature in English, English literature -- which had been seriously compiled and dubbed "The Great Tradition." What was to surprise me and some of us years after I had graduated from the University of Ghana is that a actual fact the list that made that particular canon and its christening had been an invention exclusively meant for the reaches of the empire, otherwise known as the colonies, and these days supposed to be postcolonial places. I say, "supposed to be postcolonial," because, indeed, having lost its monopolistic details and having had to give up its external pretence at being benign, colonialism today is a vicious, polyglot, hydra-headed monster whose corrosive effect on the conquered environment would have been difficult if not impossible to counter, even if there was such an effort to counter that effect. But we know definitely as Africans that nothing like that is happening. So literature -- in any case, I say a result of all of that, consequently some of us argue that "postcolonialism" is a deceptive terminology, a smokescreen, and at worst a blatant lie. [applause] Thank you. Colonialism has not been "posted" anywhere. [laughter] But literature, as some of us studied it at the university, was English literature, and not literature in English. And dependent on how -- you know, how we experienced this literature, the authors that we were made to read came to us, or even these days come to us with nostalgia or a certain amount of irritating familiarity -- Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare of course, and, mercifully, Wordsworth, Keats, and all the way down, if you are at least a little lucky, to T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and John Osborne. Meanwhile, it never occurred to someone like me that life as an undergraduate in an African university -- you know, for someone like me, from the coastal savannas of Central Ghana, had more to offer than this kind of list. So you can imagine what a revelation and a source of inspiration Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" was for me. I still have not overcome the awe with which I registered the fact or the impact of "Things Fall Apart" on me. Overnight I became aware that not only are there other literatures apart from the said "Great Tradition," but that an African like me could write a novel which the English Department of my university would consider good enough and important enough to initially put on their recommended lists from where it was soon to be promoted into the ramps of the prescribed. [laughter] One of the most outrageous questions that fine scholar students like to ask authors -- and, mind you, with good intentions -- is, "Which of your books is your favorite?" [laughter] But to a certain extent, I mean, not only has Achebe himself answered this question very ably in the opening pages of "The Arrow of God," but I also think that it is not even fair, because it is not about -- sometimes the fact that we value a text more than others by the same author doesn't mean that the author also ought to see the text in the same way as we do. But today, what I thought I would just conclude my brief remarks with, is this; that over the years I have dedicated a number of poems to Achebe, but today is -- I mean, today is the day for "Things Fall Apart," and, therefore, we are into prose. [laughter] And I thought that I should -- I'm going to share with you then. Like I said, this is kind of really very nice, because when I thought I was going to share this with you, I didn't even know he was going to be here. But, you know, in the world of fiction writing, there's something we call the flash story. It's a very, very short, short story. And it is prose, of course. And I thought that to actually, just as a gesture of -- one of my gestures for saying how much I appreciate the fact of the inspiration of "Things Fall Apart" and its author, I thought that a flash story I just did, I can share that with you. As most of you -- well, if you've read the bio piece on me, would know, I'm teaching at Brown University half of the year, and then the other part of the year I'm in Ghana. And this last time, early this year, when I was in Ghana, suddenly there was, you know, one day just a flash -- you know, a little bit of news, you know, on the radio came to my attention. And it said that either the president or other government officials of the Togolese, you know, government, were visiting a Ghanaian refugee camp in Northern Togo for Ghanaians. And, you know, it shook me, and I didn't know how much traumatized I had been until recently, because it brought to my mind all over again how expert our government in Africa -- well, I mean, in fact, most governments around the world, but at least we can talk about ours at home -- how expert they've become at, you know, hiding bad news. This story is titled, "Recipe for a Stone Meal," and, Chinua, this reading is for you. Recipe for a Stone Meal She is her father's princess and her mother's most precious, in the prime of her life, equals just over 35 years old, reasonably good-looking and strong, her description of herself for herself. A qualified schoolteacher married to another qualified schoolteacher, in [spelled phonetically] public schools all over the country, back in the classroom, so what exactly is she doing here? 'Here,' is the refugee camp. A refugee what? But the government says that this is the most peaceful country in the world, or at least in Africa. Please don't joke, because Ebie [spelled phonetically] can't laugh. Not after watching her sister butchered by relatives on her mother's side, and herself raped by relatives from her father's side, followed by four days of walking with two children to get here, where she had to immediately stand for countless hours in the queue for this kilo of beans for herself and the two kids. No news of James, her husband, yet. The U.N. officers had told her to go and cook them the way everyone is doing it, but she has boiled the beans all night. Now it's nearly noon. She has exhausted her ration of the twigs, which the women had gathered earlier for the fires, and also exhausted her store of comforting words and gestures for the kids, who in the meantime have resumed. They are frightened from hunger. As for those beans, they are sitting in that new and shiny aluminum pot, hotter to the touch now than when she first put them on the fire all those hours ago. Look at her younger child passing out. Someone is calling for the doctor. He is examining the child. 'Oh, it's only from hunger,' he says, his eyes clearly asking, 'What kind of a woman would let her own child starve?' 'It's those beans, they never got soft,' she wails. 'I know,' the doctor concedes, 'actually, those beans were never meant to be cooked whole, not under these circumstances, anyway. They demand too much water, too much time, and a lot of fire. Those U.N. characters should have brought only the powdered lot here, but maybe they could not be bothered -- oh, or they sent the bags of powdered meal to their relatives at home.' Then she, too, faints, just for some peace. [laughter] [applause] Thank you. [applause] Lanisa Kitchiner: Professor Aidoo, thank you, indeed. You know, if I had a Kola nut, I'd crack it open and pass it around as an offering, and I'd do so because we are indeed among literary chiefs. Thank you very, very, very much. Ama Ata Aidoo: Thank you. [applause] [pause] Philip Effiong: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I actually came up looking at the -- they came up for a title for my presentation, and I title it "From Achebe to Adichie, Now, everybody knows about Achebe, and if you didn't before today you probably do now, but I'll say a little bit about the other person I referred to, Adichie, whose full name is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She's also from Nigeria. She's a young lady, also an Igbo lady, and she broke into the literary scene in 2004 with her novel "Purple Hibiscus," and later on in 2006 with "Half of a Yellow Sun," and with these two novels, she has already won a number of awards and prizes. However, I'm going to focus on "Half of a Yellow Sun" for two reasons. One, it deals with an experience that I'm very passionate about, and that's the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War, in which I was raised, and second, it deals with the oral tradition. Now let me read you what Chinua Achebe has said about this book. He says, "We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers." Now, a storyteller can be a writer, but I think when Achebe says ancient storytellers, he's referring to storytellers who expressed themselves orally, before we started I'll also refer to Adichie's acknowledgement in this book -- I'm sorry, her dedication of the book. She dedicates it to a number of people, but refers to two of her grandmothers who, she says, survived the Civil War. Now, if you know anything about our grandmothers, you probably know that they must have told her a lot. And then later on, in the author's note, she says, "However, I could not have written this book without my parents, my wise and wonderful father." And she goes on to say that both parents told her a lot about the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War. Now, why am I saying this? I'm saying this because even though she's written about the war, she was born seven years after the war ended. So she was not at all a part of the experience. Now, of course, she probably read about the war, but looking at this book, I daresay that a lot of what she says about the war, she gets from stories told her orally by her parents, her grandmothers, and perhaps other friends and relatives. I believe these were her main source of information. I'll explain why I draw that conclusion. Now, like I've said, Adichie was born 1977, seven years after the war, so how is she able to weave a story so vivid and powerful, and in such engaging fashion around an experience that she wasn't directly a part of? I also have said that she must have read books, but most of these books about the Civil War analyze the war. They talk about its causes and the way it was handled. They evaluate war strategies. They point fingers and lay blame on certain individuals. They try to vindicate other individuals. They criticize or applaud, in the case of the Nigeria War, the historic coups of 1966. They discuss battle scenes. But they seldom address in detail the effect of the war on basic human emotions. These books hardly deal with relationships, especially of ordinary people, or the attempts and struggles by ordinary people to survive. They hardly talk about the struggles by ordinary people to find normalcy in the face of overwhelming odds. They hardly show people trying to preserve families, build friendships, pursue careers, or fall in love, or even pursue education. However, the latter is what Adichie achieves in her novel. So I establish a difference here between books typically written about the Civil War by the experts on the war, and what Adichie does, who comes seven years later and also deals with the experience but purely from a human perspective, and a much more personal and emotional perspective. She achieves this, I believe, by utilizing skills often associated with the oral narrator to create what is ultimately a modern novel, and a great deal of her material had to be achieved from orally rendered stories, for it is only through such stories that the above human sentiments that I talk about -- emotions, dreams, fears and hopes -- could be intimately expressed and shared. She exemplifies, in my opinion, the talent of the traditional storyteller who constantly creates and recreates around well-known stories, creating a fresh one each time. The story, "Half of a Yellow Moon," is a fairly simple one in which we see the fundamental concerns and yearnings of everyday life being played out by Odenigbo, a university lecturer; his girlfriend, Olanna, and her twin sister, Kainene; as well as Kainene's boyfriend, Richard, who is a British writer and journalist; as well as the lecturer's servant, Ugwu; as well as their friends, contacts, extended family members. It is around these individuals and around these situations that the novel is built. Although war features prominently in this work and is the driving force behind it, the work is essentially not a typical war story the way we understand war stories that highlight military strategies, or showcase actual battle scenarios, and also depict extensive evaluations of the basis for conflicts. Instead, in Adichie's book, war is in the background, while the everyday lives of the people are foregrounded, including their pursuits of fulfillment, both during times of peace and during conflict. War ultimately emerges, therefore, as a dominant mythic presence. It is almost like some kind of mischievous god that mingles with the people, and yet occupies a separate realm, and from that distance manipulates the lives of the people. This is how she presents war, and when she does this, we see more of the lives of the people, we see more of the people trying to live normal lives in spite of this monster that hovers above them. Then we don't see war, like I said, the way we see war in typical books about war. War in this case is in the background, and in that background we see how it manipulates and sways the lives of the people. And so, the deeper the people are engulfed in war, the more their social lives are obstructed and distorted. And it is the latter we see more of, rather than the war itself. For example, at the beginning there's a lot of romance, and romance is depicted as a source of satisfaction and security. But as the war becomes more and more overpowering, romance becomes something that eventually degenerates into a source of uncertainty and insecurity. For instance, Odenigbo now cheats on Olanna, his girlfriend. And later on he has a child from another woman, and then Olanna herself eventually sleeps with her twin sister's boyfriend. At this point the novel is beginning to look like a Jerry Springer show. [laughter] But what we see here is how the social lives of the people are being affected by war, not the war itself, and I believe that for her to intimately portray the lives of the people, that she could do this because of what was told her orally, not because of what she read from books about the Civil War. Eventually we see the climax of such sexual degeneration take place towards the end of the book, when a lady bartender is raped by soldiers. Normalcy is further disrupted as the characters have to flee their homes and find refuge in situations that provide nothing close to the comfort that they were once used to. In other words, they increasingly live in very indecent situations, both from a material perspective as well as a social perspective. From a lecturer who hosted intellectual discussions in his house, Odenigbo depreciates into a frustrated drunk who relies heavily on a harsh, cheap, unrefined gin fermented from palm wine. For those of you from Nigeria and perhaps West Africa, you know what I'm talking about when I talk about this gin. So he increasingly becomes a drunk. But he is degenerating in this fashion because of the war. And yet, we don't see so much of the war, but we continue to see its effects. The frequent intellectual exercise he initially inspires is steadily replaced by desperate concerns with survival, while the sense of camaraderie that the intellectuals once sustained is overtaken by relationships defined by suspicion and fear. Now, this is not to say that the horrors of war are not recaptured candidly, for we see the air raids, we see the violent coup that preceded the war, we see the battle scenes, we see the starvation, the conscription of young men into the army, and we see the orally-created and communally-owned war songs that become a strong instrument of survival and propaganda. However, this is not dominant. Although these scenarios are presented, they are for the most part marginalized in comparison to the everyday lives of the people, the everyday lives of the people, the everyday basic social lives of the people. And so it is still the social deterioration of the lives of the people that feature prominently, and not the instances of devastation and brutality. Now, I want to refer briefly to the war songs that I talk about, because this is a fundamental -- a very interesting aspect of the oral tradition, which Adichie also documents in her novel. Now, the war songs that were sung during the Nigeria-Biafra War, especially in the eastern region, were very unique, because when we think of orally created songs, we usually think of particular communities and rural settings, but these were songs that were for the most part created in urban settings. They were very unique also, because they did not just belong to a particular ethnic group, since the eastern region, which was Biafra then, also comprised other minority, non-Igbo-speaking groups. And so, these songs were generally rendered in a combination of languages including English, including Pidgin English, and including Igbo, or a combination of these languages. I could and can still sing all these songs. But, I'm sorry, I won't be singing any today. But these songs, like I said, are very unique in this, in the fact that they become -- they are part of an oral experience, but not in the typical fashion that we understand the oral tradition, when we think of particular communities, particular rural area; in this case, the setting is urban, and we have more than one ethnic group involved in this creative process. But ultimately the songs, like any orally -- any other aspect of oral tradition, is communally-owned, and to this day we cannot cite individuals as creators of these songs since, like I've said, they were communally-owned. Let me refer briefly to another aspect of the war that I think is very significant when we think of the oral tradition, and that's the names that I use in the work. And I crave the patience of Igbo people here. I will exercise a little bit of my Igbo knowledge in this instance. But usually in the oral tradition -- in West Africa, in Nigeria, for instance, if you have the tortoise in a story, right away you're able to establish a certain -- you're able to conclude or associate certain behavior patterns with the tortoise. The tortoise is usually the trickster. Many times the elephant emerges as, you know, the big animal that has more brawn than brain. You know, in some other parts of Africa it's the rabbit or the hare that emerges as a trickster character, but the important thing is that you look at the animal, you associate it with certain behavior patterns or with certain traits. By the same token, if we look at certain characters in this text, we look at their names. You can easily see a direct relationship between the roles they play and their names. The servant, Ugwu, for instance, "Ugwu" means "hill" in Igbo, and throughout the work it is as if he's constantly climbing a hill. He's a servant, he manages to go to school, he's conscripted into the army, he's wounded in battle -- he's constantly climbing, and he doesn't quite get there yet, but it's almost an uphill task for him throughout the work. The other two characters, the twins, Olanna and Kainene -- "Olanna" in Igbo means either "the father's jewel" or "the father's gold," and "father," in this case, may represent God. Olanna is the beautiful twin, and the parents, for the most part, believe that they'll find a wealthy man to marry her. So you see the direct relationship between her role, between her name, and what she signifies. Her sister -- "Kainene" means "Let's just watch and see." That's basically -- it's uncertainty, and there's always uncertainty built around this twin. She's not presented as attractive as her sister, and the parents are constantly questioning what her future will be. And at the end of the novel, something curious happens to this same twin when she crosses enemy lines trying to buy provisions and never comes back. The war ends, and nobody knows what happens to her. They still believe she's alive, and they're still searching, but up until when the novel ends she's still not found, so you see the direct relationship between her name, "Let's watch and see, Kainene, and what happens to her," not just in the course of the novel but at the end. And, finally, let me end by saying that throughout this work Adichie also presents Richard, the British journalist, as documenting ongoing events and war situations, which she is presenting. She is presenting these war situations, but he's also documenting situations about the war, which she shares with us at the end of some of the chapters. There is definitely a difference between how Adichie tells her story of the war, and how Richard tells his own. For the most part, Richard's accounts are more analytical, more official, and less emotional than Adichie's, which remain more personal, more informal, and more engaging in its ability to capture the human craving for normalcy in the midst of so much chaos. So here it's -- we almost see a distinction between someone who's witnessing the event and how he's communicating the event, and someone who has been told the event orally -- that is, the writer, Adichie, and how she presents it. And you see, like I said, something more personal and something more emotional. In the end, therefore, if you've read "Things Fall Apart" -- or if you're going to read it, like I hope you will -- you will see that Achebe documents the oral traditions of his people by presenting folklore, mythology, dance, proverbs, and so on. Adichie, on the other hand, utilizes the oral traditional idiom to create a novel around a story already told and retold, so that she's able to preserve an ancient practice, even though she relies on the modern literary form. Thank you. [applause] Lanisa Kitchiner: Thank you, Professor Effiong. I think that was a very, very, very thought-provoking capturing of the role of oral narratives in the work of Achebe and Adichie. We'll move ahead to our very own Dr. Eleanor Traylor. Eleanor Traylor: Thank you. [applause] Kaijimbe [spelled phonetically], my distinguished colleagues, Your Eminences, after a full meal of knowledge with several courses -- marvelous courses have been served -- the last speaker is only expected to be the aperitif -- [laughter] -- which is not necessary, but maybe a little delightful. From what you have learned, I have little to add, but I do have one thing to tell you that you may not -- do not know, and that is that since 1998, February 14 in Washington, D.C. has been Chinua Achebe Day, and here is the document that proves it. [applause] Howard University, to its credit, did not dare invite Professor Achebe to receive its Heart's Day honor until it had incarnated him -- and that means his work, "Things Fall Apart" -- into its humanities course. Based on the theories of Dr. Du Bois in education, we'd simply suggest that broad sympathy, a knowledge of the world and our relation to it, is what education, if it is education, should do for us. And since all of that is incorporated in this novel -- this course is practically dedicated to the two men -- in this course, "Things Fall Apart" is the leadoff book, and from its insights, which light the rest of the course -- the texts including "Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali," "The Iliad," "Fato [spelled phonetically]," "The Tale of Genji" by Madame Murasaki Shikibu; there is a review of world religions, there is the Narrative of Frederick Douglass, and it ends -- but these change, except that "Things Fall Apart" never changes. The end book may change. At the time this syllabus was created, Charles Johnson, "The Middle Passage," ended this semester, because this semester then goes into the second semester. This is the epic semester, when students learn the traditions of that form and its successors. And so, there is a full -- so that a common text, and therefore part of the common discourse of Howard University, is "Things Fall Apart," and everything that it does. Now, in the evening -- when we invited Mr. Achebe to receive this honor, we had a full day's conference, and then a gala event. I just want to share some of that event with you, because that is the event, because of which, and by which the Mayor at that time, Marion Barry, declares February 14 Chinua Achebe Day in Washington. As Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was at the White House at that time, she wrote a salutation, which I think is better than the New York Times review of the book, which I have from1959 when it first came out. And there then follows a salutation from the United Nations, when the then Assistant Secretary General for External Relations was Gillian Martin Sorensen. And then the other dedications and tributes come from all the sister universities in the city, and from the Honorable Franklin's son, then Ambassador of South Africa after the Mandela presidency. Well, all of that. At the conference my presentation was Chinua Achebe and the humanities at Howard University -- and I didn't bring that along, but that was -- and the Chair, the Coordinator of the conference that year was Dr. Victoria Arana, whom you heard this morning. And the publication from that conference is an issue of Callaloo Journal. Now, then, having said that -- that's my one new thing, except what it is that just incarnates this novel as a light, a magnetizing light that draws everything into it, is its definition of the contemporary academy, which occurs on pages 166 to 167, says, "A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village round, it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so." My reading of this proverb, which is embedded in this course, is the definition of what the contemporary academy is today and is becoming. It is interdisciplinary, this proverb; it is intertextual, this proverb, it inspires. African studies, African American studies, Asian studies, women's studies, gay studies, all are invited to this welcome table prepared in 1955 by "Things Fall Apart" and a corollary book, which also prepares a welcome table, welcoming in all disciplines, and also co-creating with "Things Fall Apart" the global contemporary novel, and it is James Baldwin. And the relationship between the two men, I refer to in my brief summary, all this wonderful knowledge. But in that I specifically think of "Sonny's Blues," where the intertextual jazz musician goes all the way back to tell the tale of how we may suffer, how we may be defeated, how we may triumph, because there isn't any other tale to tell, and when the Academy functions at its best, that is the tale that it tells conclusively. To borrow a term from architecture, "Things Fall Apart," for me, is a lodestone -- or to borrow a term from Scripture, an Ebenezer stone -- without which an edifice cannot be further built. The edifice, in this case, is the contemporary novel as we know it, but also the contemporary academy as we know it. I think of "Things Fall Apart" in relation to the novel at mid-20th century in the same way that Frederick Douglass spoke of Harriet Tubman. He wrote her a note, saying, "Dear Harriet, your only witnesses have been the silent moon and the midnight stars. But without you: nothing." He realized, of course, among other profundities, that his own narrative, which incarnated if not inaugurated a new genre of the human and literary representation, would have been impossible except for the actuation of emancipation that General Tubman had accomplished. The emancipatory narrative then occurs as an event in life effecting an event in literature. Harriet Tubman enters literature by way of biography, and Frederick Douglass by way of autobiography, a huge archeological transaction in African-American life, history and culture. One, biography, the quoted life; another, autobiography, the self-examined life. "Things Fall Apart," as an act of creative fiction, accomplishes both. It is, for one thing, an emancipatory narrative that quotes a version of life formerly seen as "The Heart of Darkness," "Mr. Johnson," "Tarzan," and the idyllic figurations of Ms. Denison [spelled phonetically]; a version of life, which at its roots carries forth so horrible a vision of the world and mankind as to make the word "distorted" a euphemism. This is the version that "Things Fall Apart" displaces, as what Professor Stuart Hall has defined as a displacement narrative. As both an emancipatory narrative and a narrative of displacement, "Things Fall Apart" liberates that narrative defined by many as the postcolonial narrative, a corrective of both the vision and the narratology that had dominated the modern novel by its view of nature and mankind as colonized. I defer the use of the word "human," because the full achievement of that word in literature and in the vision that inspired it is the achievement of "Things Fall Apart," corresponding with that of his acknowledged brother in America, James Baldwin. In other words, the liberation of the African novel from its colonization by continental and your American novelists is the only fictional eruption, with its African-American correlative, that could achieve this liberation, because they were the bodies of literature that had suffered the experience of colonization. "Things Fall Apart," the huge achievement of Unya Inua Okwo [spelled phonetically], which means "owner of words" -- and now I risk embarrassment -- Ugo Benelu Oji [spelled phonetically], which means the "the eagle of power and beauty," representing might and excellence. Ike Jimbe [spelled phonetically], which means [unintelligible] in Swahili; that achievement, the huge achievement of -- dare I say this -- that one -- [laughter] -- liberated the space for the global contemporary novel to write a new poesis of being. The correspondence between Mr. Achebe and James Baldwin at mid-century before they met face to face affirms a view that we know each other through our inscriptions and literature. Mr. Achebe and Mr. Baldwin discovered in this way that they were up to the same thing in the creation of fictional text. They had begun, before they met face to face, a Diasporic conversation that unmasked the theoretical propositions of Pan-African thought, and in the process practically founded Diasporic studies of literature. Both writers dealt in demystification, and both writers achieve what Ike Jimbe calls "imaginative identification, human connectedness at its most intimate." "Our sense of that link," he says, "is the great social cement that really holds. It calls into full life our total range of imaginative faculties, and gives us a heightened sense of our personal, social, and human reality." That's the aperitif, but I have a little more. I have some evidence of that conversation between Mr. Achebe and Mr. Baldwin. If I have permission, just a bit of it. Mr. Achebe tells us, "When I read 'Go Tell It on the Mountain' in 1958, I knew, here was a brother, and so I immediately proceeded to the American Information Service in the City where I lived, Nugu, to borrow some more books by Baldwin. Unfortunately, there were no other books by Baldwin or anybody like him in that library. And so, I asked, 'How come?' I must say, in fairness to the people concerned, they were moved, and that situation was changed." Similarly, Mr. Baldwin tells us, "When I read 'Things Fall Apart, Achebe's first novel, which is about an Igbo tribe in Nigeria, a tribe I never saw -- a system, to put it that way, or a society, the rules of which were a mystery to me -- I recognized everybody in it, [applause] Lanisa Kitchiner: Thank you very, very much, Dr. Traylor. I can't tell you that you took the first question I was going to throw at you right out of my mouth and answered it before I even asked it. So I'll have to revise my plan a little bit. [laughter] I'll tell you, we're going into the second portion of our panel. What we're going to do is just pose a few questions from the table, and then we'll open it up for questions from the floor. The first question I'll direct to Professor Gikandi. You've written extensively on reading the African novel, and some of your most recent work looks at the relationship between globalization and postcolonialism. Our dear friend Ama Ata Aidoo tells us that colonialism has never been "posted". I'd like for you to speak to us today a little bit about the relationship between globalization, postcolonialism, and the reading of the African novel in the 21st century. Simon Gikandi: How much time do I have? [laughter] Oh, I guess the best way to respond is to take each one by turn. And I'll start with the easiest, which has to do with reading the African novel. And I would say, in terms of reading the African novel, the thing one has to think about is the locations of readings of the African novels, because African novels are read differently depending on where you are. One of the most important things I have noted over time is the meaning of particular novels -- the significance of novels depends on the locality of their readers. Certain novels in Africa, in different countries, raise all sorts of questions. Chinua Achebe's works, for example, have been part of the canon in my native Kenya for a long time, but a few years ago at a Catholic Church started a complaint to have "A Man Of The People" removed from the curriculum. And I was puzzled, because the book had been the curriculum since it's publication. And it turns out the Catholic Church had been instructed to have books which referred to things such as condoms out of the curriculum. And I was puzzled because I had forgotten actually there's a reference to a condom in -- [laughter] -- "A Man of the People." But this was a case where the reading of the book came up against local politics and issues. Much more importantly, the way African novels are read in the United States, where I've taught most of my career, is going to be different. It's going to be different because American interests and understandings of Africa are going to be different from North Africa. I was talking earlier about how the novel travels, how a small village in eastern Nigeria can be transported to almost any other village in Africa, in India, in Mongolia, and so on, and so forth, but that usually doesn't happen in the United States where, of course, in this culture the village is not a locus for all sorts of symbolic actions. So in the case of reading, it depends on geographical transformations and spaces. In terms of globalization, I'm much more interested in the way "Things Fall Apart" is part of a global -- literally -- movement; that perhaps the most important thing that's happened since the publication of the book is that it's no longer read solely as a Nigerian or African project, tied up to institutions of interpretation, but has just crossed boundaries, and is usually read in relation to other novels, which invoke or at least gesture towards global movements of peoples and cultures. In terms of postcolonialism -- which Ama Ata has always said, and I've cited her, has not been "posted" anywhere -- my response to that has to do with an understanding of the category itself where it emerges. Until very recently, postcolonial was not a term I heard being used in Africa at all. It didn't make sense, and it didn't make sense precisely because, of course, the political economies, the institutional practices were very much tied, and memories were tied, to colonialism. So postcolonialism is primarily American attempt to understand legacies of empire, especially in cases where the United States doesn't have historical connection to those empires. In fact, most recently I've noticed that what postcolonialism means, in Britain, for example, is different from the meaning of the term in the United States. In the United States, when we talk about colonialism, it didn't make sense in its materiality precisely because, well, it may refer to other places, but when it comes to Africa and South Asia, for example, it was a theoretical enterprise; whereas in Britain it's tied to very particular historical experiences and memories, where the moment you say where you come from, you are not asked, "Where do you come from? Do you come from Kenya? Oh, is that in Nigeria?" [laughter] That kind of question doesn't come up. The question that comes up, if you come from Kenya, and then you are told, "Oh, yes, my uncle was there" -- well, of course, no one wants to talk about what their uncle was doing there, but... [laughter] Lanisa Kitchiner: All right. Dr. Traylor. Eleanor Traylor: Yes, thank you, amen. Lanisa Kitchiner: [laughs] Thank you. Eleanor Traylor: And, Professor, but the extent to which postcoloniality -- in the first place, its temporal suggestions are very troubling to all of us, but the extent to which it has meant, in literary critical theory, a deconstructed project, that deconstructed project maybe occurred before then, but it was their project. And that is what delivered global literature, this entire deconstruction of what Mr. Foucalt called the 19th century episteme regarding the nature of man. Now, but that was -- Madame, I think, 1966, wasn't it, Professor Arana, which called "The Order of Things," [unintelligible]? But these books were 1955 and 1966. Now, he says in his, you know, proposition that it was language that deconstructed, in other words, that 19th century and earlier paradigm about the nature of man. He said it was language which did that. He's right. What language? Well, he never mentions Chinua Achebe, and James Baldwin, and the whole project that had preceded him by 10 years. That is why James Snead's essay, "Racism and Postmodernism," is germane. I'm not sure that the whole thing is -- I'm tired of "racism" being the umbrella term that hides a whole lot of other malice. You see what I'm saying? This kind of unacknowledgement -- I said to Dr. Rama [spelled phonetically], "There is no way that those young intellectuals, Michel Foucalt, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida -- you know, they were about the same ages as these gentlemen. [laughter] They were in France. Who would not notice a little pop-eyed black boy in Paris, you know what I mean, walking up and down in the same bistros, in the same bars, and so on. They were all French, in that sense, intellectuals. Why wouldn't they have known each other? Why wouldn't there have been the same correspondence as between Mr. Achebe and Mr. Baldwin than among them? I mean, I know it's so. We can document it other places. I mean, the existentialists there with Richard Wright, they all give -- but, no -- so, I mean, it's immensely troubling for that reason. Something is not being admitted. I suppose you could -- would it be possible? Do you think those theories of that Derrida, that Foucalt, that Barthes who carried the premises in the defamiliarized language of -- or is it the denial that narrative is not also theoretical? Do you think they wouldn't have read your book? [laughter] I mean, I just want to ask somebody once and for all. Do you think it's credible that they would not have read "Things Fall Apart"? By this time, this book -- when they began to publish, 10 years later, these books had been translated all over the world. That book, "Giovanni's Room," where he does such a wonderful job of entering the American [unintelligible], it wasn't even published in the United States. It was published first in London because American publishers said, "Uh-oh, we can't sell this book. You're a black writer, you're writing a white book, you'll lose your readers." Well, of course, it's not a white book at all. And it took my students to recognize that Mr. Baldwin was using the passing code to get into that narrative, the American [unintelligible]. He was -- you know, "passing," that had been an African-American discourse from day one, when William Wells Brown wrote "Clotel" -- so these boys passed, da da da da, all of that. But the thing is, it got a lot of notoriety. People were talking about it. It had to be published in England, in London, before it -- and then immediately into the French, and by that time -- and also, "Things Fall Apart" was all over. So my question is just this: is it possible that they couldn't know those boys? [laughter] You want me to give you the microphone? [laughter] Lanisa Kitchiner: Thank you, Dr. Traylor. Eleanor Traylor: He has an answer. [laughter] Lanisa Kitchiner: Thank you, Dr. Traylor. [laughter] We'll move ahead with a question to Professor Aidoo, one that's really been on the tip of my tongue, and I'll tell you, it got on the tip of my tongue because I was reading Achebe's work again, and again, and again, and again. And there's a sentence in the book that stood out for me. Well, there were several, but there was one. In "Things Fall Apart," Achebe writes, and I quote, "There were many women, but they looked on from the fringe, like outsiders." This is in chapter 10. In turn, you have written the female experience in African literature, providing a voice to those who have been -- and some might argue, remain, to a large extent -- unheard. And alongside that, our colleague Mr. Effiong has spoke of a sort of connectedness between Achebe and Adichie. Female Speaker: Adichie. Lanisa Kitchiner: Adichie, yes, yes -- Achebe and Adichie. My question to you is, has the gap between the ways in which menfolk and womenfolk recognize and depict female narratives shortened? And do you foresee these patterns shifting in the future? Ama Ata Aidoo: Yeah, with him sitting here, it makes a difficult and -- you know, response, right? Originally, I had not -- you know, I mean, I had not even dared look at Achebe's writing in terms of how he depict women. I mean, you know, "Things Fall Apart" is "Things Fall Apart," and you see Okonkwo, and, I mean, and you see this incredibly tragic figure, and what he represented for us. I mean, as Simon -- Professor Gikandi -- said earlier, you know, these stories are based on an Igbo environment, but that the power for so many of us Africans is that you read them and you think you know the characters, because you think they come from your area. And I hadn't really dealt with the way the women were depicted originally. But then, of course, as I, you know, published myself as a writer, and then people will come to you and they ask questions like, "Why do you write about women?" [laughter] Or, "Why do you have your central character as a woman?" And I found that question strange. I mean, whom should I write about? I mean, so it's okay to me, really, that people expected me, a woman writer, to also produce these great heroic males, you know. [laughter] And it's like a big shock come in in my work [laughter] So, of course, that made me go back to, you know, to look at the way African male writers have been depicting about women. And they are hardly there. That's my response. You know what I'm saying. Because Okonkwo's wives, oh, they are busy doing in "Things Fall Apart" is hovering around Okonkwo. [laughter] And they do the same, the wives in "Arrow of God" are doing the same. The only thing is that it had not -- what I'm saying, Chinua is a man, and it's just that he should write about men, put men in focus. My only complaint comes not with his depiction of women, but with a kind of, you know, putdown that I, a woman, am not also writing with men in focus. So that's, yeah, that's [unintelligible]. [laughter] And, of course, as we -- I mean, Philip -- Professor -- Male Speaker: Philip. Ama Ata Aidoo: -- yeah, Philip -- you know, spoke to us about Chimamanda Adichie -- and, of course, Chimamanda, what is so fantastic about her writing is -- I mean, it's also the fact that these women -- I mean, it's not like she's consciously writing women into focus, you know. It's just that life is like that, and she sees, you know, in "Purple Hibiscus," the little girl and her struggles within the family, especially with her father; and then the woman, the mother, and so on -- and especially the aunt, the university teacher. I think she is darling, and I think if -- I mean, we wouldn't even actually say it in West Africa, we wouldn't even go there -- [laughter] -- to "Half of a Yellow Sun," but, I mean, for giving us that woman alone, we are enormously appreciative of Adichie. Lanisa Kitchiner: Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Professor Effiong, question to you, and I think this question really stems from your own identity as a writer. If I'm not mistaken, you have your fair share of work out there, as well. Achebe has often been asked whether African literature should cover social or political messages, whether it should focus on the past or the present. As we move farther and farther into the 21st century, what do you think really should be the preoccupation of African writers? Philip Effiong: I don't think any writer, African, non-African, should subscribe to any prescriptions, just because they have a gift that they're exploiting and that gift is creativity. And they will be informed by a number of factors, not just the prevailing social environment, but how they perceive that social environment, as well as their own personal experiences and idiosyncrasies. But I would really hesitate to prescribe any style or any focus for any writer. I think African writers should create freely. And part of the reason why I say that -- let me refer to Spike Lee. Once he was asked a question -- the producer, Spike Lee, is African-American producer, he was asked why he doesn't depict drugs in his movies. And he felt very insulted. He said, "Why must I be expected to depict situations involving drugs? And you're asking me that question because I'm an African-American, and you think this is a problem that we have and that I must address." And he was basically saying he doesn't want to be restricted in that fashion, or he doesn't want to be put in a situation where he's expected, you know -- and for a long time I think African writers had to deal with that kind of thing. And African-American writers were told things like, "Oh -- " you know, there were a lot of prescriptions which created conflicts during the black [unintelligible] movements in the '60s between African-American writers, like, "Oh, you're writing this." Lorraine Hansberry's "Raisin in the Sun," some people described it as mainstream, or some said she was sellout, and so on. Why must this burden of expectations be put on these writers? They shouldn't be put on African-American writers. They shouldn't be put on African writers. We don't always have to write about drums, or elections, or colonialism, postcolonialism -- whether it's posted or mailed -- [laughter] I think we should be allowed to -- African writers should be allowed to create freely, because that burden is hardly put on other people. I hardly see it put on writers from other cultures. Thank you. Lanisa Kitchiner: Thank you, thank you, indeed. That's right, I love that answer. Right on. [applause] Dr. Traylor, we've discussed it a little bit today, and that is this idea that African writers have been concerned with exploring the historical truth and reclaiming the African past. I wonder if it's safe to say that African-American literature has moved beyond this focus, or is it still a sort of reclamation of the African-American past, if you will? Eleanor Traylor: Oh, the discourse of reclamation is just heightening. You see, we have to rebuild something. There has been a design classic in the American novel, for instance -- let's just look at the American novel, [inaudible], where two young men take a journey, right? That's Huckleberry Finn, and so on, that's [unintelligible], and so on, that's Richard Wright's [unintelligible] boys, [unintelligible] boys, now -- and up to James Baldwin's renamed American Adam, David [spelled phonetically], and Giovanni. Now, but at the level of state, we have two young journeymen on the way to the play [spelled phonetically]. And the effort of -- not particularly writing, [inaudible] scholarship, in relation to [unintelligible] -- has got to be to reclaim for them the best heritage they could receive as leaders of the nation. Am I saying that pretty clearly? And I think that the reservoir of -- that word, "value," is used so frequently as to have lost some of its meaning, but the residue of profound thoughtful feeling that takes place in the African-American texts already, and texts that are being created, I think, is so helpful. That it has been already -- even "The New York Times" has heard it on the grapevine, that there is a relationship between -- a literary relationship between James Baldwin, for one, and Barack Obama. Looking at Obama's "Dreams of My Father," and James Baldwin's, you know, "Go Tell it on the Mountain," and how these men have [unintelligible] look, and how they have emerged in spirit, in character, in gravitas, in something that the African-American text owns as a tone [spelled phonetically] in de profundis [spelled phonetically]. So I'm very hopefuly, because the project of these two men of state has got to be a reconstructed project. They've got to build something, because there has been considerable deconstruction, as we know. And I think they have to do for each other what Madame Ama Ata Aidoo did for me. I told her I would remind her of how we met. I was in Ghana, having come from Ibadan, where I spent a year in the Institutes of African Studies. I was a student at both Ibadan and Legon. I traveled with Uncle Bernie [spelled phonetically], [unintelligible], with the Ghana Dance Ensemble. I was assigned one day to go to speak with you. This was before you had become Minister of Education, but you were at the University, on the University faculty. And you were in a meeting, so you sent drivers for me to take me to Elmina Castle. What happens to African-Americans typically, I think, when they arrive -- you know, Elmina, Argore [spelled phonetically] I don't know, or whatever, you know, that's not an easy encounter. Anyway, the driver, wonderful young man, came, and picked me up, and carried me. And I began my journey down the crypt, as James Baldwin called it that -- dungeon, though, so it wasn't restored then. And I went down, but I didn't come up on my own, you know, strength. Ama Ata Aidoo: I think that she's talking about the most famous or notorious slave fort in the world, which is Elmina Castle. Eleanor Traylor: Yeah. Ama Ata Aidoo: That's what you are talking about. Eleanor Traylor: Yeah. Ama Ata Aidoo: Yeah, they may not, here -- Eleanor Traylor: That's what I'm talking about. [laughter] And they brought me out of there. And I don't remember anything. When I was going down those steps, I thought I heard screaming. It was me. I was the one. But I thought I heard it, you know -- first time in my life I've ever known myself to faint. But I lost consciousness of a degree, and those young men brought me out. And when I came to myself, a madame was bathing my face with a cold cloth, and she was whispering things to me. "It will never happen again, it will never happen again, will never," and so on. And after that, we had the best fish. [laughter] Ama Ata Aidoo: Oh, dear. [laughter] Eleanor Traylor: There was a place -- Ama Ata Aidoo: Listen, let me say, you better rescue this -- [laughter] Lanisa Kitchiner: I am so sorry. [laughter] Yes, yes, I am being told, I must, must, must, must, must rescue us from this experience, although I am quite moved by it. Thank you, Dr. Traylor. Last question, and I think I'm going to throw it out to all of the panelists because -- and I'll ask for you to keep your answers as succinct as you possibly can. I'm asking this question because I'm an African-American in the United States, reading Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart," and I'm unable to read it in the way that a person of Igbo extraction might be able to do it. I'm reading it really as a person who sees a form of dialect unfolding. So the question is, can parallels be drawn between the use of language in "Things Fall Apart" and the use of dialect in African-American literature, like, for example, Zora Neale Hurston's "Of Mules and Men." In other words, how is the mother tongue presented or represented in literature of the African Diaspora? Somebody, anybody. Eleanor Traylor: Me? Oh, did you ask me that -- how is the mother tongue represented in it? Oh, well, the tales of Ekwefi, the wife of Okonkwo, is a good place to start. You know that marvelous little boy who -- it's a growing up narrative, "Things Fall Apart" is. He prefers the stories of his mother, those wonderful -- that have been passed down to all of us, the ones that my grandmother -- he prefers those then to the tales more like, you know, tales of his father. That is the one thing I say about, that those two men -- that they knew better than to try to do what you did in "No Sweetness Here." They didn't try that. But they did [laughs] the best they could with raising up precisely that mother tongue, and giving it, you know, into the mouth, in this case to a Ekwefi, and in the raising, you know, of those children. It is that sound that he loves. It is those tales, the tale of -- and so on. So I see the use of that kind of orality and the delivery of that sound from Mr. Achebe. Time, that mid, you know, 20th century, up to the young man's book, "The Known World." That's a splendid novel, Edward P. Jones, and in there he has a baby. Oh, it's the loveliest baby that has ever grown up in literature [laughs] to my knowledge of that, since Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Little Brown Baby -- " -- wif spa'klin' eyes, Come to yo' pappy set on his knee. What you been doin' -- eatin' san' pies? Look at you now -- you're du'ty ez me. Wisht you could always have peace an' cleah skies; Little brown baby wif the spa'klin' eyes! -- which I thought my grandfather wrote -- [laughter] -- and not Paul Laurence Dunbar, [inaudible]. [laughter] Anyway, that baby -- but in the -- Jones's book, 2000 -- what is it -- '06, '07 -- it's '07 -- "The Known World," who we honored at Howard in a lecture, his baby is a reactive baby. When that baby hears a sound, the baby becomes gleeful, and she just -- at the sound that -- [singing] "Mama's little baby loves shortnin', shortnin', Mama's little baby loves -- " -- and when the baby hears that -- so it's the sound that's transmitted, I think, across the sea of memory. Lanisa Kitchiner: Okay. Thank you, Dr. Traylor, thank you very much. We'll give our panelists a round of applause. [applause] But we're not done yet. We're not done yet. We now open it up to you, who may have questions that you'd like to pose. We've got a couple of minutes left for a few questions from the floor, and a mic coming your way if your hand is raised. Is that a hand in -- is that -- okay. Is that Kadisha [spelled phonetically]? Okay, right. Female Speaker: Thank you. I've been lucky to be part of a couple of symposiums around 50th anniversary of "Things Fall Apart." And lots of wonderful things have been said about the book. Lots of wonderful things have been said about Professor Achebe, both in his presence and outside of his presence. But if somebody was to come to any one of you who've read his work, so much of his work, and said, "So who's this Achebe geezer, then, what's he all about?" or "What's 'Things Fall Apart,' never heard of it?" what's your immediate response to that person? Have many people come to you and said they really have not heard of Chinua Achebe or of "Things Fall Apart"? Does that happen often, still, in the work that you do? Lanisa Kitchiner: Okay. Who are you directing your question to? Is it an open question? Female Speaker: It's an open question, maybe because there's -- short of time, maybe just one of the panel, maybe Professor Gikandi, because he's done a lot of work on it, or Professor Aidoo. Lanisa Kitchiner: So we're fighting against acoustics here, so I'm -- Female Speaker: It's gone off. Female Speaker: Could you come forward. Female Speaker: Hello. [low audio] Male Speaker: -- can't hear you. Female Speaker: Okay, can you hear me now? [laughter] Can you hear this? Can you hear this? Lanisa Kitchiner: We can hear it a -- Female Speaker: Okay. Do you want me to repeat the question? Lanisa Kitchiner: If you could, please. Female Speaker: Okay, I was just saying if somebody was to come to -- anyone of the panel can answer this, maybe just one person -- and they said that, okay, they hadn't actually heard of Professor Achebe, you know, or they hadn't heard of "Things Fall Apart," what would your immediate response be? Lanisa Kitchiner: You got it, okay. [low audio] [laughter] Female Speaker: What I kind of -- what I was trying to say is, would you be surprised at that? Ama Ata Aidoo: Yes. I think that if anyone -- well, it depends upon the person. I mean, if they had -- I don't know where either -- I don't know, but if they had come from -- today, frankly, I don't know, because I can say -- I can't even say if you had come from the outer reaches of Outer Mongolia or, you know what I'm saying -- [laughter] -- but if some person really came to me and said, "Oh, I mean, I just heard of Achebe and 'Things Fall Apart, what can you tell me about them?" I'd say, "Well, instead of [spelled phonetically] my question, I'll give an -- 'Where have you been?'" Female Speaker: Yes. Ama Ata Aidoo: You know, "I mean, really, where have you been? And you had to have heard [spelled phonetically] of Achebe. Are you a reader?" you know, because the thing is that if you are a reader, like the novel -- I mean, "Things Fall Apart" has been around for 50 years. And as Professor Mazrui was telling us this morning, I mean, it's not -- "Things Fall Apart" has gone beyond even being an icon of African literature or, you know what I'm saying, postcolonial literature. I mean, if people have been -- if the selectors are being fair, "Things Fall Apart" belongs to the canon that is word literature. I mean, that is everybody's literature today. So they have absolutely no right in not having a word about it. But to tell them about the book is -- well, you know, that's what we've been doing this morning. For me, I would tell anybody like, you know, who came to me after my counter-question that, you know, it's the first book by an African writer, which was, you know, which -- it's kind of -- I don't know -- broke my -- I mean, which cleared my eyes and my mind about the possibilities of the African novel. That does not mean, as somebody said, that, you know, there hadn't been other novels before, African novels, but "Things Fall Apart" somehow has always belonged to a class of its own. Okay? Phillip Effiong: Just to add to that, I think, yes, "Things Fall Apart" has received a lot of recognition and there are a few people who probably don't know about it, but I think what is sad in all of this is the fact that whereas so much attention may be given to texts like "Things Fall Apart," there's so many others that are not receiving attention. Female Speaker: Let's see [spelled phonetically], I supposed I particularly asked that because you do come across, especially some new readers who haven't heard of Achebe, and you don't really kind of want to maybe say to them, "Well, you should have done," because I suppose some people, if they're new to African literature or whatever, maybe haven't done. So that's why I was kind of throwing that out there, and how often that you still come across that, if you do at all. Simon Gikandi: Reason why it's a kind of difficult question to respond to is because the book is so popular within the institutions of education that in this country almost anyone who goes through high school now, as you saw this morning, has read the book. So we have got into a position where we think everyone does it. In fact, I find when I travel, I am more likely to come across people who haven't read the book in Africa than here -- Ama Ata Aidoo: Thank you. Male Speaker: -- and that's precisely because of either two reasons, either because the book is not available or because among the middle classes sometimes there's a kind of resistance to the book, because it's now so closely associated with the institutions of education. So if you're revolting against your parents -- so in my generation, you said, "I'm not going to read "The Venerable Bede," whatever happens." [laughter] For some people -- some kids I come across in my own family will say, "I will not read 'Things Fall Apart' because that's what the teachers want me to read." There's a kind of resistance. But you if I were to come across someone who has not read it within, let's say, my institution, then I would say quite clearly they are people who need to have a better education in terms of literary culture. Lanisa Kitchiner: Is there another question from the floor? Female Speaker: Dr. Traylor, I read the brief biographical sketch of yours that appeared on the papers that was distributed, and you are a graduate of one of our historically black colleges and universities, Spelman College, is that correct? Well, today my presence here in the Library is a homecoming. Forty years ago in 1968 I was one of eight black editors at the Library of Congress. And I want you to know, as a graduate of one of our historically black colleges and universities, that six of those black editors were from those universities; my alma mater, Morgan State College, two of us, four from Howard University. Also, do you recall in 1980, or perhaps 1981, when Peoples Congregational Church honored James Baldwin? [low audio] Eleanor Traylor: I was [inaudible] committee. Female Speaker: You were -- [laughter] Eleanor Traylor: I was the one [inaudible] invite. Female Speaker: Yeah. Well, I kept the sheet that you distributed to all of those who were present, which we read to ourselves as you read to all of us. I thought your presentation was the most beautiful. I have lost my sheet. Can I get another one? Female Speaker: I have one. Eleanor Traylor: I've lost mine, too. [laughter] Thank you so much, [inaudible], and we will start a quest for that because I'm going somewhere -- I'm going to Cornell University next week to talk about James Baldwin at a conference there on him, and I was looking for that program. And I was looking for that. But I think -- didn't they -- they do now tape things. I think they were taping them then. If we can get ahold of the tape, the whole program's there. I'll seek it, and let you know. [laughter] Lanisa Kitchiner: All right, on that note, please, please allow me to just say thank you again to each of the panelists that we have here today. Thank you very, very much. [applause] Female Speaker: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov. [end of transcript]