#CHINUA ACHEBE POETRY HOW TO#

They are against excess - their world is a world of dualitiesвЂ¦ If there is one God, fine. The Ibo people who made that proverb are very insistent on this - there is no absolute anything. Reflecting on a famous Ibo proverb - вЂњWherever something stands, something else will stand beside it.вЂќ - Achebe considers the complementarity at the heart of existence:

#CHINUA ACHEBE POETRY HOW TO#

вЂњIf you look very carefully you will see that they are the same people who are quite happy with the situation as it isвЂ¦ What they are saying is donвЂ™t upset the system.вЂќ By that point, Achebe had already been busy upsetting the system for more than two decades, beginning with his iconic debut novel Things Fall Apart, which remains the most widely read book in African literature.Д®ight years after his conversation with Baldwin, 58-year-old Achebe sat down to discuss the storytellerвЂ™s task in both upsetting the system and stabilizing the spirit of the people with another exceptional interlocutor - Bill Moyers, who so poetically describes Achebe as вЂњa storyteller who hears the music of history, weaves the fabric of memory, and sometimes offends the Emperor.вЂќ The conversation was later included in Bill Moyers: A World of Ideas ( public library) - the indispensable 1989 tome that gave us Isaac Asimov on the role of science fiction in advancing society and philosopher Martha Nussbaum on how to live with our human fragility. вЂњThose who tell you вЂDo not put too much politics in your artвЂ™ are not being honest,вЂќ beloved Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (November 16, 1930вЂ“March 21, 2013) observed in his forgotten 1980 conversation with James Baldwin.

Chinua achebe poetry