There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

The Igbo believe that art, religion, everything, the whole of life are embodied in the art of the masquerade. It is dynamic. It is not allowed to remain stationary. For instance, museums are unknown among the Igbo people. They do not even contemplate the idea of having something like a canon with the postulate: “This is how this sculpture should be made, and once it’s made it should be venerated.” No, the Igbo people want to create these things again and again, and every generation has a chance to execute its own model of art. So there’s no undue respect for what the last generation did, because if you do that too much it means that there is no need for me to do anything, because it’s already been done.10

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One thing that I find a little worrying, though, is the suggestion that perhaps what was done in the 1960s, when African literature suddenly came into its own, was not as revolutionary as we make it out to be. That African literature without a concerted effort on the part of the writers of that era would still have found its voice. You find the same kind of cynicism among young African Americans who occasionally dismiss the contributions of the civil rights activists of that same period. Many of these same critics clearly did not know (or maybe do not want to be told) what Africa was like in the 1940s, back when there was no significant literature at all.

There are people who do not realize that it was a different world than the world of today, one which is far more open. This openness and the opportunities that abound for a young intellectual setting out to carve a writing career for him- or herself are in fact partly a result of the work of that literature, the struggles of that era. So even though nobody is asking the new writer or intellectual to repeat the stories, the literary agenda or struggles of yesteryear, it is very important for them to be aware of what our literature achieved, what it has done for us, so that we can move forward.

As I write this I am aware that there are people, many friends of mine, who feel that there are too many cultures around. In fact, I heard someone say that they think some of these cultures should be put down, that there are just too many. We did not make the world, so there is no reason we should be quarreling with the number of cultures there are. If any group decides on its own that its culture is not worth talking about, it can stop talking about it. But I don’t think anybody can suggest to another person, Please drop your culture; let’s use mine. That’s the height of arrogance and the boast of imperialism. I think cultures know how to fight their battles; cultures know how to struggle. It is up to the owners of any particular culture to ensure it survives, or if they don’t want it to survive, they should act accordingly, but I am not going to recommend that.

My position, therefore, is that we must hear all the stories. That would be the first thing. And by hearing all the stories we will find points of contact and communication, and the world story, the Great Story, will have a chance to develop. That’s the only precaution I would suggest—that we not rush into announcing the arrival of this international, this great world story, based simply on our knowledge of one or a few traditions. For instance, in America there is really very little knowledge of the literature of the rest of the world. Of the literature of Latin America, yes. But that’s not all that different in inspiration from that of America, or of Europe. One must go further. You don’t even have to go too far in terms of geography—you can start with the Native Americans and listen to their poetry.

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Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor. For me, at least, I can declare that when I wrote Things Fall Apart I couldn’t have told anyone the day before it was accepted for publication that anybody was going to read it. There was no guarantee; nobody ever said to me, Go and write this, we will publish it, and we will read it; it was just there. But my brother-in-law, who was not a particularly voracious reader, told me that he read the novel through the night and it gave him a terrible headache the next morning. And I took that as an encouraging endorsement!11

The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes ready to be drawn deep into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, toward a deeper understanding of self or society, or of foreign peoples, cultures, and situations.12

1966

absentminded

our thoughtless days

sat at dire controls

and played indolently

slowly downward in remote

subterranean shaft

a diamond-tipped

drill point crept closer

to residual chaos to

rare artesian hatred

that once squirted warm

blood in God’s face

confirming His first

disappointment in Eden1

January 15, 1966, Coup

On Saturday, January 15, 1966, a pivotal day in the history of Nigeria, members of the Society of Nigerian Authors happened to be gathered for a meeting. The venue was an office building on Kingsway Road in Ikoyi, Lagos. There were about ten of us living in Lagos at the time: John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo (aka J. P. Clark), Wole Soyinka, Onuora Nzekwu, and a few others. A few members were sitting at a table that looked out onto the Lagos Lagoon. We were engaged in polite conversation, delaying the start of the meeting as some of our members trickled in.

It happened that my new novel, A Man of the People, was about to be published in London, and I was communicating with my publisher, Heinemann. I knew that the book was going to be problematic for me because of its criticism of Nigerian politics—very severe criticism. The novel, after all, climaxes in a military coup.

I had sent one copy of the novel to J. P. Clark on a Wednesday, two days earlier. When J.P. arrived at the meeting his voice rang out from several hundred feet away.

“Chinua, you know, you are a prophet. Everything in this book has happened except a coup!”

That very evening, unbeknownst to us, a military coup was being launched that would change Nigeria forever.