Chinua Achebe's Home and Exile (2000) is certainly life writing, but it fits into a separate category from the ones I mentioned in class today. His book is made up of three essays that began as lectures at Harvard. These essays touch on not only his life but also his opinions about literature. One cannot call these essays "simply" memoirs.
The first essay, "My Home Under Imperial Fire," begins in a way that makes the reader believe that he or she is about to read a traditional memoir. Achebe recalls his entry into his home village, Ogidi, the home that his father, a missionary, had chosen to retire to. Ironically, as Achebe later observes, the relative who had been watching the family home for Achebe's father still worshipped the village gods. In fact, the relative built a shrine in the home that the former missionary had planned to retire to. Achebe's father destroyed the shrine; however, overall, in his recollections of his home village, Achebe emphasizes the persistence of Igbo values and culture. He underscores their influence on his own life and work.
[The first picture above is from a Catholic newspaper in Sacramento, CA. The girls in the procession are part of an Igbo parish there. The second picture above is from the library at Southern Illinois University and depicts a man playing a drum in an Igbo ritual.]
In the next section of "My Home Under Imperial Fire," Achebe moves on to a discussion of European writing about Africa and mid-20th century African literature. He recalls his classmates' recoiling from Mister Johnson, an Englishman's novel about an African. (As you can see, the book was later made into a film with Pierce Brosnan.) Achebe's English professors had thought that the students would be interested in reading a novel set in Nigeria.
In the next essay, "The Empire Fights Back," you see that Achebe's criticism of Conrad is part of a cultural context. It is amazing but not surprising to see the criticism that an early work of African literature, Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952), received...from a Englishwoman who wrote a number of works set in Africa...and whose works have appeared on Masterpiece Theater! Ironically, maybe not so ironically, as Achebe later notes, Nigerian students also complained about Tutuola's novel due to its lack of style and resemblance to a "folk tale." Achebe then reveals that these students had not read the book!
However, Achebe also mentions authors and reviewers who were sympathetic towards African literature. One was the poet Dylan Thomas who gave The Palm-Wine Drinkard a glowing review. Another was F.J. Pedler who encouraged Africans to write about their continent.
In the last essay, "Today, The Balance of Stories," Achebe contemplates the current state of African and other post-colonialist literature. He praises writers such as Nadine Gordimer, Ama Ata Aidoo (an author from Ghana), and R.K. Narayan for the clarity of their vision and their willingness to avoid stereotypes. On the other hand, he criticizes V.S. Naipaul and Buchi Emecheta for their eagerness to assimilate into mainstream British culture. In particular, Achebe encourages writers to...in a way...cultivate their own garden--to depict what they have seen and experienced rather than to be ashamed of it and strive to write stereotypically.
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