The Headstrong Historian By Chimamanda Adichie

In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, it is shown that the African people had their own complex culture before the Europeans decided to "pacify" them. The idea that the dignity of these people has been greatly compromised is acknowledged in the essay "The Role of the Writer," which is explanatory of Achebe's novels. A writer trying to capture the truth of a situation that his readers may know little or nothing about needs a sense of history in order to appropriately address the topic. It is not enough "to beat" another writer to the issue. Writers should make the attempt to express a deeper understanding. Without proper mental investment in a written work, the

The Interesting Narrative conveys the first-hand experiences of an African who is stripped of the basic rights given to humans and is forced into slavery, while at the same this individual fights for freedom. This autobiography is a reliable source for historians, educators, and students. After analyzing the literature, I concluded that the autobiography’s main criteria included content, tone, perspective, and the structure of his writing. The authors ability to manipulate this criterion, allows for the successful creation of an environment that builds a connection between the audience and his journey.

The study of history not only provides information about the past, but gives people knowledge and details that help shape lives, in the present and future. For the longest time it has been said that history is bound to repeat itself if it is not understood. Although the repetition of previous tragic historical events is an important reason to study the past, there are many others. As American playwright James Baldwin said, people are a part of history, but history is just as much part of them. This is one of the more fundamental reasons why the exploration of the past is vital to human beings. The study of history gives humans a sense of belonging, a feeling that

Chinua Achebe was educated in the West, though he hails from an African tribe. His exposure to both African and Western thinking gives him a unique perspective on the colonization of Africa, which is argued to be barbaric by some, but beneficial and necessary by others. In “Things Fall Apart,” Achebe perspective comes through as he masterfully describes a pre-colonization African tribe, and how colonization percolated through it. His authentic accounts of the positives and negatives of both tribal society and colonization leave the reader to answer the question of whether imperialism was morally justifiable or not.

My room-mate had a single story of Africa; a single story of catastrophe”. Adichie also tells how growing up in Nigeria reading only American and English children’s books made her deaf to her authentic voice. As a child, she wrote about such things as blue-eyed white children easting apples, thinking brown skin and mangos had no place in Literature. That changed as she discovered African writers.

Barbara Cooper argues that the gap between African historians and the general field of historians is derived from the many debates surrounding the legitimacy of oral sources as a tool of understanding the evolution and development of Africa and its past. As a result of this, the exciting developments occurring within African history have been “…rendered unintelligible to academic historians in general” (Cooper 211) as the methodological research that Africanists put into acquiring and using oral sources are overlooked and ignored. She encourages other historians to utilize this research and for African history scholars to do their part as well by participating in conversations with other historians and debates to bring their work to light. All in the hopes that African history becomes relevant and exciting to a larger audience including historians outside the African field of work, as this history is too important to be

For what little history is taught about Africans institutionally and publically presently, it used as a tool to disempower people of African descent. To start present interpretations of African history denies the feats and accomplishments done by Africans as well as the roots from which all people come from. Presently history is made for people

The biased European view that Africans were useless savages is revealed in Leo Africanus’s Description of the Middle Niger, Hausaland, and Bornu. Throughout his description, he

History is one of those subjects that often times doesn’t always show the full truth, and whether that be to protect the students being taught or just because it seems more convenient for the teacher, there are a lot of lies that can be taught. Again, it can be for different reasons or it could just be that it is looked at from a different view, two poems that have the same general topic won’t always be the same. Just take the poem The History Teacher by Billy Collins or Southern History by Natasha Trethewey for example and you will be able to right away catch the lies the students were told by the teacher and for different reasons

This European interference in African historical storytelling destroyed parts of the uniquely constructed explanations that were no more wrong than the scientific explanations. In general, education destroys the truth of imaginative stories because it teaches which explanation is “correct” when both are equally legitimate. Part of the reason to imperialize, according to J. A. Hobson, author of Imperialism: A Study, is the ability to control the education of the colonized. To the ignorant public, education is a reason to imperialize for it is seen as generous of the mother country to enlighten primitive Africans. Once able to control the education of children, it is easier to impose ideas of racial inferiority, corrupted measures of value, and European morals. (Hobson 229) This education, however beneficial or otherwise, plausibly diminished inventive African explanations of nature, but also destroyed the need for griots. Once Europeans and eventually Africans could begin writing down their stories, the oral storytellers of the past were not needed. The essential and important part of Mali’s history and cultural became much less

In James's time, it was a period where one of the most corrupt presidents of the century was in power and had high authority; Georges W. Bush. This resulted in the utter absence of spirituality and lead to brainwashing peoples' minds with false values and objectives/priorities. James lived in a rural middle class occupied area near Birmingham, Alabama. Life at the time was almost much about surviving, building careers, and taking care of meaningless responsibilities, very much comparable to today. Anyhow, life was often perceived as being very difficult and to have a normal secular life was perceived as too hard because everyone was so busy with competing against each other, trying to be better than the other and thinking that's all there is

Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor and critic. He is mainly known for his trilogy that investigates, using fiction, the history of Nigeria. The trilogy begins with Things Fall Apart, followed by No Longer at Ease and ended with Arrow of God. Furthermore, in this critically analytical essay, through a feminist perspective, a chapter of his second novel, No Longer at Ease, published in 1960, will be discussed. The setting of the novel is Lagos, Nigeria and Umuofia, Nigeria during the 1950s, before Nigeria attained independence from Great Britain. The novel, No Longer at Ease begins with Obi Okonkwo on trial, charged for accepting a bribe. However, using flashback, the author takes us back to the point before Obi’s departure

Why are people so impatient to leave their own culture to adopt new beliefs? Throughout history, African countries have been full of Christian Missionaries who offered education, as long as people in the village convert to their faith and learn English leaving behind their cultural roots. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the British colonized Nigeria and built churches in villages to get individuals to practice their religion. Thousands of Nigerians started to accept Christianity and reject their own traditions. As time went by, European missionaries gained much power in these tribes and started controlling people. The British believed their culture was superior. They felt they were bringing civilization to primitive "sinful" cultures. Some individuals decided to escape the British colonial education system to reveal the truth about their history and renew their beliefs. This is presented in the short story “The Headstrong Historian” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who writes to show the ways cultural conflict can influence different individuals in the same environment. Through her protagonist Grace, known as the headstrong historian, Adichie tells her own story and the story of her struggle to fight British ideologies. Adichie uses Grace 's dynamic character to show that an individual can reconstruct her lost knowledge of her people when she finds a cultural and spiritual connection to

A short story about a dystopian future in which everyone is equal and a short story about a Nigerian family reclaiming their history, on the surface, seem unalike, but Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Burgeron” and Chimanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Headstrong Historian” bear a strong resemblance when further examined. “Harrison Burgeron” and “The Headstrong Historian”, while seemingly different stories, share many similar themes and ideas. While “Harrison Bergeron” mainly considers people’s concept of equality this is not the central theme of “The Headstrong Historian”. They both delve into the theme of oppression.

Achebe’s image of the African people is depicted extensively in his novel. Achebe gives us a look at life in an African village and what it was like during African colonialism. Tribal life in Nigeria is told from an inside perspective through the life story of a man, Okonkwo.