Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Poetic Obituaries: When asked the role of the African writer,

[Chinua] Achebe offers the following truths:

"African peoples did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans; their societies were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty, that they had poetry and, above all, they had dignity. It is this dignity that many African peoples all but lost in the colonial period, and it is this dignity that they must now regain. The worst thing that can happen to any people is the loss of their dignity and self-respect. The writer's duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them, what they lost.

from Ebony: Remembering Chinua Achebe

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