What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need for an African literary revival to reshape perceptions of the continent.
Chinua Achebe highlights the importance of an indigenous African literary renaissance, aiming to confront and rectify the stereotypes and myths that persist about Africa and its people. His overarching goal is to create a body of work that tells authentic African stories through various literary forms, ultimately shaping a more accurate and positive image of the continent for both its inhabitants and the world, especially for future generations.
In practice
This quote can be cited during a literary festival focused on African storytelling.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books . . .
If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.
It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.'
The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.
Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state.
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