Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
Interpretation
Chinua Achebe highlights the complexities of Nigeria's colonial past and the impact it has on the nation's identity.
In this quote, Chinua Achebe reflects on the intricate and often painful colonial history of Nigeria. He emphasizes the importance of understanding this history as it shapes the contemporary narrative of the nation, influencing its culture, politics, and identity. Achebe's work often delves into the consequences of colonialism and the need for a thorough examination of Nigeria's story to fully grasp its present and future.
In practice
In a lecture about post-colonial literature, this quote could illustrate the importance of historical context.
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.
Glory to God in the highest, Ohio has saved the Nation.
My father's father fled a pogrom in Russia in the early 20th century and was welcomed to the United States. So was my stepmother, who escaped as a young girl from Communist Hungary in 1950.
One constant among the elements of 1914βas of any eraβwas the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
The evil of slavery and colonialism was that these oppressions kept their victims out of history, disconnected them from the evolutionary struggle.
The history of exploration across nations and across time is not one where nations said, 'Let's explore because it's fun.' It was, 'Let's explore so that we can claim lands for our country, so that we can open up new trade routes; let's explore so we can become more powerful.'
The people and the cultures of what is known as Africa are older than the word 'Africa.' According to most records, old and new, Africans are the oldest people on the face of the earth. The people now called Africans not only influenced the Greeks and the Romans, they influenced the early world before there was a place called Europe.
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