I decided to conduct an educational program for myself and fill the gap in the brain associated with knowledge of modern African literature. Until recently, to be honest, I never thought about her at all: it is clear that there is no literary tradition outside of several North African countries on the continent, because there is not much writing there, and there was no time at all, too sharp a transition from running around in loincloths to the benefits of civilization.
But it's still interesting to see what she is, because my only association with the phrase "African writer" is John Maxwell Kutsee, who not only is indecently white, but also became an Australian some years ago. Actually, I decided to start with "Half of the Yellow Sun", because it's an easy way, the most famous work about Africa: it was translated into Russian 6 years ago, filmed 4 years ago, people read and stay alive, which means I have nothing to fear.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie herself is an atypical representative of the literary community of Nigeria; Yale, Harvard and Princeton are like her home for her, and in general, she spends no less time in the USA than in her native country, and therefore I have an opinion about her as a person who, of course, loves her homeland, but produces an export product that is focused specifically on the Western reader, who longs to read something about exotic Africa, but without the stamps of colonial literature.
This does not mean that when talking about the Civil War, she is shy to say who was actually the culprit, but the plot and characters in this case are easily amenable to whiteshaming, they can easily be represented as typical representatives of the white intelligentsia, although they are representatives of the black intelligentsia.
On the one hand, this is completely normal, thus the boundaries between races are erased, a kind of universal and understandable history is created, in the end it is stupid to think that in the 1970s in Nigeria, its indigenous people still did not get off the palm tree and believed in some rain god who needs to be sacrificed, on the other - if we discard African names, mentions of various peoples who inhabited Nigeria.
And some local fruits and vegetables, then almost the entire plot of "Half of the Yellow Sun" can be dragged to any other point of the globe, for example, to Southeast Asia or the Balkans in general, and it will be a very average story in which people love each other, cheat on each other, quarrel and reconcile against the background of Civil War, famine and pestilence.
At the center of the novel are five characters: mathematics professor Odenigbo, his girlfriend, a master of sociology - the beautiful Olanna, her sister Kainene, who was much less lucky with her appearance, the British writer Richard, the only white in this company, and young Ugwu, Odenigbo's servant. Each of them in the novel has not only its own storyline, which, of course, is intertwined with the others, but also a function.
For example, Ugwu is the embodiment of those remnants of community consciousness that still remain in remote areas of Nigeria, and Richard will be a white man who himself chose the southern part of Nigeria, where the Igbo people live, as his Homeland and Home. As I have already said, nothing distinguishes the heroes from their contemporaries in more developed countries, since Adichie chose a layer of bourgeois and intelligentsia as a close examination, and less educated representatives of the country will appear only in the background. And in vain!
Just the same, it would be interesting to read what everything that the British brought grew into on African soil, how it assimilated and mixed with what was part of the culture in this territory before their appearance.
I hoped that this would be fully revealed through Ugwu, when I realized that no, with each page the author only notices the cultivation of the boy more and more, I expected the same from the image of the village mother Odenigbo, but apparently Adichie really wanted to bypass all the stereotypes about "backward Africa" or simply does not notice such small greetings from the communal pagan past in her country, and therefore cannot demonstrate them to the reader.
The plot of the "Half of the yellow sun" is stratified into two parts:
- the first one is dedicated to the interpersonal relationships of the characters, this is a real melodrama with infidelities, worries, insults, children on the side and everything else. Here you can see strong African women and men who pretend to be sex rags at the most crucial moment;
- the second one shows what happened to Nigeria in the period from 1967 to 1970, and it was a real Civil War between the north and the south of the country, with genocide, famine, bombing and so on.
And here's a funny story: somehow I was a little afraid to read just about the second one, because well, in general, I didn't have a foot in the tooth about what was going on there and what kind of state the Republic of Biafra was, but while reading it, I was just more interested in the historical background and everyday details of that period, and not feelings and psychology (but I must pay tribute, Adichie does not use very primitive techniques and does not smear snot-drool).
Everything is written about the civil war in such a way that it will be clear to a child, the relationship between Hausa Muslims and Igbo Christians is literally explained on the fingers, and now you yourself begin to wonder how it would really be right in this situation: on the one hand, to separate and exterminate each other for a fig.
If you are one country, who will be better off from this, on the other hand, you are one country, just because a white man once invaded the territory of your continent and sticking pegs out of it, he said "Nigeria will be here", and figs that on this land there are warring peoples with different cultures and traditions who do not want to be a single whole. But this is generally an eternal question, and it can be easily transferred to any other countries, including ours.
337.725 SRY