The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays [Hardcover]

Chinua Achebe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 2009

From the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart and winner of the Man Booker International Prize comes a new collection of autobiographical essays—his first new book in more than twenty years.

Chinua Achebe’s characteristically measured and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. In a preface, he discusses his historic visit to his Nigerian homeland on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart, the story of his tragic car accident nearly twenty years ago, and the potent symbolism of President Obama’s election. In “The Education of a British-Protected Child,” Achebe gives us a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and inhabiting its “middle ground,” recalling both his happy memories of reading novels in secondary school and the harsher truths of colonial rule. In “Spelling Our Proper Name,” Achebe considers the African-American diaspora, meeting and reading Langston Hughes and James Baldwin, and learning what it means not to know “from whence he came.” The complex politics and history of Africa figure in “What Is Nigeria to Me?,” “Africa’s Tarnished Name,” and “Politics and Politicians of Language in African Literature.” And Achebe’s extraordinary family life comes into view in “My Dad and Me” and “My Daughters,” where we observe the effect of Christian missionaries on his father and witness the culture shock of raising “brown” children in America.

Charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise, The Education of a British-Protected Child is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe. For passion, intellect, and crystalline prose, he is unsurpassed.”
—Toni Morrison

“An eclectic and thorough view of Achebe in his longtime roles as writer, father, and teacher. [Written] with the same generosity and humility that have always distinguished his work. . . . [Achebe] strives to act and to write with empathy and nuance rather than with fanaticism. . . . [He writes] in his characteristically gentle narrative style, that way he has of seeming to be in casual conversation, discussing matters big and small with an interested and sympathetic companion.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Measured but firm. . . . Achebe’s deeply humane intelligence reverberates.”
—Newsday

“Sharp and fresh. . . . Achebe’s assessment of colonial contact [has] gravitas and pathos. . . . He is one of world literature’s great humane voices.”
—The Times Literary Supplement (London)

“A welcome return. . . . [Achebe] writes firmly and vividly. . . . [He] tangles further, and profitably, with the obsessions that have defined his career; colonialism, identity, family, the uses and abuses of language.”
—The New York Times
 
“Quite wonderful: it gives the reader the feeling of sitting across the table and talking on easy terms with one of the world’s deepest and broadest literary minds, gaining insight into Achebe’s life and work, but also into Nigeria, colonialism, and the complicated interplay of European and African culture. . . . Rich and insightful.”
—The Buffalo News
 
“Timeless. . . . Achebe has stayed an engaged and provocative voice. There’s plenty of pluck and fight in this collection. . . . [His] arguments are well reasoned, interesting, and often engrossing.”
—The Associated Press
 
“This collection of beautifully written autobiographical essays reveals much about [Achebe’s] worldview.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
 
“[Achebe’s] essays range from the political to the historical to the personal, yet they are all projected through an intimate, biographical lens, thus making each a milestone on his long journey on this earth. . . . It is a mark of Achebe’s genius as a narrator that one could hear him many times on the same subject and never grow bored.”
—The Guardian (London)
 
“British protection assumed the humiliation and denial of dignity of colonialism but also allowed for the unpredictable in human affairs. . . . In all of these essays . . . Achebe generously locates and describes this unpredictable area.”
—The Boston Globe
 
“Achebe has discharged the burden of storyteller and intellectual with penetrating intelligence and sensitivity. . . . The essays reveal a characteristic awareness of history . . . and an intellectual temperament suspicious of fanaticism of any sort, secular or religious.”
—Financial Times
 
“The hero Achebe has become is not disassembled before us in these essays. If anything, he is, as an individual hero, remade. . . . [His] many personal anecdotes in The Education amount, in the end, to something like liner notes to the great songs of his novels.”
—Columbia Journalism Review
 
“Early in the book, Achebe states that his thinking occupies the ‘middle-ground’ which is ‘un-dramatic’ and ‘unspectacular.’ But don’t be fooled; his is a voice that roars. . . . There is much to admire about the life and mind of one of the world’s most important writers and thinkers.”
—The Independent (London)
 
“The essays, like his novels, are models of clarity, care and thoughtfulness. They are the product of a western-educated mind, but are suffused with an Igbo sensibility.”
—The Times (London)

“Surprising and revelatory . . . wise and scintillating. . . . Here style is substance as Achebe writes with generosity, reason, and elegant clarity about the perpetual struggles between tyranny and resistance, denial and remembrance.”
—Booklist
 
“For all the ferocity of Achebe’s argument, he never loses his sense of humour, his instinct for poetry, nor his belief in the resilience of the human spirit.”
—The Scotsman


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author

Chinua Achebe is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. He was, for over 15 years, the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He is the author of five novels, two short-story collections, and numerous other books. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize. He lives with his wife in Providence, Rhode Island.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (October 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307272559
• ISBN-13: 978-0307272553
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #462,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #94 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > African

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Here He Goes Again on Conrad!, December 29, 2009

By 

Thomas J. Farrell (Duluth, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays (Hardcover)

Over my lengthy teaching career, I taught Chinua Achebe's novels THINGS FALL APART (1959) and NO LONGER AT EASE (1960) more often than I taught any other works of imaginative literature of comparable length. Consequently, when I read that Achebe had published a new short collection of essays, I hastened to order a copy of THE EDUCATION OF A BRITISH-PROTECTED CHILD: ESSAYS. As you might expect, I found some of the essays more interesting than others.

But I am writing this customer review to protest against Achebe's continuing charge against Conrad over alleged racist views in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS. Achebe himself gives no evidence in the essays in this new collection - or anywhere else that I know of -- of having considered any counterarguments to his well-publicized arguments. So I propose to set forth here counterarguments for prospective readers of Achebe's new collection of essays to consider.

With respect to the passages in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS that Achebe has selected to object to, I agree with him that the views expressed in the selected passages in the text can be characterized as racist. But I can think of less harsh terms to use to register the same criticism about the limited range of humanity expressed in certain statements.

But in the frame narrative in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS, the views that Achebe has selected as expressing racist views are imputed in the text to Marlow. But Achebe imputes them to Conrad! But the views in question are not necessarily Conrad's!

Moreover, nowhere in the text is Marlow presented as an apotheosis of all that is good in human nature, as Beatrice is presented in Dante's PARADISO. Furthermore, nowhere does Conrad tell us to take everything Marlow says at face value. Thus if there are no explicit hints about exactly how we are to be circumspect about what Marlow says, there are no explicit injunctions to regard him as an entirely reliable narrator either. In short, we are free to question Marlow's judgment, as Achebe does.

But what about the title? The title of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS does not lead me to expect that I will be reading about an imaginary paradise, as the title of Dante's PARADISO leads me to expect. On the contrary, the title of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS leads me to expect that I will be reading about the heart of darkness, but the title does not tell me exactly wherein I may find the heart of darkness in the novella.

If Achebe understands that Marlow is expressing racist views, isn't Achebe thereby examining the heart of darkness in Marlow? In short, can't Achebe understand Marlow's racist views to be one form of darkness, although perhaps not the only form of darkness to be found in Conrad's novella?

Moreover, when Achebe himself spells out the problem that he finds in the text by saying that Marlow does not recognize that the Africans are people, aren't we coming pretty close to the heart of darkness? In plain English, Marlow distances himself from and de-humanizes the Africans.

As Achebe notes, when we read novels, we tend to identify with the dominant cultural conditioning that is expressed in the novel. In plain English, we tend to say "we" and "us" to the dominant cultural conditioning expressed in the novel. As a result, when we first read Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS, we may tend to say "we" and "us" to the limited views expressed by Marlow. But we are free to reflect on and question his views, as Achebe does. This process of reflection involves critical reading - in plain English, not being taken in uncritically by the novel.

After I have removed Conrad the author as the target of Achebe's criticism about racist views and have substituted Marlow as the appropriate target for Achebe's criticism about racist views, I can thank Achebe for deepening my critical understanding of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS.

Next, I want to discuss an analogy based on Achebe's THINGS FALL APART. In this novel the author uses the narrative device known as the omniscient narrator. This is a far more straightforward narrative device than the tricky narrative device of the frame narrative that the author of HEART OF DARKNESS uses. At times, the omniscient narrator in THINGS FALL APART comments in no uncertain terms about something portrayed in the novel, most notably at the very end of the novel.

The main character is Okonkwo. He is presented sympathetically but not uncritically. He is a strong man whose father was weak and unsuccessful. Okonkwo worked hard and overcame adversity to become a successful farmer. As a young man, he became a champion wrestler. Subsequently, he was an outstanding warrior, and he was recognized and rewarded for his warrior services to his village by being given certain public responsibilities within the village. Nevertheless, he is at times a rash man. In the course of the novel we learn enough about Okonkwo that we can classify him as a round character, not a flat character.

Compared to all the things that we learn about Okonkwo in the course of the novel, we learn relatively little about Agamemnon and Achilles in the Homeric epic the ILIAD. So compared to Okonkwo, Agamemnon and even Achilles are flat characters, not round characters. However, in the opening episode, we learn that both Agamemnon and Achilles are rash men, just as we learn that Okonkwo is at times a rash man.

But we should pause and note certain things that we do not learn a lot about in the novel. Even though we learn that Okonkwo is a successful warrior, we are not given detailed battle scenes, as we are in the three big battle scenes of the successful warrior Beowulf in the medieval heroic epic BEOWULF. (When the British slaughter the people in a neighboring village, that event also takes place off-stage and is merely reported to us in the novel.)

But Beowulf is not portrayed as a rash man, as are Agamemnon and Achilles in the opening episode of the ILIAD and as is Okonkwo.

Conversely, apart from battle scenes, we learn a lot more about Okonkwo than we do learn about Beowulf. Compared to Okonkwo, Beowulf is not a round character but a flat character, just as Agamemnon and Achilles are flat characters.

However, despite his flaws and limitations, Okonkwo is arguably a great man in his cultural context, as Beowulf is in his, and as Achilles and Hector are in their cultural contexts in the Homeric epic the ILIAD. But to understand Okonkwo's greatness, we will probably have to consider him carefully as a warrior and compare him to Beowulf -- and to Achilles and Hector. The cultural conditions in Africa that gave rise to the warrior Okonkwo are roughly comparable to the cultural conditions in antiquity that gave rise to the warriors Achilles and Hector, and in medieval culture to Beowulf.

Moreover, symbolically, Okonkwo symbolizes all of us who find ourselves mid-life in emerging cultural conditions that are significantly different from the cultural conditioning in which we grew up.

But what can we say about the two episodes in the novel concerning wife-beating, where the omniscient narrator does not comment in no uncertain terms about wife-beating? Should we charge the author with endorsing wife-beating because the omniscient narrators fails to criticize the practice in no uncertain terms?

As each episode stands, it appears that the practice of wife-beating is accepted by the Ibo people, but with the understanding that there is a limit beyond which it is not acceptable to go.

From those two episodes, should we charge that the author condones limited wife-beating? After all, the author uses the narrative device of the omniscient narrator, and the omniscient narrator does not criticize the practice of wife-beating in no uncertain terms. In this way, limited wife-beating appears to be an accepted practice not only among the Ibo people but also for the omniscient narrator. But can we go beyond pointing out these obvious points and charge the author with condoning limited wife-beating because the author does not portray any explicit criticism of this practice in the text of the novel, just criticism of carrying the wife-beating too far?

For the sake of discussion, I will assume that the author would want to object to having me make such a charge against him.

But if he were to object to the charge of condoning wife-beating against him because the omniscient narrators does not criticize the practice in no uncertain terms, then he should join me in objecting to his charge against the author Joseph Conrad.

We do not need to have the omniscient narrator tell us what exactly we should think about wife-beating, just as we do not need to have explicit hints about how we are to think about Marlow's racist views.

And what should we say about the cultural conditions in Nigeria that gave rise to the author Chinua Achebe and conspired to enable him to write the novels THINGS FALL APART and NO LONGER AT EASE - two sensitive creative achievements? If Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS grated against Achebe's sensibility so strongly that he was moved to write those two novels, then I say glory be to God for Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS -- and glory be to God for Achebe's novels.

As Achebe intimates in places in this collection of essays, the supposed darkness of Africa (the so-called dark continent) and Africans involved projections of the European and Western psyche. But if we are going to give credit where credit is due, then Conrad deserves a certain share of credit for plumbing the depths of that projection.

If you ask me, Achebe understood and understands what Conrad's novella is all about - it is about the heart of darkness that Achebe chooses to sum up as racist, although that is not all that it is about... Read more ›

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essays in light, November 8, 2009

By 

Hande Z (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays (Hardcover)

"Does it matter, I ask myself, that centuries before these European Christians sailed down to us in ships to deliver the Gospel and save us from darkness, their ancestors, also sailing in ships, had delivered our forefathers to the horrendous transatlantic slave trade and unleashed darkness in our world?" Chinua Achebe, "The Education of a British Protected Child"

51 years ago Chinua Achebe wrote in "Things Fall Apart", "A child's fingers cannot be scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm." In "The Education of a British Protected Child", Achebe revealed why that is so. Woven into a collection of 16 essays the author portrayed the essence Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular, to the world in general, and the English speaking west in particular. The themes and topics in this book were not new; some of the essays were revised pieces from his published oeuvre. His defence of English as the lingua franca of Nigeria despite his disdain for colonial rule is best appreciated in the context of the book as a whole. The snippets of life of oppressed Africans, impoverished Nigerians, his personal life growing up in Africa and studying abroad, the impact of Christianity on Africans all have a profound personal impact on this famous, sensitive (in the positive sense) son of Ogidi, Nigeria.

Some of his more famous criticisms of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" can be found in the chapter entitled "Africa's Tarnished Image". After reading his comments on Conrad's book, one might be tempted to agree with the sentiments of that English professor who went up to Achebe - after he had listened to a speech in which Achebe had severely criticized Conrad as racist - and said, "I now realize that I had never really read "Heart of Darkness" although I have taught it for years." Achebe felt that Conrad, among other things, "devised a simple hierarchical order of souls for the characters in Heart of Darkness. At the bottom are the Africans, whom he calls `rudimentary souls.' Above them are the defective Europeans, obsessed with ivory, petty vicious, morally obtuse; he calls them `tainted souls' or `small souls.' At the top are regular Europeans, and their souls don't seem to have the need for an adjective." His criticism of Conrad and colonialism was not pure venom. "The point", in his words, "of all this is to alert us to the image burden that Africa bears today and make us recognize how that image has molded contemporary attitudes, including perhaps our own, to that continent."


Writing from afar might sometimes let us see not only farther, but also deeper. Achebe, a Nigerian, accomplished in English prose in a way an Englishman has yet to acquit himself in any African language. This is not a criticism of the Englishman or his language. It is a plain (neutral) fact that has such meaning and implications as one might draw from Achebe's works. He might be living in New York, but Achebe declares that his "romance with the world is subsidiary to [his] involvement with Nigeria." Or was that because he had not quite acquired the taste of Nigerian nationalism?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read his Novels Instead, January 11, 2010

By 

Loves the View "Louise" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays (Hardcover)

I very rarely find essays satisfying, but since this was Achebe and it was a library check out, I went for it. I was hoping to learn more about this author and something of Nigeria. There were a few interesting moments such as Achebe's meeting Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, his views on Conrad, travel in Africa in the early 1960's and his impressions on high level literary or policy gatherings, but on the whole this book validates my feeling.

Achebe is a master in developing themes. The essay forces a point and doesn't have the space for layering ideas. Essays work for news events, but there is not enough space to develop a theme.

These pieces cover colonialism, images of Africans in print and the historical record, the rape of Africa after "independence", etc. The book is OK, but Achebe's views are better expressed in his books.

Later - The 5 star rating does not match my review. I meant to give this 3 stars. My finger must have slipped. It does not appear that this can be edited.