Great African Reads discussion

Hi everyone! how did it get to be August? I am so sorry I failed to set up a poll (again!). In july we attempted a free-for-all, but it seemed to have been a dud...do we want to try that again in August or do you want me to just pick one right now? Or do a quick poll anyway? There are a lot of good choices for this genre...it might be fun to do a free-for-all if people are game to participate...

I would love to see a poll. I'll also offer up a few from my TBR pile, in the hopes of getting to one of them faster :)

Born in the Big Rains: A Memoir of Somalia and Survival
Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire
Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia

(Of course, half the books I pulled out have already been read by this group...)

I vote for a poll, too- I will look in my TBR pile to see if there is anything interesting there...

I like a good poll...

I will set one up with a quick turnaround time and then tomorrow set one up for September to get this back on track. I can't set them up and send out invites at the same time because we have too many members for me to be able to do that.

Okay- I looked at my shelf and these two popped up- they may not quite fit the bill, but one is dubbed a "memoire of Zimbabwe" and the other a "memoire of the ANC":

The Last Resort by Douglas Rogers (sorry, I am using my phone and don't know how to make the link)

100 Years of Struggle: Mandela's ANC by Heidi Holland

Are these written by Africans?

This reminds me I have a South African/ANC one, too. It's "After the Party" but I'm blanking on the name of the author. (I'm also using my phone)

The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe is by a Zimbabwe-born child of white farmers.
100 Years of Struggle: Mandela's ANC for Elizabeth's second link, and I think After The Party is the one you were thinking of, Marieke.

The first two I listed are by African writers; the third is an American writer who spent part of his childhood in Ethiopia. Oh, and To My Children's Children (by a South African) also looks interesting.

How about John Mahama's My First Coup d'Etat: And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa? Written when Mahama was Vice-President of Ghana, and covers aspects of his childhood, and youth, but not his career in politics.

That would have been my dictatorial pick! But the people want a poll lol. :)

I have the older list to work from, too. I will randomize them and poll the top 5.

I understand - I do not know where this summer went, but it is already back-to-school time.

I too would like to see a poll.

A book I would like to see in the poll is:
There Was a Country by Chinua Achebe.

Thanks, Beverly!

Since I'm assuming all of you will participate in the discussion here, I think I'll just make a poll with the suggestion listed here. I will do that tonight. I thought i would have time last night, but I didn't. Apologies!

Hopefully some more members will join us after they see the poll! I think it will be hard to choose...

Marieke wrote: "Thanks, Beverly!

Since I'm assuming all of you will participate in the discussion here, I think I'll just make a poll with the suggestion listed here. I will do that tonight. I thought i would hav..."

The reason I do not join the discussions is usually because a library in my area does not have the book or the book is not in my personal library.
None of the libraries in my area has My Terror the current tour read. I usually find an alternative read but just have been beyond busy these last couple of months.
I have also learned to check before voting if the book will be available to me.

Beverly, that's why I'm guilty of suggesting books that I own :)

(I may have shot myself in the foot in that regard, though, as I just read one of them this week and got halfway through another on this morning's commute. Oops!)

We definitely encourage reading alternatives! :)

I know polls are fun, but do you think a free-for-all would work? I mean, you can read the books you have! the discussion wouldn't be as streamlined, but I think it could be interesting if we share the things we are learning and some people would likely be reading the same book (or others will have read the book you're reading).

Marieke wrote: "We definitely encourage reading alternatives! :)

I know polls are fun, but do you think a free-for-all would work? I mean, you can read the books you have! the discussion wouldn't be as streamline..."

I appreciate all of the hard work you put into the polls. I personally prefer when we all read the same book as I appreciate hearing the thoughts of others. We all have different experiences and reactions based on who we are and this is often how I learn and grown as a person to understand a different pov.

That is a good point!

A free for all is fun once in awhile, but for me even the switches to every other book on the Tour and two months for reading has made the group lose momentum. Free for alls contribute to less group engagement, IMHO.

Osho wrote: "A free for all is fun once in awhile, but for me even the switches to every other book on the Tour and two months for reading has made the group lose momentum. Free for alls contribute to less grou..."

thanks, Sho! it's good to get reminders about what people thinks works and doesn't work for the group. I'll have to open a thread for brainstorming for 2014 and hopefully get the group back in a good groove.

I was so tired after dinner last night i failed to open goodreads but i'm about to set up the poll now.

okay so we have a winner! Actually...it looks like the poll is still open because i messed up the settings and apparently i cannot edit them. if someone knows how to edit a poll, please tell me!

As of yesterday, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra had the most votes, so it is our official read. of course if you have already read this and want to read another, or if you can't get your hands on it, feel free to read another. obviously we will be discussing Achebe's presentation of Biafran history, but we can also discuss the form of memoir in general, or even compare memoir with biography. Happy reading!

I read Chinua Achebe's memoir some months ago and would be fascinated to hear what the rest of you think. The heartfelt power of the prose, the intimacy of his voice, are compelling. I grew up in Nigeria as an expatriate child, my family evacuated under orders in 1967 at the beginning of the fighting. After college in 1979-80 I returned to the area that was once Biafra, to teach. I've been so haunted by these experiences and my feeling that we deserted our friends in need that I wrote my own novel, published October 2012 by Imajin Books, about the expatriate experience. I'm so glad There Was A Country is the next book for this group!

Wow, Robin...such an interesting and personal connection to this book and piece of history!

Marieke wrote: "Wow, Robin...such an interesting and personal connection to this book and piece of history!"

It feels so odd. We simply lived there, and all this history happened around us. In fact when I went back after college my parents were back teaching at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka. We used to have Achebe and his wife Christie over for dinner in Nsukka before he moved to Brown, (before his car accident.) My mother who's Chinese could make great food out of any kind of meat or vegetable so we had lots of vistors for dinners, and the Achebes were regulars in the late seventies/early eighties.

It feels so odd. We simply lived there, and all this history happened around us. In fac..."

Wow... I am definitely inspired to get my act together and start reading this book. I too lived in Nigeria, but came there several years after the Civil War had ended. Yet there were still quite new memories of it, especially from those from the Eastern part of the country.

I read 'There was a country' soon after its release last year. I felt compelled to read it as it was a class assignment in Critical Review of Writing at my pg course but was drawn into the significance of the narrative. my dad, being igbo, had told me stories of the civil war so it was a perfect opportunity for us to rub minds again on the subject. I, even gave him my copy which he treasures.
I learnt two major lessons from the book:
1) I have to be aware of the happenings in my environment; for who knows? tommorrow, i may be the historian for generations yet unborn. His narrative is founded on a keen interest in what happened around him and he was an active player. He didn't sit back to observe, he threw himself into the fray in his own way. That is a huge challenge for Nigerians of today who only analyse and criticise the situation without lifting a finger in the little ways they can to effect the much- needed change in our nation.
2) His first book was conceived at age 26 and published at age 28. He was able to birth a masterpiece that has touched the entire world. He wrote how some girls in asia wrote him a letter about the book. Only very few Nigerian youths are birthing significant gifts that will transcend their locality and generation. We need to wake up and emulate the elders who did something for their generations or else the labours of our heroes past might just be in vain.
The book renewed my committment to be an agent of change in my own way and to securing a viable future for generations yet unborn in Nigeria, both my own and others'.

Wow Ngozi, thank you for sharing what a profound impact Achebe and this book has had on you. I'm looking forward to reading it. I saw him speak and read from his work a few years ago--very powerful voice indeed. I will try to find a link to the recording and share it here.

I am enjoying the comments so far and am now very anxious to read the book. I should be picking it from my library by this weekend - if not before.

History and how we see it is often a personal experience which is why often there are different opinions on what has happened and why - and the challenges the legacies of history have left behind.

I just got my copy from the library yesterday, and am about 30 pages in. Mostly so far it's a brief story of Achebe's life and education and early career. It's interesting to me that he explored the tradtional perspective of his great uncle and other family members as a child, as well as the Christian perspective provided by his parents.

Robin & Ngozi, I'll be interested to hear your perspectives on this memoir.

By the way, has anyone here read Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Adichie's novel about the civil war?

I read it, Ardene, and I loved it. I would love to know what our fellow members with personal connection to the time and/or place think about Adichie's novel.

Ardene, I have read it too Half of a Yellow sun and loved it. One of my favourites. Highly recommended.
I am in fact from the same village as Chinua Achebe. Though, from different generations.

Robin, Ngozi, what incredible personal insight to share. Nina, looking forward to your memories once you start reading the book. Half the Yellow Sun was a favorite of mine, too. It feels odd how there are so many pockets of the world brimming over with significance that I knew and still know nothing about. A huge gap in US education.

I read Half of a Yellow Sun some time ago and recall it as rich in setting and characters and a sense of human effort to live as normally as possible in incredibly fragmented circumstances. Human tragedy and human stories. There's always a difficult issue in writing historical fiction -- how much to tell, how to show and how can you keep history from hijacking the human story of your characters. I don't know how Adichie did it, but I remember (with some pain!) deleting over a hundred twenty pages of history from Night Must Wait until the stories of my four women truly became both clear and strong and properly dominated the action.

Ardene wrote: "I just got my copy from the library yesterday, and am about 30 pages in. Mostly so far it's a brief story of Achebe's life and education and early career. It's interesting to me that he explored th..."

I am excited about reading There Was a Country, but when I went to check it out just now, it's missing! Arrgh! And I just bought that book for my library a few months ago. :(

So, I checked out Half of a Yellow Sun instead. :)

I just finished There Was A Country today. Really interesting stuff, although by the end of it -- to be fair, I went in with very little knowledge of Nigerian history -- I'd pretty much come to the conclusion that it would have helped to have read up on Nigerian, and particularly Igbo, history first.

Achebe was in a unique position to write about this, given his a) deep involvement at the time and b) more or less global platform. It doesn't make for an unbiased view, but certainly for an important one.

I worry when somebody from one particular tradition stands up and says, "The novel is dead, the story is dead." I find this to be unfair, to put it mildly. You told your own story, and now you're announcing the novel is dead. Well, I haven't told mine yet. (Achebe, 55)

This was my first exposure to Achebe, and now I'm deeply curious about his fiction.

I read this a few months ago. I loved pieces, particularly when he talked about his writing process and when he wrote focused on memoir. Other parts felt too much like digressions to set the record straight; interesting and hard for me to evaluate, but the criticism is worth a read, especially from those who feel Achebe used this book to stoke ethnic divisions: here, here, and here.

I would love to see what some of you feel about Night Must Wait especially coming from a background of having read There Was Country and Half of a Yellow Sun. The problem of history in memoir or in fiction must always be this intense press of the personal, the intimate reaction to events, especially ethnically burdened events, blood stained events. Stoking ethnic divisions is a fascinating phrase, but is that ever as straight-forward as it sounds? How do we eat our bitterness, how do any of us resolve the real wrongs of a real past, even in the side-step of fiction?

This book read like an easy conversation – but there were times when I wanted to interrupt and ask questions. As Mr. Achebe effectively blends memoir and history – the heartbreak he feels comes through clearly and the poems that are interspersed throughout the book are in many ways an extra bonus on his emotions and thoughts are the sections that we just read.

Of course there are times I want to interrupt the conversation and ask questions of ms. Achebe.

I am wondering how this book was received in Nigeria?
How is the intended audience for this book?
At times in the beginning of the book - several times it was pointed out Igbo's achievements and why their culture allowed them to "achieve" - I wondered how non-Igbo Nigerians felt when reading this.