All posts by Jeffrey Wang

Chinua Achebe, “Chike’s School Days” (1960) Ama Ata Aidoo, “Two Sisters” (1970)

Uncategorized

Chinua Achebe

Chike’s last name, Obiajulu, means “the mind at last is at rest” (Page 827) in the Igbo language. The meaning of this seems to be obvious to the people of his community, that he is his family’s only child or only son since his parents wouldn’t need to worry about having their family name die out. However, after reading the second page of this short story, the meaning of Obiajulu can instead refer to how the mind itself is at rest and no longer active. In Chike’s community, he is classified as an Osu, the lowest caste in the Igbo class system and would be expected to be looked down upon but he instead looks down on his neighbor and calls her a heathen for not following in the ways of the white man. Under any normal circumstance no four year old boy would dare call their neighbor a heathen let alone do so fully meaning it and even if the neighbor did not control herself, whatever actions she may have committed would have been justified. It is also interesting to note that during one of Chike’s classes they sang in honor of Caesar, a man who may have been ruler of his world at one point, but was ultimately backstabbed and murdered by those he trusted.

Ama Ata Aidoo

The two sisters Mercy and Connie, while having very similar lives, are so very different. On the one hand you have Connie, a married woman who has a baby with another on the way who works as a school teacher. On the other, you have Mercy, a typist who has affairs with rich, well-known, and older men. Although they have opposing personalities and beliefs, they are two sides of the same coin as their lives are actually nearly the same. While dutiful to her husband, Connie knows that her husband has affairs with many other women but is seemingly fine with this as she states : “Because I love James. I love James and I am not interested in any other man.” (Page 997) Mercy responds to this short excerpt with contempt as she does not understand why her sister lets the husband get away with having affairs while not indulging in the act as well. Although having many romantic pursuits, Mercy denies the men who truly appreciate her for herself as they all lack wealth and prestige and so she has affairs with those who will grant her expensive gifts. These two sisters are unique in that one is a woman who knows her husband has affairs with other women while the other is a woman who is the one having affairs with other women’s husbands. It is also surprising that Connie’s husband attempts to use the fact that Mercy is having affairs with influential men to his family’s own advantage. A story lacking morals, and two main characters in harsh conditions, would you rather be in Connie’s shoes or Mercy’s new shoes – gifted to her by Mensar-Arthur?

Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own*” (1929); Alice Walker “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens*”

Uncategorized

 

In Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens,” she states that:

“Virginia Woolf, in her book A Room of One’s Own, wrote that in order for a woman to write fiction she must have two things, certainly: a room of her own( with key and lock) and enough money to support herself.” (Page 235)

Immediately after this passage, Walker goes on to critique this thought as false using the example provided in the life of Phillis Wheatley. Although I initially agreed with Woolf in that the prerequisites for writing fiction were as she described, after reading through In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, I found myself disagreeing with Woolf. While a room along with funds are certainly important for a person’s state of being, the only real necessity for creating works of fiction is the drive to do so. If Phillis Wheatley, a slave who didn’t even own herself was able to create great poems through great effort to herself then why can’t any other striving female writer?

Walker further goes on to talk about how while many great stories were first thought up by one generation, they simply did not have the resources necessary to publish their thoughts and had to instead pass down their stories to their children in the hopes that their children would be able to publish the stories. Two of the most famous and well known pieces of fiction, The Iliad and The Odyssey, were passed down through the generations through word of speech until they were finally published once the tools were available to do so. Unfortunately for many of the black mothers described by Walker, their names will never be accredited to the stories their children wrote. Walker herself gives credit to her mother for several of the stories she has published but personally, there is no need to.  Much like the title, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, the role of the first generation of female slaves is to provide the seeds from which the second generation will grow from along with the decayed compost from which the second generation will gather nutrients from until the cycle repeats with the final generation producing fantastic results, which in this case will be great works of literature.