Chinua Achebe biography

Synopsis

Early Years

Famed writer and educator Chinua Achebe was born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe on November 16, 1930, in the Igbo town of Ogidi in eastern Nigeria. After becoming educated in English at the University of Ibadan and a subsequent teaching stint, in 1961, Achebe joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation as director of external broadcasting. He would serve in that position until 1966.

Prior to joining NBC, in 1958, Achebe published his first novel: Things Fall Apart. The groundbreaking novel centers on the cultural clash between native African culture and the traditional white culture of missionaries and the colonial government in place in Nigeria. An unflinching look at the discord, the book was a startling success and has become required reading in many schools across the world.

1960s and 1970s

The 1960s proved to be a creatively fertile period for Achebe. It was during this decade that he wrote the novels No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964) and A Man of the People (1966), all of which address the issue of traditional ways of life coming into conflict with new, often colonial, points of view. (Anthills of the Savannah [1987] took on a similar theme.)

In a related endeavor, in 1967, Chinua Achebe and Christopher Okigbo, a renowned poet, co-founded a publishing company, the Citadel Press, which they intended to run as an outlet for a new kind of African-oriented children's books. Okigbo was soon killed, however, in the Nigerian civil war. Two years later, Achebe toured the United States with Gabriel Okara and Cyprian Ekwensi, fellow writers, giving lectures at various universities. The 1960s also marked Achebe's wedding to Christie Chinwe Okoli in 1961, and they went on to have four children.

When he returned to Nigeria from the United States, Achebe became a research fellow and later a professor of English (1976–81) at the University of Nigeria. During this time, he also served as director of two Nigerian publishing houses, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. and Nwankwo-Ifejika Ltd.

On the writing front, the 1970s proved equally productive, and Achebe published several collections of short stories and a children's book: How the Leopard Got His Claws (1973). Also released around this time were the poetry collections Beware, Soul-Brother (1971) and Christmas in Biafra (1973), and Achebe's first book of essays, Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975).

While back in the United States in 1975, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Achebe gave a lecture called "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," in which he asserted that Joseph Conrad's famous novel dehumanizes Africans.