Lecture 11

Hausa author, Limia Chidia of northern Nigeria wrote a pastoral poem in the early nineteenth century.  It is a funeral verse said over the graves of Islamic religious leaders and has nine parts. Chidia died thirty years before this text was published in 1895. (Specimens of Hausa Literature, 2) I bring this text to the readers’ attention because of Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and its examination of conversion to Christianity, civilization and commerce.

Educated people often use conversion as an explanation for their presence and their social practices that are supposed to generate human security. This ideology assumes that civilization and commerce did not exist before conversion. It also assumes that there was no government associated with civilization. This entire novel and pastoral poem occurs in Nigeria. (See map) One also should realize that the British poet, Matthew Arnold, wrote a pastoral elegy not so unlike Chidia’s. One can find a copy of Chidia’s the pastoral elegy, in the Blackboard reserve readings, all of which readings have been part of the course. This lecture challenges the reader to put the ideology of a western educated reader into another context.

http://culture.chiamaka.com/igbopeople1.html

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Study Skills

It would also be good to learn about the nine parts of the elegy and consider the ideology behind the editor of Specimen’s of Hausa Literature.

Answer the following questions, then consider the context of Adichie’s novel, Purple Hibiscus.

1.       

1.  What does the novel as a whole say about the nature of religion? About the relationship between belief and behavior?     
2. What does Purple Hibiscus reveal about life in Nigeria? How are Nigerians similar to Western readers? In what significant ways are they different? How do Western readers regard Nigerians in the novel?      
   
3.  Why does Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie end the novel with an image of rain clouds? What are the implications of Kambili feeling that the clouds hung so low she "could reach out and squeeze the moisture from them"? What is the meaning of the novel's very simple final sentence: "The new rains will come down soon"? http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/purple_hibiscus1.asp#discuss