My most meaningful takeaway from the Achebe Shared Inquiry Discussion

During the Achebe shared inquiry discussion, we had to discuss our inquiry questions about an interview with Chinua Achebe from The Atlantic in the August 2, 2000. The interview features the writer of Things Fall Apart, discussing the effects of African literature as well as how colonization influenced the messages which writers are expressing to the rest of the world. One of the inquiry questions I had was; What is Achebe's position about the moral obligation of a writer to write about his/her homeland in a certain way?

Throughout the discussion, one point that stood out for me the most was how Achebe shows that through the use of African literature, writers bring to light how people are more similar than different, despite what they like to believe.

"I really had no sense of that. Its meaning for my Igbo people was clear to me, but I didn't know how other people elsewhere would respond to it. Did it have any meaning or resonance for them? I realized that it did when, to give you just one example, the whole class of a girls' college in South Korea wrote to me, and each one expressed an opinion about the book. And then I learned something, which was that they had a history that was similar to the story of Things Fall Apart -- the history of colonization."

This specific section resonated with me the most throughout the interview. This is because within the cultural context, Achebe adresses that many people, non-Igbo people resonated strongly with his novel Things Fall Apart. Despite their different background they shared a mutual feeling of oppression thus showing that all around the world people from different backgrounds subconsiously share many mutualities. Thus this shows how depite our geographical location, people are more similar than they realize. This emphasises how African literature is a powerful tool to connect people together through ideas and feelings, instead of relying on one-sided literature (influenced by European notion). By giving different cultures a voice through literature, it can reach many more people all around the world and allowing them to see the complexity of the world much more clearly since often left-out spots in history and literature are covered. Achebe develops an argument on how literature, in particular African literature, gives a different experience  and -side of the story which often makes it more recognizable and realistic for others to interpret.

This inquiry discussion therefore expanded my appreciation of the cultural context of Achebe's writing since he displays the mutualities such as colonialism within cultures such as the Korean and Igbo people, and how through the use of his novels Achebe evoked resonance within people from very different backgrounds and cultures.