As I sit here today eating my breakfast thinking about English class, I feel a little bit shaken up from the last class I attended. The class of Thursday April 12th 2012 was one to document in the books.
I had read the whole passage of Achebe envisioning the characters as I read with great detail. To me the name Achebe sounded very much Asian, and to my surprise I found out he was in fact very.. not Asian.
The beat of the drums and all the talk of the ancient gods and traditions how could you not mistake it! As we talked more and more about Okonkwo being a black man, I could not shake the vision of a big strong Asian man with a fu manchu.
In my mind: Actual:
As you can see it was quite a transition for the rest of the class to wrap my brain around the new look the characters in this story now had. Now back to the actual story... I thought that we had made some steps forward in class when we talked about feminism and the role that women play, no longer being looked at as property but as equal, but this was not the case. Women had gone back to their role of belonging to the husband and providing, cooking, and caring for the children. There was a shining moment in the story during the trial when the elders said that "it was not brave to fight with a woman", but for the most part it was revolved around the wife beating, alpha male Okonkwo.
Although I did enjoy this story and the read went by quicker than others, I still will never fully appreciate a story where there is multiple woman beatings and guns fired in their direction.
Yours in writing,
Hailey Browne
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