What you have done will not please the Earth.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Things Fall Apart is a story of Nigerian village life, replete with love, pain, history, strife, and complex layers of nuance. It chronicles the life of Okonkwo, whose father disappointed him in lacking traditional 'masculine' qualities and goals for the time and place. Okonkwo takes several wives and builds his own reputation within the village of Umuofia, eventually earning a place as an egwuwu, an Umuofia elder who portrays an ancestral god. Okonkwo's early life is full of hard work to get to this point, but his middle age is full of tragedy and heartbreak. His family takes in a young boy who is sacrificed to the village by a nearby village after they murder a woman from Umuofia. The boy, Ikemefuna, lives with Okonkwo and family for several years, but eventually his role is put into motion and Okonkwo kills him with several other men from the village. Okonkwo's other sons disappoint him in various ways, the eldest eventually becoming interested in the Christian community that makes its way into villages as missionaries. Okonkwo gets exiled for accidentally killing a community member, and has to leave for seven years with his family. He spends this time planning his triumphant return, but when he makes it back to Umuofia, everything is different. The missionaries have gained a foothold with his people, and despite his best efforts, he is unable to force the white man out. Okonkwo tries to lead a short rebellion against the Christians, but after he kills one of them, he realizes that his attempts are fruitless, and in the final scene of the book, we find that Okonkwo has hung himself.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

So as you can see, this book was SO UPLIFTING! ;) Okay, clearly it was not. I had a tough time getting into it, largely because of two main reasons: 

(1) Misogyny/Sexism
There are lots of articles about whether this was hyperbolic, or ironic, or INSERT PHRASE HERE, but as a reader, I just couldn't stomach it. Okonkwo beats his wives frequently, talks about how terrible female traits are, and wishes frequently that his favorite daughter was a boy. Here are a few snippets: 

• No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man. Yep. Love reading about women being ruled.

• Apparently there is such a thing as 'too much wife-beating' - Interestingly, in one scene a woman's brothers defend her leaving her husband, because he beats her 'too much'. I was confused about how much wife-beating is an appropriate amount of wife-beating, and where we are to draw the line. 

(2) Homophobia
In addition to the numerous references to women as being less than, or property of, or ruled by men, there are loads of derogatory comments about 'effeminate men', men who 'are women', and men who don't condone clan violence. A quick review suggests that same-sex sexual activity is illegal in present-day Nigeria, and there are no LGBT protections. In northern Nigeria, you can face death by stoning. So that's swellsies. Too bad this book was written almost sixty years ago, and very little has changed. All I can say is, I'm not here for it. 

There were a few lines I liked, most of which were about yams, the main crop in Umuofia (though, notably, it's designated a 'man's crop'): 

• That year the harvest was sad, like a funeral, and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and rotting yams. 

• Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king.

• The faint and distant wailing of women settled like a sediment of sorrow on the earth.

• After her father's rebuke she developed an even keener appetite for eggs. And she enjoyed above all the secrecy in which she now ate them.

• Umuofia was like a startled animal with ears erect, sniffing the silent, ominous air and not knowing which way to run.

Here's a snapshot of Okonkwo, which just MIGHT make it clear why I did not like him: 

• Okonkwo knew how to kill a man's spirit.

• Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength.

• I will not have a son who cannot hold up his head in the gathering of the clan. I would sooner strangle him with my own hands.

• On Ezinma, his favorite child: She should have been a boy. This one touched a nerve. 

On a more pleasant note, there were a few things that reminded me pleasantly of Senegalese traditions, relayed to me by my sister from her time in the Peace Corps, or my brother-in-law:

• Wrestling bouts - wrestling is a huge deal in the book, and in Nigerian culture, it seems. It is equally Ginormously popular in Senegal, and bouts are extremely interesting to watch. 

• Waist beads, or jigida - the meanings may differ, since there are various layers of significance, but I remember talking to Lune about why women wear waist beads, what they represent, and the ways in which they are sacred, so I enjoyed seeing them appear here. 

• Kola nuts - Kola nuts are featured throughout the novel, in various moments of greeting and traditions. They made me smile because I have a favorite pair of earrings from Senegal that is made of kola nuts (though I have lost one of the earrings somewhere! I must find it! You tell me if you find it, okay?)

Strange connections
I'm always struck by the expected and unexpected connections that flow between books, despite the distance and time that separates them. Here are a few I saw: 

the Evil Forest (the Forest Sauvage)
Many things are relegated to the Evil Forest in the book (including twins, which, I recognize, feels a little extreme!) but it kept reminding me of the Forest Sauvage from The Once and Future King.

locusts
The coming of the locusts struck me because it still happens today, and there's a similarly eery quality to it, no matter the space or time of their arrival.

At first, a fairly small swarm came. They were the harbingers sent to survey the land. And then appeared on the horizon a slowly-moving mass like a boundless sheet of black cloud drifting toward Umuofia. Soon it covered half the sky, and the solid mass was now broken by tiny eyes of light like shining star dust.

drum (cannon) to announce a death
Drums play many roles in the book, but at one point the sound of the drum/cannon announces that there has been a death in the village, which distinctly reminded me of the Hunger Games, where they announce the death of participants with cannons each evening.

the land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors (the Turner House, Coco)
This line about the proximity of the land of the living and the land of the dead was very much in my brain already this weekend, having read Angela Flournoy's The Turner House and watched Coco on Friday, which is all about a boy traveling to the land of the dead by accident and meeting his ancestors.

Words I learned:
obi - a man's meeting house in traditional Igbo villages

egwuwu - masked Umuofia elders who are seen as ancestral gods; they serve as respected judges in the community, listening to complaints, prescribing punishments, and deciding conflicts

ekwe - an Igbo traditional musical instrument, the ekwe is a type of drum with rectangular cavity slits in the hollowed out wooden interior

harmattan - a season in the West African subcontinent, occurring between the end of November and the middle of March, and characterized by the dry and dusty northeasterly trade wind, of the same name, which blows from the Sahara Desert over West Africa into the Gulf of Guinea

kola nuts - fruit of the kola tree, a genus of trees native to the tropical rainforests of Africa. The caffeine-containing fruit of the tree is used as a flavoring ingredient in beverages, and is the origin of the term "cola".

Well readers, I'm off to the next adventure! Here's hoping there's a little less woman-hating in that one. ;)