“I realized that I was one of the savages in the adventure books I read.” ~ Chinua Achebe
In 1988, Chinua Achebe sat down for an interview with the journalist Bill Moyers. Amongst the many things he shared, he told of his experience reading Western literature.
In the books he read, he met white men who were described as brave and intelligent explorers of Africa. He also read about characters who were savage and bush. Naturally, he sided with the intelligent characters.
With the eyes of adulthood and a lens of critical thinking, he later realized this: He and Africans like him were the savages that had been described in the books.
In another interview with The Paris Review, Achebe said that this awareness made him decide:
I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian.
That was why in 1958, four years after college graduation, he published Things Fall Apart. This was his own way of reclaiming the narrative. Of presenting a realistic perspective. Of paying homage to his heritage.
Achebe is famous for this saying: ‘Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.’
Writing was his own way of dismantling skewed beliefs and bringing nuance into the conversation.
Heroes and Heirs
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up reading about characters who were nothing like her. So when she started writing as a child, she wrote about the people she had read about.
Her characters had blue eyes. They played in the snow and talked about the weather. They drank ginger beer.
But at age ten, she discovered something different yet familiar. She started reading African writers like Achebe and realized that people like her—with her skin color and cultural experiences—could exist in literature.
That changed the kind of stories she wrote. And when she went to America and was missing home, she wrote what would become a highly acclaimed first novel set in Nsukka, Nigeria.
Years later, her editor sent Achebe the manuscript of Half of a Yellow Sun. He read it and afterwards wrote a blurb that had Adichie in tears:
We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie knows what is at stake, and what to do about it…She is fearless, or she would not have taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria's civil war. Adichie came almost fully made.
Talk about a full circle moment!
It’s not one person’s job.
We recently discussed Toni Morrison's Beloved in our story learning circle, The Story Anatomy.
We talked about the characters, the narrative style and choice of language. But we also had an important question: Why did Toni Morrison write this book?
There were several motivations for this. One of them was that Morrison wrote Beloved to humanize the over 60 million Africans who suffered and died during the Atlantic Slave Trade.
This aspect of history is brutal and honestly, we can only imagine the emotional and psychological labor it demanded. But she is a writer. And the job of a writer is to create words for the unnamed and the unnameable, to expose injustice, and to set up bridges where there were none.
Throughout history, writers have put pen to paper, spoken, advocated, documented. They have been chroniclers and satirists, moral conscience and witness, prophets, visionaries and much more.
This has always been the calling of those before us. And in our generation, it has also become ours.
A Time for Strong Meat
For faith-based writers, especially, we have got work to do. We can no longer be playing on the surface. We need to start pushing the boundaries of our craft. To take up positions. To learn, practice, write, and to stand up again even when it gets tough.
We need books that do more than just feel-good or retell standing tropes. We need works that show rigor and deftness of craft. Christian-themed books that are so compelling that they can be studied as literary texts, dissected for content and style, critiqued, acclaimed.
Let the cute stories be written.
But let much more be written about history and politics, nature and science, family dynamics, human advocacy, and whatever else, all woven through a faith lens and skills sharp enough to produce words that can reach hearts.
Our great writers have shown us what is possible. Their courage opened up a path for us to walk through. It's in our hands now to bear the torch, make it burn brightly, and leave deeper footprints of impact in our wake.