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.
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Book
Things Fall Apart
In the summer of 2009 Miranda July was struggling to write her second screenplay, The Future, when she began to obsessively read the PennySaver classified ads. The iconic Los Angeles newsprint booklet served a computerless demographic—a
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Why, he cried in his heart, should he, Okonkwo, of all people, be cursed with such a son. He saw clearly in it the finger of his personal god or chi. For how else could he explain his great misfortune and exile and now his despicable son’s behavior? Now that he had time to think of it, his son’s cri…
If ever a man deserved his success, that man was Okonkwo. At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all the land. That was not luck. At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man say yes his chi says yes also…
A snake was never called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string.
‘I do not know how to thank you.' 'I can tell you,' said Obierika. 'Kill one of your sons for me.' 'That will not be enough,' said Okonkwo. 'Then kill yourself,' said Obierika.
With a father like Unoka, Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men had. He neither inherited a barn nor a title, nor even a young wife. But in spite of these disadvantages, he had begun even in his father’s lifetime to lay the foundations of a prosperous future. It was slow and pa…
And now the rains had really come, so heavy and persistent that even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene. He could not stop the rain now, just as he would not attempt to start it in the heart of the dry season, without serious danger to his own health. The personal dynam…
‘Looking at a king's mouth,’ said an old man, 'one would think he never sucked at his mother's breast.’
Fortunately, among these people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father.
As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look.
To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength.
You think you are the greatest sufferer in the world? Do you know that men are sometimes banished for life? Do you know that men sometimes lose all their yams and even their children? I had six wives once. I have none now except that young girl who knows not her right from her left. Do you know how…
For whom is it well, for whom is it well? There is no one for whom it is well.
As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of the man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph…
We do not ask for wealth because he that has health and children will also have wealth. We do not pray to have money but to have more kinsmen. We are better than animals because we have kinsmen. An animal rubs its itching flank against a tree, a man asks his kinsman to scratch him.
He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days.
He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.
When mother-cow is chewing grass, its young ones watch its mouth.
Ogbuef Ezedudu, who was the oldest man in the village, was telling two other men when they came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan. ‘It has not always been so,’ he said. ‘My father told me that he had been told that in the past a man who…