#55 Ghosts- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Today I saw Ikenna Okoro, a man I had long thought was
dead. Perhaps I should have bent down, grabbed a handful of sand, and thrown it
at him, in the way my people do to make sure a person is not a ghost. But I am
a Western-educated man…and I am supposed to have armed myself with enough
science to laugh indulgently at the ways of my people.”
That opening paragraph of Ghosts, is a common theme of this
collection. The older educated class of Nigeria battling old culture with new,
African vs. the west, etc. Both proud of
living through war and corruption to better their families and lamenting the
erosion of their heritage, even the narrator’s name, James Nwoye represents
this dichotomy.
James is a retired professor, a widower, a father and a
grandfather of children not born in Nigeria and losing their native tongue in
just one generation. He runs into a man he thought long dead, and they share
the tales of the past years. Although
not friends during the war years, they have too much in common to harbor bad
feelings.
“He had forgotten [his wife’s] name and yet, somehow, he was
capable of mourning her, or perhaps he was mourning a time immersed in
possibilities.” Ikenna was “a man who carries with him the weight of what could
have been.”
In retirement, James holds onto connections of his past, and
the old ways despite the manner in which he lived his life, educated,
well-traveled, progressive: “We are the educated ones, taught to keep tightly
rigid our boundaries of what is considered real.” The ghost of his wife visits
him often.
Word of the day: Harmattan – A dry dusty easterly or north
easterly wind on the west African Coast occurring from December to February
Notable Passage: “It is our diffidence about the afterlife
that leads us to religion.”
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