Dubem Okafor, ed.
Meditations on African Literature
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Pp. 208. $59.95

Reviewed by Ode S. Ogede

Emmanuel Obiechina is unquestionably one of Africa's most respected scholars and most esteemed teachers. His areas of teaching and research are wide and varied, covering both Africa's oral and written literatures as well as folklore and mythology, popular culture, African-American literature, the African diaspora, postcolonial literature and criticism, comparative literature, education and pedagogy, and world literature. While it is difficult to bring these different aspects of Obiechina's professional preoccupations together in one volume, this edition devoted to honoring his many contributions is well intentioned.

While the contributors to Meditations on African Literature do not pretend to address all of those areas in which Obiechina has shown leadership, readers will find many interesting and illuminating articles. Michael J. C. Echeruo, for example, analyses the degrees to which the first indigeneous English-language newspaper in Nigeria was used to further efforts by earliest Western educated Nigerians to subvert their own implication in inherited British imperial colonial discourses related to perceptions of the African woman. Charlie Sugnet studies the narrative style of Achebe's remarkable first novel Things Fall Apart. Here Sugnet provides evidence to support the claim that, contrary to conventional perceptions, Achebe's narrative depends on an alienated point of view. Isidore Okpewho attempts to insert a body of new Nigerian writing within a reworked definition of the concept of "Commonwealth Literature."

Equally insightful are Romanus Egudu's extensive discussion of morality in the Nigerian novel; Peter Nazareth's sensitive explication of the principal inspirations of Grace Ogot's short stories; Dubem Okafor's rereading of Achebe's novel of post-independence disillusionment, A Man of the People; Biodun Jeyifo's examination of the notions of education adumbrated by Obiechina (which Jeyifo terms "Obiechina's nationalist orthodoxy"; and Chimalum Nwankwo's detailed review of the image of women in Achebe's fiction. Unfortunately, the contributions are uneven in terms of depth and quantity. The article on the vision of Africa in Caribbean theater ought to have been rejected outright; the piece tabulating the "reputation" of African writers is pointless and does not fit into the overall scope of the volume. Sam Ukala could have scrutinized more carefully his misconceived argument that impersonation (or imitation/mimicry) is an exclusive quality of drama; and the editor could have added a bibliography of Obiechina's works. Despite these misgivings, the present edition offers an array of essays that reward attention.