THE HEADSTRONG HISTORIAN

"It was Grace who driving pass Agueke on her way back,would become haunted by the image of a destroyed village and would go to London and to Paris and to Onicha,sifting through moldy files in archives,reimagining the lives and smell of her grandmother's world for the book she would write.................................But that day as she sat at her grandmother's bedside in the fading evening light,Grace was not contemplating her future.she simply held her grandmother's hand,the palm thickened from making pottery."

This short story totally caught my attention,its one of the stories in the Famous "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie" book THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK". You should also read AMERICANAH. I know some people who thinks that the Feminist movement was brought to African women by the western world,but this story made me realise it has always been in Existence in the African setting.

African feminism owes its origin to different dynamics than those that generated Western feminism. It has largely been shaped by African Women’s resistance to Western hegemony and its legacy within African culture…it does not grow out of bourgeois individualism and the patriarchal control over women within capitalist industrializing societies… The debates in many Western countries about essentialism, the female body, and radical feminism are not characteristic of the new African feminism. Rather the slowly emerging African feminism is distinctively heterosexual, pro-natal, and concerned with many “bread, butter, culture, and power” issues (Mikell, Gwendolyn.  “Introduction”, in Mikell, G. ed. African Feminism: The Politics of Survival in Sub-Saharan Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.: 1997).

African Feminism is all about the struggle to remain relevant in the society,to keep being strong, to not be cheated upon by the society or family members,to not take the sole blamed for the ill in the society.according to Rudo B. Gaidzanwa,In Africa, modern feminism is rather complex. It has many manifestations and expressions, and so it is not possible to refer to a single ‘African feminism’. One strand – active in the academic arena and reacting to the devaluation and misrepresentations of various African cultures and traditions by colonialists – focused on re-capturing and re-valorising African traditions and cultures.

According to the short story,As much as Nwamgba loved that her child was trained by the colonial masters,she also hoped he never forgot his roots. It saddened her heart to see that her son whom she thought would regard his roots didn't accept it as the best way for him to thread upon but what an irony life is,his own daughter Afemefuna "Grace" took so much interest in the path her father ignored. All thanks, her grandmother was still alive to relieve all the necessary histoire. In this story, both the grandmother and granddaughter had their share of life,the pain,hurt,tears,love, joy etc.One thing aligned their minds and it was the joy they derived in valorising their culture (the potter and writer),being creators in their little way.

I would have no better Title for this story,because of the perseverance I read in every sentence of the story.and for those that do not know what African feminism is all about, I hope you get enlightened.