The Igbo Word in Flora Nwapa's Craft
1995; Indiana University Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1527-2044
AutoresChimalum Nwankwo, Nkem Nwankwo, Onuora Nzekwu, Elechi Amadi, Chukwuemeka Ike, Buchi Emecheta,
Tópico(s)African history and culture studies
ResumoThe ancient Igbo who thrived around the tell-tale mythological system of Nri and Umu Nri axis had an attitude to the crafts from smithing and carving codified in one of their profound personal names, Okwu/du/na/nka 'there is word in the craft.' The word is the message, the kernel of every art. To the Igbo, it is the substance without which all art would be retrograde and forgotten as mere ihe/ife nkiri/knili, frivolous spectacle blighted by a transience measured by spiritual worth. It seems to me now increasingly that for any work to endure, the writer must be comfortable in the matrices of culture and history, the bedrock of the craft. The craft itself may come out and assert its image in reasonable comeliness and yet fail because of the unfinished wedlock between the word and the craft. It is my belief that therein lies the difference between the novels of Chinua Achebe and those of other able and competitive novelists: Nkem Nwankwo, Onuora Nzekwu, Elechi Amadi, Chukwuemeka Ike, Obinkaram Echewa, Buchi Emecheta, and so on. In a general sense, human problems are psycho-cultural, because the significant events in our lives meld with the culture of our environments to create harmony or generate crisis. The arts which endure somehow succeed in achieving the right chemistry between the word and craft in varying degrees, of course. So in order to better appreciate Flora Nwapa, we must frame her work against that backcloth of history and culture. Since we are all, sociologically or naturalistically speaking, products of our environment, it is pertinent to preface this reflection with certain tentative but revealing (I hope) remarks about Nwapa. In a 1985 interview with Adeola James, Flora Nwapa admits with what one may now regard as characteristic candor and humility:
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