''Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1965-1987'' is collection of

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

s by

Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe (; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as the dominant figure of modern African literature. His first novel and '' magnum opus'', ''Things Fall Apart'' (1958), occupies ...

, published in 1988.Achebe, Chinua (1988) ''Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1965-1987''. Heinemann, Several of the essays caution against generalizing all African people into a monolithic culture, or using

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

as a facile

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...

.Edwards-Yearwood, Grace (December 31, 1989)
Africa Is Nobody's Metaphor: ''Hopes and Impediments'' by Chinua Achebe (review).
''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

''. The opening essay, " An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's ''Heart of Darkness''", challenged the prevailing opinions in the west about Joseph Conrad's depiction of African people.Grossman, Ron (November 8, 1989)
"Damning message proves irresistible"
''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...

''. He also discusses several notable authors and shares his opinion on the role of writers and writing in cultures. In a contemporary review, Chris Dunton wrote: "The essays in his new book remind us also how tough-minded, how properly insistent, he can be in exposing false and demeaning ideas about Africa and its culture."Ezenwa-Ohaeto (1997). ''Chinua Achebe: A Biography'', p. 262. Indiana University Press, The book is dedicated to Professor

Michael Thelwell Ekwueme Michael Thelwell (born Michael Miles Thelwell; 25 July 1939) is a Jamaican novelist, essayist, professor and civil rights activist. He was in 1970 founding chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massach ...

.French, Mary Ann (September 12, 1999)
"The people's professor: Michael Thelwell, father of black studies at UMass-Amherst, thinks most of his academic peers have sold out the values of the '60s"
''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

''.

*" An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's ''Heart of Darkness''" *"Impediments to Dialogue Between North and South" *"Named for Victoria, Queen of England" *"The Novelist as Teacher" *"The Writer and His Community" *"The

Igbo Igbo may refer to: * Igbo people, an ethnic group of Nigeria * Igbo language, their language * anything related to Igboland, a cultural region in Nigeria See also * Ibo (disambiguation) * Igbo mythology * Igbo music * Igbo art * * Igbo-Ukwu, a ...

World and Its Art" *"Colonialist Criticism" *"Thoughts on the African Novel" *"Work and Play in Tutuola’s ''

The Palm-Wine Drinkard ''The Palm-Wine Drinkard'' (subtitled "and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead's Town") is a novel published in 1952 by the Nigerian author Amos Tutuola. The first African novel published in English outside of Africa, this quest tale based on ...

''" *"Don’t Let Him Die: A Tribute to

Christopher Okigbo Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (16 August 1932 – 1967) was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet an ...

" *"

Kofi Awoonor Kofi Awoonor (born George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams; 13 March 1935 – 21 September 2013) was a Ghanaian poet and author whose work combined the poetic traditions of his native Ewe people and contemporary and religious symbolism to depict A ...

as Novelist" *"Language and the Destiny of Man" *"The Truth of Fiction" *"What Has Literature Got To Do With It?" *"Postscript: James Baldwin (1924-1987)"

References

External links

''Hopes and Impediments'' publisher's page
via

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

Works by Chinua Achebe Doubleday (publisher) books 1988 books {{essay-stub

Contents

References

External links