Manifesto!

For your first writing exercise of the second semester, you're going to have the opportunity to create your own manifesto, either as a solo composition or in collaboration as a group of two or three. Use Wilde's "Preface" to The Picture of Dorian Gray as one model: Wilde's provocative and paradoxical aphorisms can be seen as a "manifesto of aestheticism," and this model was taken up and pursued with a passion by a number of modern artists and writers (see Marinetti, Pound, Loy, and Lewis). You or your group should identify yourselves as the vanguard of a "movement," although it doesn't have to be built upon an especially serious or dire set of issues. For authenticity, you might add an "-ist" to your group's name: if you want to hail the superiority of the cashew over every other variety of nut, for example, you might confront readers with "The Cashewist Manifesto." 

Your manifesto should draw directly on the examples of modernist manifestos we've read for today's class (and Wilde's "Preface") as models of the form. Imitate the style of their sentences, the format of their assertions, and even the typeface and arrangement of words (see Lewis's Vorticist Manifesto or the reproduction of Loy's Feminist Manifesto). It should include a minimum of 10 distinct assertions or aphorisms or statements of provocation. Note how all of these manifestos share a desire to break decisively with the past--they are all "revolutionary" in some form, and the affirmation of the movement is always framed in terms of a rejection of a stilted or outdated or obsolete past. There is usually a generational aspect to a manifesto: you are declaring a new set of views and ideas to replace the old, outdated ones. All manifestos in this sense could be described as "futurist": they all share the posture of hailing an imminent future at the expense of the exhausted past. Think of what issue or set of issues you would like to sound off on, in such a forceful and decisive voice.

If you collaborate, all members of the group should sign the manifesto, and all members should contribute assertions and aphorisms. You can edit the final draft together, to produce the strongest, most uncompromising, authoritative assertions you can create. Please have fun with this assignment. The final draft is due (via Canvas) by the end of the day Friday, January 16, and you will have the opportunity to share your work with the class. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Midyear Feedback

Please take a few minutes at the start of our exam period today to give me some useful feedback on the class-discussion dynamics in this section: 

Midyear Feedback Form

Notebook prompt: Kambili's Coming-of-Age

Consider the portrait of Kambili as the novel draws to a close in the final section, "A Different Silence: The Present." Do you see Purple Hibiscus as a coming-of-age narrative? How does Adichie depict Kambili at the end of her story? What significant coming-of-age developments do you see in her character? How does her coming-of-age compare to Jaja's, as we see him in this final scene?

Please take 5 minutes to contemplate these questions in your notebook before our class discussion on Tuesday, November 18.

Highlife Music in 1980s Nigeria

Just as music plays a significant role in Gansworth's characterization of Lewis and his complicated friendship with George, which is largely grounded in a shared love of the Beatles and Wings and Queen, music is a part of Adichie's characterization of Kambili and her ambivalent relationship to 1980s Nigerian secular culture. Singing is as much a defining characteristic of Aunty Ifeoma's house as laughter, but in Kambili's house, there is very little song or music. They never play the fancy stereo they have, and when Ifeoma's kids insist that they put something on, the best thing Obiora can find is "an Irish church choir singing 'O Come All Ye Faithful." In the car, we're told that they listen to cassettes of "Ave Maria," a well-known piece of sacred music composed by Franz Schubert in 1825. Both of these selections, not surprisingly, place Papa Eugene's musical tastes squarely in the British-colonial camp--and Papa's musical tastes set the standard for what is acceptable listening in their household.

When Kambili and Jaja start to interact more with Ifeoma's family, they are introduced to a new kind of music. The first time they go driving in Ifeoma's car, Kambili refers in passing to the "high life music from the car radio" (83). "High life" (or "highlife") refers to the most popular form of music in Nigeria in the 1980s: the genre originated in the early twentieth century in Ghana and became hugely popular in Nigeria in the 1960s. Highlife music combines African melodies and rhythms with European instrumentation, driven by rhythmic guitar and horns. By the early 1980s, when the novel is set, it has become a proudly African form of music, often reflecting the influence of Black American funk music and American Black Power pan-African consciousness. As Amaka says to Kambili, "I listen mostly to indigenous musicians. They're culturally conscious; they have something real to say. Fela and Osadebe and Onyeka are my favorites" (118).

All three of these musicians--Onyeka Onwenu, Fela Kuti, and Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe--have had long and productive careers that are worth digging into in their own right. There are a number of highlife mixes available on YouTube, put together by devoted fans of the genre. Fela Kuti is the most widely known and internationally influential of the group, and there are a number of clips of his band Africa 70 performing live all over the world: for a high-quality recording of a live performance by Fela Kuti and Africa 70 on German television in 1978 (less than a year after the Nigerian army raided Fela's "Kalakuta Republic" compound and killed his mother, in response to his inflammatory single "Zombie" [1977]), see here.

Notebook prompt: Kambili's Dream

After spending the day with Aunty Ifeoma, Papa-Nnukwu, and her cousins, Kambili has a dream: “I dreamed that I was laughing, but it did not sound like my laughter, although I was not sure what my laughter sounded like. It was cackling and throaty and enthusiastic, like Aunty Ifeoma’s” (88). 

How do you interpret this dream? How does it reflect Kambili’s recent experiences? What does laughter represent, and why is it important?

Take five minutes now to contemplate this passage in your notebook.

Notebook Prompt: First Impressions of Kambili

Part 1 ("Breaking Gods: Palm Sunday") of Purple Hibiscus introduces us to the fraught family dynamics that the narrator is a part of: she describes this scene at home on Palm Sunday as the moment when "everything" has come "tumbling down" in her family, when "things started to fall apart." As we start to unpack this densely layered opening scene, take a few minutes to record your initial impressions of Kambili (who has not yet shared her name with us) as both a character and a narrator in this opening section. How would you describe her narrative voice? How does this voice seem to reflect her character, her role within this family?

Take 5 minutes in your notebook to record your initial observations and impressions of Kambili as a character and as the narrator of this story.

Allusions in Adichie

The first line of Kambili's narrative ("Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion . . .") alludes to two well-known literary works: the novel Things Fall Apart (1958) by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, and the poem "The Second Coming" (1919) by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, to which Achebe alludes in his title. Things Fall Apart is the most well-known of Achebe's works, and it depicts a traditional Igbo man struggling to come to grips with the encroachment of British colonialism in his community. Achebe essentially initiated modern Nigerian fiction in English, and Adichie cites him as a profound influence on her own writing. As we'll see, Purple Hibiscus addresses the intersection of British-colonial and traditional Igbo culture in the 1980s from a more modern, domestic perspective than in Achebe's novel (reflected in her specification of things falling apart at home).