Jean-Baptiste Tati-Loutard

He writes of the ocean like someone who grew up with it. I should know. That was the main overarching thing that I found in his writing. Living beside the ocean for 12 years, it leaves a major impact on your life. It is a powerful, living, organ that pulsates and thrives. It takes and it gives away. I think that Tati-Loutard used the ocean as a sort of subtle metaphor. All of his poems had this kind of fatalistic tone which reminds me of the ocean. Especially in the poem, End of Flight. That poem is about a bird being shot by a man and being tossed and turned by the ocean. The way it was written suggests that the birds death is inevitable and that the man's part in it was inevitable too. Turning it into a metaphor, the bird is freedom and the man is humanity and I think that is symbolizes the idea that we always want freedom but will not hesitate to sacrifice it. The ocean however, takes it, and rolls with it, humans not affecting the tide. The ocean is something that takes and gives away and there is nothing that you can do about that. His poems also concerned oppression and the oppressed which ties in with the idea that the ocean is essentially neither of these things, although by taking away life (tsunamis, drowning etc) it is the oppressor and is oppressed by humans (pollution, mining, etc). Overall, the ocean is a prevalent idea in his writings although I am unsure as to what role it fills. It is, however, an important part of the author's life as he references it in every poem. He is, as said in the poem Letter to Edouard Maunick, "Ready to offer the ocean my nautilic soul".

Poetry Vocab

• stanza
• sonnet
• Petrarchan
• Shakespearean
• Iambic pentameter
• Iambic hexameter
• Meter
• quatrain
• haiku
• simile
• metaphor
• line
• epigram
• villanelle
• diction
• epic
• sestina
• personification
• alliteration
• consonance
• assonance
• ultimate/penultimate
• oxymoron
• paradox
• allusion
• allegory
• tone/voice
• trajectory/development
• volta
• narrative
• repetition
• rhyme
• rhyme scheme
• slant
• sprung rhyme
• emphasis
• double entendre
• denotation/connotation
• hyperbole
• poet/speaker
• syntax
• grammar/punctuation
• POV
• voice
• tone
• mood
• form (how)/content (what)

Free Write

Wishes

I wish you wouldn't say things like that to me, because I know that they're probably true.


"She was like, 'You are such a weird child. I don't think you're mine.'"


I know you meant it as a joke, but I know how she treats you. I know all of it. I wish that she loved you like my mother loves me. Sure, it's a bit stifling, but at least I know that there are arms holding me up when I fall and when I am so lonely I want to break. You don't have that and it shows and I know it. I don't know what to do for you.

I wish I didn't think about you last night. All night. From the second I got home, talking to my parents, taking my trance nap, trance-dreaming about you, and then waking up and trying to do homework and thinking about you some more and then falling asleep and dreaming about you and then eating breakfast the next day, your face the only clear thing in my dream deprived haze. I wish I didn't think about you at all. Because it hurts me so much more than you will ever know, but it wouldn't be fair of me to make this your problem.


I'm sorry. I've said too much.


I wish that things were different for us. I wish we weren't so far away from each other. I wish that I could be the friend you want me to be and that we will never grow apart. But I have a feeling we might. I would rather die than branch off from you. I hope you know that. You are the last thing back home that I actually care about.


I wish I loved you more. I wish that I could go back to you and be a little kid again. Hike through your canyons and stay out on your suburban streets later than a child should. But I can't. Home is only home because of the people in it. I'm not too fond of the people right now. They push and pull and push and pull and think money always matters to me when it rarely ever matters to me at all. I don't want to come back to you because I don't want to deal with their drama, and their heartache, and the way they've internalized things that they really shouldn't; the way they don't know how to live without something negative in their lives. I don't want that, so I don't want you.


I wish you were the only thing that I loved. I wish that I wanted to be good at you and I wish that I could make a living in your art form. But I can't. That's too unstable for me and I don't know how to handle it. I'm not ruthless. I don't want to be so good at what you are that I can't sleep at night for thoughts of pas de chat and frappes. For quadruple pirouettes and ron de jambe en l'air. I can't do that. I want to have a life too, not just you.

African Short Stories: Commentary on Style

All of the stories seem to be written in a very similar voice. It is a refined and clear voice, one that is very concise. They are very straightforwardly written, but have meaning woven into them. This worked quite well in Minutes of Glory, which is probably one of my favorite pieces in anthology. I liked how it causally and clearly brought up the conflicts that surround the 'Anglicizing' of women in beauty (i.e. lightening their skin, straightening their hair, etc) and men's reaction to it. I like how it explored the women who are often marginalized in society and their quest to reach noteriety. I also liked how she managed to become someone confident and in control through material things and then be arrested.

Another story I liked stylistically was Bossy. Apparently we weren't supposed to read it, but I did anyways. I liked how it was written in a series of letters that are sent to only one person. I think that is a very interesting device to use because the characters can be more vulnerable in a letter and writing a letter is more about them and their thoughts. It also lends itself to a little mystery, as you never know who is supposed to be receiving the letter and you don't know a lot of the backstory because it would not make sense for friends to provide information about their backstory to each other. It allows the reader to become fully immersed in the story quite quickly.

I felt that a lot of stories in the Northern Africa section were focused on seemingly innocuous situations but that really led to important revelations about the culture and the society. I liked reading them because they allowed for some thinking but they weren't overly dense.

Certain Winds from the South was also an interesting read as the story was very focused on the mother, even though the story was not happen to her. I liked how the daughter's words were omitted. It made reading a little difficult (this is experienced with the anecdotal story of Memunat) but it added a certain depth to the character of the daughter, while allowing the story to focus on the mother. It would be hard to write a portion of a story with only one person speaking, but I think that it is an effective way to establish who the character is and adds certain characteristics to the character that would be otherwise hard to place on them conventionally.

Male and Female Roles

The role of women in this book is very interesting. There are three couples in the story. There is one old couple, Anowa and her husband Kofi, and Anowa's parents. Anowa is constantly referenced as being strange. She even thinks herself to be abnormal. But I don't think she is the only one. She and Kofi seem to be the inverse of their traditional gender roles. Kofi seems to actually love Anowa, as he is content with her being his only wife and wants her to be the one that he spends the rest of his life and has his children with. Anowa, however, wants to live her own life and wander. Children are not her first priority and she would rather stay home and work. I think that they are interesting characters because they don't ascribe to traditional gender roles, yet they are the main characters. It makes reading the play a different experience than the one we have had so far, simply because the characters are completely different to any characters we had encountered up to this point.

I think that all of the male characters in the play are different than the ones in the books we have read so far. They are usually quite laid back and they enjoy working but seem to mostly be sitting around and they stay stationery. They seem to defer to the women more than any of their previous counterparts. They definitely appreciate their wives and know that their lives wouldn't be able to function without them. It's quite interesting to read, because the story is set in the 1800's and yet there seems to be more equality among the genders than we've seen in history at the time and the stories we've read.

The women are quite opinionated and feisty. They know what they want to do and often inform their husbands as a sort of afterthought. They are aware of the position that their society has placed them in, but it seems that they have adopted their posts so completely that ideas of their social standing seem to come straight from the women.

First Impressions on Anowa

I really enjoy reading plays. I think they are such an interesting medium because a lot of the time you know exactly what the character is supposed to do through the stage directions, but the way the words are said is ofter up to the interpretation of the actor. As someone who has taken acting classes before, interpreting a script is a fun activity that I don't get to do very often. It also quite difficult because you have to figure out where the director's authority begins and your's ends.

I am quite liking this script. I think the staging is very interesting; I am definitely a fan of the split stage. I also liked the characterization of The-Mouth-That-Eats-Salt-and-Pepper and how they are bound by certain character consistencies like the side they must always enter from and how they can only enter on the lower stage and not the upper one.

Reading it aloud in class is also quite fun. The only plays I have read aloud in class are Shakespeare where the language can easily leave you behind if you are not paying attention. I think that this play has elements of that in it; some of the phrasing seems slightly awkward when reading in the cursory fashion one uses when reading aloud. These characters were meant to be portrayed. Having been sick for the first two times we read the book, I was reading it by myself. The full effect was lost on me. The characters really come alive when they are read by other people. Having multiple voices really helps show the differences in each of the couples.

Response to the End of "Tail of the Blue Bird"

I rather enjoyed the ending of Tail of the Blue Bird. I think that I am definitely a person who deals in absolutes, so the fact that the mystery wasn't explicitly solved was slightly irksome. However I am a fan of ambiguity as I often find myself stranded in that realm. I liked the person Kayo had become. He so much freer now and he is much more accepting. I think that he inherently is willing to believe most things (in as non-naive a way as possible) but he choses to go for absolutes and logic. I was a little sad that his grandfather's death wasn't really resolved. By that I mean that he attempted to solve the case or, because the evidence probably didn't last that long, at least tried to go through the proper channels to attempt to solve the case.

I think this book was incredibly enjoyable. It's perfect for teenagers because it's got a little bit of magic, a little bit of dubious behavior (like spiking their drinks at dinner) but feels serious enough for kids who think themselves adults. It also helps show kids a different way of life than the one they know, while contrasting it with one that is apparent to them.

Tail of the Blue Bird Thoughts, October 19th

On page 37 there is a line that reads, “His younger brother, Kakra, would soon finish his National Service assignment and start university; that meant he would be paying accommodation costs for both his siblings.” I made me think that Kayo was like Babamukuru, but I like Kayo a lot better. He doesn’t try to subjugate people.

The pidgin is become easier to understand, just because now I know that it is in fact pidgin, I am more prepared to read it when it comes up. I am confused about the prevalence of the language, however. It seems strange that sometimes characters will use it when speaking to each other, even though they have two other perfectly viable languages to speak in. I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re trying to achieve by speaking it, it just seems like they are subjugating themselves.

I like the whole element of magic in the story. It’s pretty fun to read. I like the way that it is interwoven with the story. The part at the end starting on page 73 is really weird. I wouldn’t have expected them to burn the matter; I thought they should bring it back to Kayo’s lab (does he have a lab right now?) But then the thing with the tree. Either Garba was being annoying and joking around (which his language and the language before seem to allude to), or the tree was magicked or something so that it would feel heavy at first and then be lighter once the remains were burned. The blue feather at the scene was interesting too.

I kind of feel like it is all just one giant conspiracy, like in that movie about the priests in the village with the Black Death. I feel like the village didn’t want to be found out but took precautions in case they were (not knowing the smell, the preparations, the aphrodisiac). It is a very interesting story, and I can’t wait until it progresses further.

First Impressions of "Tale of the Blue Bird"

I think that Parkes is trying to tell a story. In contrast to Things Fall Apart and Nervous Conditions, there is no central idea that we are trying to draw from this book, we just have to enjoy it. Things Fall Apart was written to combat the ideas of Africa that were permeating Western culture. We not only had to enjoy it as a narrative, but it was almost our obligation to take something away from the reading. It is a book written to educate, which means that the narrative falls by the way-side because there is another purpose besides telling the story. The same is true for Nervous Conditions. The story was written to educate Western women about the struggles they would have to go through, were they living in Rhodesia, and to provide Zimbabwean women with characters that they could related to and use to understand their own situation. Tale of the Blue Bird is without a doubt a pure narrative. Its purpose is to take you on a journey. In this case, the journey is one of mystery and science.

The first chapter was very hard to read. I understand that the character is supposed to be unused to writing down his thoughts, but I feel like it was incredibly over exaggerated. It was only exaggerated when Yaw Poku was speaking English or trying to portray a Western ideal. I did, however, like that the English words were italicized. I thought it was a nice sort of twist, because usually the African words would be italicized.

I am sympathetic to the character of Kayo. I think he demonstrates great integrity in regards to himself. I find it incredibly admirable that he chooses to do what he loves, regardless of what his parents think. I also felt very sympathetic towards him because of the way he found his grandfather and I can imagine the way in which he told his supervisor the story of the discovery. All in all, I find him an incredibly more likable protagonist than Tambu. I think that I appreciate him even more than Okonkwo, because Okonkwo was driven to the edge by his fear which makes me feel more sorry for him than enthusiastic about his character.

I think this story will prove to be rather interesting, instead of something used to educate.

End of the Book Stream of Consciousness

• Nyasha's feelings of falling apart and not having a way to express her fracturing
• Babamukuru is a nervous and frenzied sort of man who seems to hold control but is really just frantically grasping at it
• His "maleness" makes me think of him as a completely nervous and uncomfortable person
• Tambu's mother is passive out of depression, not because she actually cares about how her husband feels
• Melancholia: "Those who are depressed are the most calm in dangerous situations"
• Tambu knows she is passive but at this point doesn't care to change because all the things she is passive about are not that important
• Her reverence for Babamukuru led her to become demotivated because if makes the decisions, she doesn't have to try hard to obey him
• Babamukuru breeds "unnatural children"
• Nyasha and Chido as hybrids
• Tambu's utmost and all consuming respect and reverence for him
• Babamukuru only has two mindsets, good vs. spoiled
• Uses the "spoiledness" of the girls to deny them basic privileges
• So worried about his authority he is absolute when he doesn't allow people to object to him, instead of letting them object and then explaining to them why that is not okay.
• Has no sense of honor or decorum, unlike Okonkwo
• Goes straight to threatening instead of negotiating and being reasonable
• Lots of talk of obedience
• So panicky
• Never seen as human in the eyes of the others
• A way of the woman oppressing themselves
• Didn't earn his respect
• Babamukuru skates the line of being misogynistic and it's very annoying
• Nyasha's worry about others led to her being proud Maiguru left and also her psychotic break
• Weird things with "the girl" and "the man"
• Distancing herself from her family
• Female competition over education prevalent everywhere
• The passage about "looseness" on page 184

Harkness Reflection

I think I'm doing okay in this class. I really enjoy it, so that helps, but I think that I could be a little more active in discussion. I'm really good at listening to people, but I don't really speak that much. I think that it's rather difficult for me to interject because I can express myself easier if I'm writing and I'm never really fully confident in what I am saying in class. It's hard because I really don't want to mess up and look stupid. It's one of those things that makes me embarrassed..... I mean, writing you can edit. You can't edit your spoken ideas and people tend to remember what you say more. Listening to the ideas of others is embarrassment free, and you don't have to risk sounding stupid by replying.

1. I apparently had a text reference and I talked twice to Mustafa and David. This must've been at the beginning of the year when I felt most confident in what I was saying. I was most likely answering someone's question.
2. I talked a lot to Mustafa, both Matts, and Laksh. I remember this discussion and it was when I was asking a question but I felt that people didn't understand my question, and so I had to keep on asking it in different ways until it clicked for them. I really hate talking like that because it's embarrassing that people don't understand what I'm trying to say. I think that was also the day when I had this really great idea but by the time I had a chance to talk, it was irrelevant.
3. I talked once to Julia. I don't remember what it was about.
4. I talked twice with Mustafa and Emily. I don't remember what this one was about either, but I think that this is the most accurate representation of how my discussions will go.

Writing September 23

I am starting to dislike Tambu. I think that she is becoming exactly like her brother, who I could not stand. It's weird to me how a prevalent idea in the book is that even though family is inexorably tied to education of the children, it seems to be that as soon as Tambu or Nhamo gets to Babmukuru's house, they suddenly realize the "squalor" they used to live in and are ashamed. It bothers because they are being educated for the benefit of their family, and as soon as they reach the mission, it is all about them. I dislike how the family is immediately discarded. I don't know if it's naivety or just shame, but it really inhibits the good feelings that I have for the book. I don't find Tambu a character that makes it easy to sympathize/empathize, for the simple reason that her feelings are very alien to me. When she was angry at her brother, I understood because her brother was obviously in the wrong, but the fact that she would miss her river more than her family really put me off.

There is an interesting contrast between Babamukuru and Nhamo/Tambu. Nhamo and Tambu are being educated because it is good for the family. Babamukuru managed to build himself a life with his own two hands and look out for his family. Maybe when Tambu is older, she will understand that her position is important because then she can look after her family, but in the interim it is annoying how she thinks she will learn and be educated and leave her family behind.

I think the tone is slightly off too, because all she ever seems to do is condescend people. She dislikes her cousin because she is rude and "hoped that she would not carry on like that..." She also had a whole paragraph explaining what was wrong in their kitchen. On page 71 she talks about the dirt in the house, and on the next page she ridicules the use of a tea-strainer. The tone is so disparaging and so un-likeable. She is being placed in a position to better her and her family's circumstances, and all she can do is criticize her new home. It is very bothersome to read, and it makes her seem ungrateful. I know that moving is a hard task, especially away from your family, but she did not seem to even like her family and all she could hope for was to not sleep in the same room as her cousin, who is rude and unhelpful. I just don't understand why the other would write this if she wanted to make her character likable.

One thing that is rather puzzling to me is their religious system. It obviously important, but it reminds me of Haruki Murakami's Dance Dance Dance the way reality is so interchangeable with things that aren't necessarily feasible in reality.

One example is after Ezinma gets sick, Achebe writes about the story of Ezinma's birth. Ezinma is described as an ogbanje which, according to Wikipedia, is an evil spirit. For the Igbo, the word means, "children who come again and again". It is an interesting idea that the favorite daughter of Okonkwo is also thought to be an evil spirit. But I digress. According to the story, the ogbanje have these things called iyi-uwa, which according to Wikipedia again, is an object that binds the spirit of a dead child to the world, causing them to born again and again. Some of Chapter Nine is spent telling the story of the finding of Ezinma's iyi-uwa. At first, I thought (from my view as a westerner) that maybe Ezinma was being coerced into saying that she had one and to give the location. But the fact that it was actually found seems to contradict my reading of what happened. The nonchalant way it is woven into the story makes it less believable, to me at least, and confuses the action of the story.

Another example is at the funeral of Ezeudu. It is a very frenzied funeral, as Ezeudu was a warrior. But in the middle of describing the funeral, it is said that "Now and again an ancestral spirit or egwugu appeared from the underworld, speaking in a tremulous, unearthly voice and completely covered in raffia." These spirits seem to be commonplace, and so relevant to the reality of the story, but my confusion stems from the case at the beginning of Chapter Ten. A court case is being received and a point is made that, "Okonkwo's wives, and perhaps the other women as well, might have noticed that the second egwugwu had the springy walk of Okonkwo."

Chimamanda Adichie's TED Talks

There is something motherly about her. The way she stood, impeccably dressed with smooth dark skin, reminded me of my mother. She was so articulate, her Nigerian accent accentuated with (what seemed to me) an English one. Her just being an articulate writer who was interested in "the process" just reminded me completely and utterly of my mother.

Her roommate really struck a chord with me. It was astounding that someone could be so ignorant to someone else's face. I know that it is something that happens often, but it was weird that it should happen to someone so cultured and intellectual. The other moment that was particularly appalling was her professor, someone who should be knowledgeable, saying that her novel was not "authentically African". Um, excuse me, SHE IS AFRICAN. I am really appalled at what people allow to exit their mouths.

It seems that whenever writers attempt to illustrate what it is really like in their home countries, they are always met with ignorance. It is a strange idea, that someone bringing truth would be met with such audacious and brash stupidity, but it seems to happen frequently. Perhaps I just have an extreme aversion to stupidity (not perhaps, I do), but it just seemed to be so unforgivable, how would someone let you open your mouth?

Her point about writing about what she sees resonated with me. When I was younger, I wasn't allowed to buy dolls with pale skin and blue eyes, because I wasn't like them. In our house, we have lots of art and literature of African origin, and I grew up hearing about the struggles of the African people. In a way, I got a more beneficial upbringing for someone of color than Ms. Adichie did. She read books with white characters and English personalizations that were so completely inapplicable to her life. Even though she was directly linked with her past by being in Nigeria, her identity as a Nigerian/African was stifled by the remnants of colonialism. As a young writer, I never wrote stories with Caucasian protagonists. It wasn't shocking when she talked about this, but I was a little surprised that she had become so proud of who she is in later life. However, when in situations like this, you have to do what must be done.

Book Cover Exercise

#4

Out of all the book covers, I think the edition that we were given for class works the best in relation to the story. Maybe because I have been accustomed to it for longer, but I also like the message it is trying to convey. I think it really ties in with the story. The fissures in the picture of the man's face really look like parched ground and one of the main aspects of the story is the planting season. There is a passage in the novel where it talks about the sun breathing a breath of fire on the earth, and the cover really evokes this. I also like how it kind of ties in with the story of the Tortoise, because the Tortoise tried to take advantage of his friends and ended up falling back to earth and cracking his shell. The cracks also remind me that when things fall apart, they don't fall apart in large pieces. The crack and fissure and little pieces break off. Because of this, I think that, at least on a superficial level, cover #4 is the most fitting cover.

Thoughts:

Nwoye

• reminds me of Caleb in East of Eden when Caleb was trying so hard to be like his father, but his father never saw it.
• Okonkwo wants Nwoye to be a certain type of person, and will not settle until he is that way. He cannot see Nwoye's true intentions (i.e. to make his father proud of him)

Ikemefuna

• the "Golden Boy"
• Okonkwo loves having him around because he is an older boy who is helping Nwoye become more of a man
• he has totally assimilated into the household, barely even remembering his own family
• I feel that as a character he is very important because I feel that his death is the catalyst for Okonkwo's fall
• why did Okonkwo have a part in his death?
• his death symbolizes Okonkwo destroying the very thing he strived for most
• symbolizes the destruction of what Okonkwo's well being and lifestyle by his fear

Ezinma

• is the fact that she is ogbanje attributed to the circumstance of her gender, or is that a bit of a stretch?
• i feel that she will die, only because Okonkwo loves her so much more than he should
• she is the perfect child, if only she were a boy
• she will die because of something that Okonkwo will/has do/done.

Writing exercise:

"As the man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his matchet, Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow. The pot fell and broke in the sand. He heard Ikemefuna cry, 'My father, they have killed me!' as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his matchet and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak." (page 57)

When I first read this passage, for some reason, it was not apparent to me that Okonkwo had delivered the killing blow. As I read the passage out to type, I realized that in his fear, Ikemefuna ran toward Okonkwo. For me, this changes the whole connotation of the excerpt. My impressions of the first reading were that Okonkwo had acted out of fear, and that he had run forward to see if Ikemefuna could be saved, and then in order to not look weak, drew his matchet and killed him. I think this passage is significant because it demonstrates that Okonkwo's fear is so powerful, that it overrides his paternal instincts. His "son" calls out for him and runs towards him for help, and yet Okonkwo cuts him down. Because he is so afraid of being thought weak. I think no matter how attached we are to Ikemefuna and all of the positivity he brought into Okonkwo's household, the real significance of his death is not that we have lost a central character, but that it signals the turning point of the novel.

It is also interesting how, in his fear, Okonkwo completely disregards the warning of an elder. On the top of page 54, Ogbuefi Ezeudu says, "'That boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his death.'" And yet Okonkwo delivers the fatal blow. Because of this, I feel that the "fall" of Okonkwo is very near.

Chapters 6-9 Questions and Observations

• Very spiritual and mildly esoteric society: "Spirits of good children lived in that tree waiting to be born." "They were possessed by the spirit of the drums." (both page 44)
• What is the composition/effects of a kola nut?
• The line, "'I think she will stay...'" makes it seem as if the children have a choice to "leave". (page 46)
• This is said by the priestess of the Oracle of the Hills and Caves, who is very important, which seems to warrant its truth.
• Foreshadowing?
• In reference to Ezinma.
• Ikemefuna is a positive force in the family's life. "Okonkwo was inwardly pleased at his son's development, and he knew it was due to Ikemefuna." (page 49)
• Nwoye is suppressing his nature for his father's benefit. Okonkwo suppressed his father's nature in himself. (page 51)
• What is harmattan? (page 51)
• Locusts seem like a bad thing to me, however the people of Umuofia are pleased by the coming of the locusts. (page 52)
• Umuofia seems very isolated from the rest of the nine villages (page 53)
• "'That boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his death.'"They are going to kill Ikemefuna! (page 54)
• Strange that Okonkwo would even consider having a hand in his death
• Seems like a warning to prevent him from even thinking of it
• Why would he think of being apart of his death?
• On page 55 there is reference to a celebration being had somewhere to celebrate the giving of a title to a man in a village.
• Weird contrast of going to Ikemefuna's death and gaining a "new life" with the acquisition of a title
• Okonkwo's fear rules him so much, he cuts down his own son.
• "Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down. He was afraid of being though weak." (page 57)
• The warning and this mention of his fear makes this almost positively his "fatal flaw"
• "Okonkwo did not taste any food for two days after the death of Ikemefuna." even strong men feel guilt. (page 59)
• Mentions the fact that Ezinma should have been a boy every page for three pages.  (pages 60-2)
• "'But if the Oracle said that my son should be killed I would neither dispute it nor be the one to do it." I feel the same way. Why did this not occur to Okonkwo? (page 63)
• The talking of the giving of the titles seems to make Umuofia more respectful and virtuous than other villages. (page 65)
• When Obierika's daughter is meeting with her suitor, she goes from being assessed to being completely forgotten about. (page 66-7)
• "...the polite name for leprosy was 'the white skin'" interesting that the color of their occupier's skin became the name for leprosy
• Okonkwo remembers a story that his mother told him, strange because Nwoye is trying not to enjoy the stories of the women so much. (pages 51 and 71)
• Ezinma is dying!!! (page 71)
• What is an iyi-uwa? (page 76)
• Did Ezinma actually have an iyi-uwa or is she playing along for the sake of the village? (page 77)
• The medicine man digs up a pebble wrapped in a rag, and Ezinma seems to truthfully say it is hers. So, are we to assume that these powers are present? (page 80)