Nwando Achebe Quotes

So, nudity at protest is an abomination. That is the way women have evolved strategies on the pre-colonial period, through the colonial period and after colonialism.

But if you look back to the pre-colonial period, women were very active. It is something that slowly we have to come out of . We have not gotten there yet.

In Igboland, there is a proverb that says: Igbo enwe eze which means Igbo have no king. We do not believe in kings. If you want to be a king, you can be in your mother’s backyard; don’t think you can lord it over us.

I have written and published two books, the first: Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings published by Heinmann ; the second book is called the Female King of Colonial Nigeria and other numerous journals and articles and chapters but my area is women history.

Sitting on a man is the most extreme sanction that Igbo women have when they want to punish a man. For example: if a man continues to ill-treat a woman, the women groups Otu Umu Ada, Otu Ndi ama Ala, the title societies, the market women, the woman can go to one of these groups to report him and there, they will decide which punishment to mete out on him. They can decide to boycott their matrimonial duties or sit on the man. In one village, the women asked the men to clear the path to a stream and the men refused. The women got together and declared a boycott. They boycotted cooking, so, men could not eat for few days. They went to their mothers’ houses and their mothers told them they were not cooking, the same with their wives. Again, sitting on a man is the most extreme sanction; it only happened if other sanctions have failed.

That is called family planning. (Laugh) We don’t have the mechanism over there (US) that women in Nigeria have in terms of helping them in house work. You find out that a lot of professional women there don’t have as many children as the Nigerian women.

For me to be a creative writer? That is not my calling. I write only history books because that is my calling.

All of us have accomplished what we can in our unique fields. So, there is no push in my family to be like my father. Everybody is like an individual and you follow your own calling.

If the aggrieved woman let out a cry of grievance, once women hear it, they know that things are not good. All women will then gather, dress in war gear. They smear their bodies with ashes and cover their bodies with palm fronds.

It is the worst abomination. That is the strategy women used to punish the colonial government during the Women’s War of 1929. They also used nudity as protest. We know from the colonial document that at a particular point when soldiers were trying to open fire on women, women lifted their skirts and the soldiers dropped their guns because you could not view the nakedness of your own mother and survive.

I want to do it; I want to write the story of my people especially women. That story has not been written. Women have been silenced in historical study. If you pick up a book, if women were mentioned at all, they were mentioned in footnotes. So, I want to change that and write a story that other women can pick up and be proud of.

My parents want us to live the best way we possibly can and that is what I have been doing in terms of my education. I am doing the things I want to do. Again, it is not just my father’s achievements; my mother was also one of the senior professors in Nigeria from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. So, I have two extremely phenomenal role models who have brought us up to be the best of what we can be.

I want to write the story of my people especially women. That story has not been written. Women have been silenced in historical study. If you pick up a book, if women were mentioned at all, they were mentioned in footnotes. So, I want to change that and write a story that other women can pick up and be proud of.

If you want to be an ally, you have to listen and truly hear what it is that African people are saying. We are equal partners. It is not one group dictating the way the relationship should be. It is a partnership where we listen to each other and truly hear each other. We can learn from each other, but it has to be an equal relationship.

Honestly speaking, I don't want to publish another book or article that does not have an advocacy purpose to it. I want to use my work to potentially change lives.