Review of Purple Hibiscus - The Herald

Saturday Herald December 9 2006.
Adichie C, Purple Hibiscus, Weaver Press 2006.

Reviewed by Sifelani Tsiko
Adichie brings to fore contemporary struggles

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers a fresh and new dimension to Africans’ struggle to redefine and rediscover themselves in the post-independence era.
Although set in Nigeria’s turbulent era of military coups, the themes of the book are relevant to the experiences of people in other parts of the continent.
The book captures the life of a young girl, Kambili growing up under a deeply religious father, who is protective and hates African traditional beliefs.
The girl grew up in a relatively well off family where she gets everything – food, education, comfort, satellite television and other luxuries.
Despite living in the lap of luxury, her strict father does not allow her to watch television, wear trousers, go to discos and cinemas and viagra sales drug visit her grandfather, who is a firm believer in African traditions. She is forced to live under a strict reading and learning regime, follow a set of mannerisms and a prayer routine that almost robs her of her freedom and the joys of the youth.
At school, Kambili is seen as a “backyard snob” who does not easily mix with others and is under pressure from her father to perform well in order to escape poverty and ignorance.
She builds up to the works of earlier Nigerian novelists such as Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe who articulated both the pre-colonial and price cialis daily 5mg colonial struggles of the African.
Whereas Achebe wrote about a young African running several miles to a missionary school to get an education, Adichie captures the life of a young African “backyard snob” being driven to school and given all the necessary needs by a father who worked hard to succeed in “life.”
Even though the attention of earlier Nigerian novelists focused more on the harsh colonial life, the conflict between religion and tradition, the desire for freedom and liberation, the damaging impact of colonialism in post-independence Africa, emerging voices like Adichie also brings up similar struggles for peace, justice, freedom, democracy and a longing for the gone African traditions.
Kambili’s life takes a new turn when she hears about the military coups and other activists opposed to the “Big Man in Abuja” (military ruler).
Her grandfather whom her father never wanted her to live near him because of his belief in the gods, motivates and inspires her with his traditional beliefs which, ironically, resemble those of Christianity and powerful story-telling abilities.
“How can Our Lady intercede on behalf of a heathen, Aunty?” Kambili asks.
“Aunty Ifeoma was silent as she ladled the thick cocoa yam paste into the soup pot, then she looked up and said Papa Nnukwu was not a heathen but a traditionalist, that sometimes what was different was just as good as what was familiar, that when Papa Nnukwu did his itu-nzu, his declaration of innocence in the morning, it was the same as saying our rosary.”
Adichie writes in a simple and inspiring way that takes the reader through the turbulent years of the military coups in Nigeria.
Adichie, in this simple and neatly woven book, questions the notions of working abroad. Does the flight of African professionals to the United States and United Kingdom bring the desired freedom, when a lawyer is forced to be a cleaner, a medical doctor a taxi driver, simply because an African cannot be trusted that he can do the job?
Her book brings these contemporary struggles to the fore and helps define an individual’s place in the modern African society.

“This is a book about the promises of freedom, about blurred lines between the old gods and the new, between childhood and adulthood, between love and hatred,” one book critic said about the book.
It’s a book worth reading that should form part of one’s collection of the new emerging voices – the literary heirs to the Soyinkas, Achebes and many other early African writers.
It carries the struggle of the African to a new and higher level, which one can readily identify with in the present.