You probably had to read him in college—Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart.
I certainly did and I remember not looking forward to it. I didn’t like the book cover, which was a confusion of yellows, browns, and burnt orange. It was exhausting just to read the title. Yes, I judged a book by its cover.
I was also lazy: I didn’t want to read yet an
other assigned book. I grumbled and moaned and put off reading it.
But I loved it.
In fact, it blew me away.
I’m so proud that he’s now in Guernica. How did we get him? Because at Guernica, we often feature African writing. We’ve won awards for it. And why? Because we came to love African writing through Achebe.
