Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is a powerful narrative of the Biafran War that surpasses the factual details of the case, as all great fiction does. Part history, part love story, Adichie proves her skills as a writer in crafting a book over 500 pages long but so addicting one cannot put it down. Her style is simple, sweet, and effective. In many ways she is the 21st century Chinua Achebe, the famous Igbo writer of the 20th century, best known for Things Fall Apart. Her narrative, rooted in the 'facts' of the Biafran War, such as the corruption, ethnic conflict, colonial manipulation and starvation of the Biafran masses, tells me more about this war's impact on human lives than any history I could find. And believe me, I've read and seen the pictures of starving children, since the Biafran War of 1967-1970 was everywhere in the international press due to the blockades ordered by Gowon in Nigeria.

Unfortunately, I believe that many unfamiliar with Nigerian history and culture will be unfamiliar with some of the background to the conflict. Adichie wisely chose to begin the story in the early 1960s and avoided giving too much historical background, since the novel would have likely become boring and academic for those unfamiliar with the historical context. Likewise, Adichie's novel focuses on the Igbo perspective, and through the Englishman Richard Churchill, a white man's perspective on Nigeria. It would be nice to read about the Biafran conflict from the perspective of the Muslim North and the non-Igbo minorities within Biafra who worked with the Nigerian state to defeat Biafra, whose flag included half of a yellow sun, hence the title of the novel. The only northern, Muslim Hausa character to play a role in the novel is the wealthy prince, Mohammed, a former lover of Olanna, the Igbo daughter of a Chief who abused his position as a tax collector to amass wealth and purchased property in Lagos, where he and his wife live lavishly. Olanna's former beau still loves her, and helps her escape Kano when the Hausa begin to massacre Igbos after the Igbo led a coup against the Northern-controlled central Nigerian government. In response, the Igbos of southeastern Nigeria, under Colonel Ojukwu, secede from Nigeria, which had only been 'independent' of Britain since 1960. Although the Muslim North and South of Nigeria were never close prior to the unification of the two regions under British colonial rule in 1914, and even then the two regions remained distinct and separate as Southern elites received colonial education and prepared to take over civil administration in the central state, the Igbos had traveled to the North and Lagos to start businesses, purchase property, etc. Indeed, at one point in the novel, the Igbos are referred to as the Jews of Nigeria. 

After the Igbos declared independence, it was inevitable their little republic would face war with Nigeria because of Biafra's oil and the need to maintain colonial borders established by European powers. Indeed, Biafra was never recognized by the imperial powers, and Nigeria received aid and arms from Britain, the Soviet Union and some African countries to force Biafra into submission. It also helped that Biafra's military was corrupt and exploiting its own people in the name of Igbo nationalism and autonomy, commandeering cars, conscripting 'idle' men such as Ugwu, and lying to the people when they knew Nigerian forces were about to defeat their forces and take another Biafran town. The Biafran propaganda and misinformation to their people worked well, since so many people, including Olanna and her Igbo professor husband, Odenigbo, felt cheated when a ceasefire was declared. Ojukwu fled, lying to Biafra on the radio. Ugwu, who was conscripted later in the novel, initially desired, at least partially, to serve in the military to fight for Igbo independence. However, after serving, he experiences the military's corruption, dehumanization of its own soldiers, who are like sheep, and even participates in the rape of a Biafran woman working at a bar with his fellow soldiers. While serving as a soldier, Ugwu comes across Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. The symbolism is so obvious, that the Biafran soldiers are akin to slaves, exploited and abused to carry out injustice while supposedly 'doing the right thing' by being patriotic. Ugwu decides to name his own story about the Biafran War after Douglass's Narrative.

Adichie's white character, Richard, is fully developed as one of the main characters (Ugwu, Olanna, and Richard are the main characters whose point of view is explained by the omniscient third person narrator). Richard Churchhill, though on the side of Biafra and in love with Kainene, Olanna's twin sister, remains a white man and part of the former colonial elite regardless of his ability to speak Igbo and serve Biafra with journalistic accounts of heroism, suffering and resilience of the Igbo peoples. His fellow white residents of Nigeria display astounding racism and pro-imperialist beliefs, including Susan, Richard's lover before Kainene. Susan sees Nigerians as violent, savages who are ungrateful despite all the 'civilization' the British brought to Nigeria. Two American journalists Richard shows around Biafra during the War are likewise racist, paternalistic fools who see Nigerians (and all Africans) as savage, starving peoples with the mind of children. Indeed, the Americans care more about dead whites than any of the thousands of dead and dying blacks. This unspoken rule of Western journalism taints all Western accounts of war and deaths in Africa, since any and all whites remaining in those African regions where people are dying are either rescued instantaneously or memorialized in Western newspapers and television news forever. The dying, malnourished Biafran children, suffering from kwashiokor and other deficiencies, become objects for Western journalists to achieve name recognition and become famous. The Red Cross and other relief agencies and churches, despite coming with the right intentions, also reinforce white supremacy and abuse their power. Father Marcel, a priest at the relief center in Orlu, run by Kainene, raped starving young girls until  Kainene discovers the truth and chases him out. 

Richard likes to see himself as Biafran, as African, not European. But his whiteness and the inherent privileges that confers upon him makes it impossible to escape his whiteness in Nigeria/Biafra. He can speak Igbo, study the Igbo-Ukwu civilization (and still express shock that these people had any civilization!), marry an Igbo woman, and endeavor to write about the story of Biafra, but it will never be his story. Ugwu ultimately must tell the tale, since Richard's whiteness makes him forever privileged. He came to Nigeria to find a home, and to write the one brilliant novel that will make him famous, but finds neither. Even when he 'helps' the Biafran cause by writing articles that will get international press, the only reason his stories get so much attention in the West is because he's a white man. Colonel Madu, who asks him to write in the first place, never saw him as anything but a white man who will never understand Igbos of Africans. Although life does not end well for him with the disappearance and presumed death of Kainene, Richard's whiteness will ensure him a life of privilege and comfort in Nigeria. As previously mentioned, his fascination with the Igbo-Ukwu art that dates back to the "time of the Vikings" is rooted in a disbelief, or shock that black Africans could produce magnificent pieces of art, practice long distance trade. Thus, despite his attempts to avoid paternalistic racism, Richard nevertheless succumbs to it. 

Adichie also criticizes those Nigerians/Biafrans, who in the name of nationalism, black power, and progress abuse their power to copy whites and mimic British styles in dress, 'culture' and taste. Olanna and Kainene's parents, for example, have to buy everything European, essentially buying into the material excess of European cultures. Other Nigerian/Biafran elites act similarly, endeavoring to be like the former and current British colonizers, who persist in their racist beliefs and treatment of blacks. The Western ways of Nigerian elites is also sharply contrasted with the lower-class population, who are domestics, peasants, and villagers whose traditions, ways of life, and even dietary patterns are vastly different. The new black elite, despite professing to support and come from the masses, turn their backs to the religious beliefs of Igbo peasants, for example, as Odenigbo does with Igbo beliefs he calls superstitions. The new elites are no more than black skins with white masks, blacks masquerading as whites because they ape European colonial domination, divide and rule tactics, and condescension if not outright hatred for the lower classes.

Adichie's novel here is a masterpiece. She explores issues of gender, love, colonialism, race, and national identity in Nigeria in deep, meaningful ways with a simple prose that is easy for anyone unfamiliar with Nigeria or West Africa to follow. Igbo phrases and words are used throughout the novel, reminding the reader that most of the dialogue is in fact in Igbo between different characters in southeastern Nigeria. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and multiple iconic events of the 1960s to put the Biafran war in a much larger context of decolonization, apartheid in South Africa and white-rule in Rhodesia, the civil rights movement in the United States, and a world in the process of taking the flood in the tide in the affairs of men. Nothing happens in isolation, thus, the Biafran War is part of human history, not solely Nigerian history. The universality of Adichie's novel is why it's so important to read literature from around the world, since all human 'nations' interact with others. Furthermore, one would hope this novel increases foreign knowledge and interest in Nigeria, one of African's most important economies, and the most populous nation in Africa. The effects of the Biafran war linger, and its causes are still replayed in the ethnic/regional conflict for control over the central government. People in the Niger Delta are still oppressed by a central, national government that colludes with foreign oil companies instead of providing for infrastructure and funding for government programs to battle poverty. Moreover, the conflict between the Muslim North and mostly Christian South continues to divide the regions. Nigeria currently has an agreement where the North and South switch off leaders of the central government, so the new leader is Christian, but the previous was a Muslim.