Chimamanda Adichie
Literary guru condemns reviews on Adichie’s Dream Count
Literary guru, Ikhide Ikheloa, said no western reviews of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count has done justice to the appreciation of the book.
She said he has read addresses the substance of the army of issues raised in the book.
According to her, “We, Africans, need our own reviewers. They are mostly dismissive swipes at Adichie for daring to depart from the path of liberal orthodoxy. That’s a shame, the book is weighty, groaning with issues, mostly unresolved “
She said “all the culture wars and anxieties are here, wound tight and sullen in this joyless book. Pro circumcision or no, pro this pro that. Monogamy or polygamy. Who gets to name the child? In the anxieties of these high flying women (yeah, even Kadiatu the maid is high flying, she made it to America!) their world is more than binary.”
She said compared to the hapless peasants that populate the poverty porn infected narratives of what passes for African literature today, their lives are magical.
“They fly to the best places in the world, go to the best schools, and meet interesting people. Thriving in the community of the individual, of ME, everyone else is an afterthought. They live the American dream in a global world they have conquered except for the opaque men that sashay in and out of their lives,” she said.
Specifically, he said Dream Count is more complicated than the stick figure narratives in contemporary African fiction.
“Gone is the obsession with ‘exile,’ as a pejorative. We are here, we are here. In order to appreciate the messages embedded in Dream Count you would have to read all of Adichie’s works since Purple Hibiscus. There is consistency and courage in her focus on addressing the power dynamics that is overwhelmingly in favor of men, albeit from a privileged middle class perspective. I respect and admire that. This book, Dream Count is the latest salvo. It might as well be titled ‘What Do Men Want?”
The book should be required reading at all secondary schools worldwide, he said.
She said Dream Count should be read “for one, it repudiates the infantilization of women, the tired trope of African women as needy and expensive semi-infants. It’s a crisis of gargantuan proportions, the infantilization of women is on at full force on social media – watch the video clips, the reels, our comedians.
She added that Dream Count is a sorority of sisters looking out for each other, adding that Adichie in this book seems to be channeling Madeleine Albright: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women.
Chimamanda Adichie does not get enough credit for being a trail blazing bundle of courageous energy. She understands what must be said and does not apologize for saying what others are too cowardly and dishonest to say.
She says it, she doesn’t wait for the words to be perfect, she says it.
Dream Count does not exactly infantilize African men but it comes close in the misandry. It definitely did not try to understand Chuka, Kwame, etc., the women just wanted to settle and get married to these “thieves of time.” Thieves of time? Some of the men had no names, collectively called thieves of time because they wouldn’t propose. The hunt for men is relentless and fascinating There probably should have been a novella on one of the men. Darnell or Chuka or both. But that would have required a lot of work – getting into character for a man.
Instead, we are treated to self-absorbed blather and inchoate musings about pretend existential issues that give the clear impression that the protagonists are drowning in intellectual waters too deep for their understanding.
Maybe I have Adichie fatigue, but I must say Dream Count is not her best work. Perhaps her best days of writing fiction are behind her. Attempts to come across as intellectual fall flat. And the lede is buried deep in reams of narcissistic self-absorption. I had the same issue with Jhumpa Lahiri. After a couple of books, I got fed up – everything seemed formulaic, I stopped reading her. I still buy her books. Weird.