Remembering A Man Of The People - Chris "Preach" Smith

Chinua Achebe.

This past Friday morning, I was preparing to head up to Harlem to attend my
aunt’s homegoing service. I scrolled through my Twitter feed and emails and 
saw the news that the legendary Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe, passed away.
As I read all of the articles celebrating his life and work, I began to reflect on
how he had a looming influence in my own life and in ways one couldn’t really
expect.

For anyone coming up in New York City high schools in the early 1990’s, you
were guaranteed a set amount of books that you were to read as part of your
English requirements. And one of them was Achebe’s first and most heralded
book, Things Fall Apart. I had heard of him before, through my mom’s work in
the United Nations and because my family was full of hardcore readers on both
sides. But getting the chance to read of Okonkwo the yam farmer who struggled
against colonizers in 1890’s Nigeria was inspiring in a subtle way. It connected
with me and a lot of others in my class because we in some ways felt just like
Okonkwo. We were finding out about a world that was bigger than us and also
finding out we had to change to be assured of a place in it. The year I read 
Things Fall Apart, I remember a couple of showdowns between kids from Bayside
and Corona that started with racial slurs. Fights, cutting classes, more fights,
copping beers; rebellion without purpose. Achebe’s writing put all of that under
a microscope, and went well with the other authors I was reading at the time
like Chester Himes and Toni Cade Bambara. Another thing that stood out to me
at that time was just how big of an impact his people had in Southeast Queens;
to this day there’s an Igbo Community Center on Linden Boulevard in St. Albans,
which has been there for decades.

Achebe’s influence hung out in the background of life as I went to college and
found myself in a heated discussion because I objected to how Africans were
depicted in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I will always have love for the
professor who not only encouraged the discussion(one where I had to ice-grill
this one dude who said ‘Africans ARE savage; look what they do to each other
in Somalia and other places’ for a whole week after), but brought in Achebe’s
writing’s on his view of racism in Conrad’s work and dedicated the next class
session to it. As I got involved in political activism, A Man Of The People was a
godsend to me and a reminder to maintain perspective always in a shifting
struggle. I still read that more than Things Fall Apart. And through his writing
I got the chance to read more works from other Nigerian authors like Wole 
Soyinka and the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, and other African authors of note. A
much needed lifeline those days studying in the heart of Nassau County to 
go along with parties, women and hip-hop.

As far as hip-hop, Chinua Achebe made his mark there as well. He’s been
referenced by MC’s like Black Thought, and The Roots even named their 1999
album after his first novel. He even made headlines when 50 Cent made him
a million dollar offer to use the title for one of his projects back in 2003. The
author flatly refused. The struggles Achebe depicted, struggles of holding on
to one’s own culture in the face of white culture, Christianity and all of those
intersecting conversations on race and class exist in the beat of other artists
today like Nneka, Blitz The Ambassador, K’Naan and other artists from the
continent. Chinua Achebe truly was a man of the people. And for that, we
all owe him our sincere gratitude for creating another space for our voices.

Rest in power, teacher.