Biafra's Half a Yellow Sun

I'm writing a review for the Women's Review of Books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun. The book is quite moving and sent me off to relearn the Nigerian history that I experienced as current events in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I first learned of the Nigerian Civil [Biafran] war from shocking television news images. For the first time, I saw images of African children with extended bellies and enlarged eyes suffering from kwashiorkor. I clearly identified with these children; but I couldn't figure out whom to blame for these atrocities. To further confuse me, we had a Nigerian exchange student staying with an extended family member and he was from a minority tribe within the Igbo area. He was distraught because the news seemed to be siding with the Igbo people who had formed Biafra despite the wishes of some of the minority ethnic groups in its region. I believe this was the first African I met and I was completely entranced by him. Of course, now I cannot remember any name or identifying information I could use to Google him. But he the impact of making all stories about Africa more complex for me.

When I went off to Wheaton College (MA), I met a classmate who was Igbo and who suffered greatly from the atrocities visited on the civilians during that led to some 2 million deaths. I suspect that my conflicting loyalties led me to avoid reading too closely about the Biafran/Nigerian Civil War until I was asked to do this review. After many years, I finally read Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra and Flora Nwapa's Never Again. I discovered that Adichie wrote into a very fertile literary territory in which many Nigerians had ventured to explain their cataclysmic civil war. Nigeria has produced so many great writers and and many of them had lived through the war at home, like Nwapa, or abroad, like Emecheta. I will have to place Half a Yellow Sun in this context. Well I better get to a write this review now. It was, after all, due on February 10!

Here's a good summary of the war and the lead up to it from Irem Szeman, Zones of Instability : Literature, Postcolonialism, and the Nation. Baltimore, MD, USA: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. p 120.

The Federation of Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960. A federal system of highly autonomous regions divided primarily along ethnic lines (Northern Region: Hausa-Fulani; Western: Yoruba; Eastern: Ibo) was established with the aim of making the country of Nigeria a workable whole. This close association of region and political party with ethnicity (one of the problems faced by many federations around the world) generated immediate difficulties for the new country: given the structure of the federal government, each election would inevitably result in one political party— and therefore one region and ethnic group— being effectively excluded from government (forming neither the official opposition or the government itself ). The inevitable ethnic tensions produced as a result were further heightened by the ethnic composition of the military: the officer corps were primarily Ibo, while the enlisted men were drawn mainly from the north.

A military coup led by Ibo officers in January 1966 constituted the last straw for the north and led to the eruption of violence against Ibo living in the north. A countercoup led by northern elements of the army led to the brief restoration of the federal system under the leadership of General Yakuba Gowon. This countercoup led to a mass exodus of Ibo from the north to the Eastern Region, and to the secession of the Eastern Region early in 1967 as the independent ‘‘Republic of Biafra.’’ An incursion by Biafran troops into the Western Region in an effort to capture Lagos led to all-out war on Biafra by the remaining regions of the federation; a blockade of Biafra by both land and sea contributed to the death of up to two million Biafran civilians, mainly by starvation, before the surrender of Biafra in January 1970. Only now is Nigeria beginning to emerge from this dark period that has effectively constituted the entire short history of the nation.••

The Biafran flag on which Adichie's
title is based:

Curriculum Vitae

Welcome to my new blog. Here is my CV:

e. Frances White, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Professor of History and Black Studies, New York University

Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs
New York University
70 Washington Square South—1225
New York, NY 10012
1-212-998-2192

EDUCATION

1978 Boston University, Boston, Mass.
Ph.D. in African History

1973 Boston University, Boston, Mass.
M.A. in History

1971 Wheaton College, Norton, Mass.
B.A. cum laude and with departmental honors in Urban Studies


FELLOWSHIPS, PRIZES AND HONORS

Spring 1989 Kidder-Peabody Grant for research in The Gambia

Fall 1987 Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Prize of the Association of Black Women Historians for the best book in 1987 on Black women (Sierra Leone's Settler Women Traders)

1985 to 1988 Catherine T. & John D. MacArthur Professor, Hampshire College

Fall 1983 Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Sierra Leone and The Gambia

Spring 1983 Mellon Scholar, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women program on integrating women in to the humanities

Summer 1982 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for research in South Carolina

1980 to 1981 A.W. Mellon Faculty Development Grant for research in Sierra Leone

1977 to 1978 Roothbert Fellowship, The Roothbert Fund

1975 to 1978 Kent Fellowship, The Danforth Foundation

1975 to 1976 African American Scholars Council Grant for research in Sierra Leone


EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

9/2005 to present Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, New York University

7/98 to present Professor of History, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, NYU

7/98 to 7/2005 Dean of the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, NYU

7/94 to 6/98 Dean of Faculty, Hampshire College (MA)

7/91 to 6/94 Dean of the School of Social Science, Hampshire College

7-80 to 6/98 Hampshire College: Professor of History and Black Studies (appointed 7/1990); Associate Professor of History and Black Studies (appointed 7/1983); Assistant Professor of History and Black Studies, (appointed 7/1980)

9/78 to 6/80 Assistant Professor of African History, Departments of History and Pan African Studies, Temple University

10/75 to 6/76 Instructor, History Department, Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, (Freetown, Sierra Leone)

1986 to 1998 Five College Graduate Faculty

9/78 to 6/80 Assistant Professor of African History, Departments of History and Pan African Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

10/75 to 6/76 Instructor, History Department, Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone Freetown, Sierra Leone


OTHER APPOINTMENTS AND SERVICE

2001 to 2005 Chair, NYU Deans’ Council

2001 Chair, Review Committee for Proposed Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies Program, Louisiana State University

1997 to present Series Editor, Critical Studies in Racism and Ethnicity,
Temple University Press

1997 to 2003 President’s Commission, Wheaton College

1997 to 1999 College of Arts & Sciences Advisory Board for Adelphi University

1994 and 1997 Planning Committee, Black Women and the Academy Conferences

1995 Selection Committee, Frederic W. Ness Book Award

1995 History Department Visiting Committee, Amherst College

1981 to 1982 Chair, Five College Black Studies Executive Committee

1975 to 1977 Visiting Research Scholar, Institute of African Studies, Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone


BOOK PUBLICATIONS

Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability, Temple University Press, 2001.

With Iris Berger. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History. Indiana University Press, 1999. Reprinted in Japanese in 2004.

Sierra Leone's Settler Women Traders: Women on the Afro-European Frontier, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, Women and Culture Series. 1987. (Winner of the Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Prize of the Association of Black Women Historians, 1987).


OTHER PUBLICATIONS (Selected)

Review of Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel. The Women’s Review of Books. March/April 2006.

“Adelaide Casely Hayford.” “Constance Cummings-John.” and “Race: Overview.” Contributions to Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2007.

Review of Having It All? Black Women and Success by Veronica Chambers and Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem by bell hooks. The Women’s Review of Books. October 2003.

"Africa on My Mind: Gender, Counter Discourse and African American Nationalism." Journal of Women's History. Vol. 2 No. 1 (Spring 1990). Reprinted in Expanding the Boundaries of Women’s History: Essays on Women in the Third World. Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel, eds. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1992; Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, ed. New York, The New Press, 1995; and Is it Nation Time: Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.

"Women of Western and Western Central Africa." Restoring Women to History: Teaching Packets for Integrating Women's History into Courses on Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel (eds.) Bloomington: Organization of American Historians, 1988.

"Racisme et sexisme: La confrontation des feministes noires aux formes conjointes de l'oppression." Les Temps Modernes. Vol. 42, no. 485 (Dec. 1986).

"Women, Work and Ethnicity: The Sierra Leone Case." Women and Work in Africa. Edna Bay (ed.) Boulder: Westview Press, 1982.


LECTURES, PAPERS AND CONFERENCES ORGANIZED (Selected)

2/05 “Teaching and Research at Fourah Bay College before the (Sierra Leonean) Civil War.” Lecture delivered at the Institute of African Studies, FBC, University of Sierra Leone.

2/05 “Liberal Education in a Research University.” Lectured delivered at the Ministry of Education, Freetown, Sierra Leone

5/02 “Liberal Education and the Contested Meanings of Freedom.” Paper delivered at the Smith College Symposium, “What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts Today?”

10/01 “Marking Race: Race, Respectability, and Nationalism.” Lecture delivered at Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers University at New Brunswick.

8/99 Race and Gender in Hiring in the American Higher Education.” Invited lecture delivered at la Universidad de Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

5/94 “Evidence of Things Not Seen: The Alchemy of Race and Sexuality” Paper presented at Princeton University Conference, Race Matters.

1/94 “Gender, Sexuality and Nationalism” at the American Historical Association annual meeting, San Francisco, CA.

3/93 “Race and Gender Entwined: The Anita Hill Clarence Thomas Affair” Paper presented at University of Havana Conference of Developments in Women’s Studies.

10/92 “Who Represents the Race?” Paper presented at Women’s Studies, University of Oregon at Eugene.

3/91 "Black Feminist Voices." Lecture delivered at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as part of the series, "Race, Class and Ethnicity in the Americas."

2/91 "Theories and Societies Structured in Dominance--Black Feminist Interventions." Lecture delivered at Hampshire College as part of the Five College 25th Anniversary Lecture Series.

2/90 "Gender, Counter-Discourse, and Afrocentric Thought." Paper delivered at Williams College conference on African-American Scholarship, Williamstown, MA.

3/88 "Africa on My Mind: Searching for the African Roots of African-American Women." Paper delivered at Clark University conference, Women on the Frontiers of Research: An Interdisciplinary Conference.

2/87 "Black Feminism and the Politics of the Black Family." Paper delivered at the Williams College conference on the Black Family, Williamstown, MA.

2/87 "The Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Constructing Race and Womanhood in the 19th Century." Women's Studies, Santa Cruz University, Santa Cruz, CA. [Also delivered at the National Women Studies Association meetings (6/87) and Simons Rock at Bard College (9/87).]

1/87 "Race, Gender and Science," Conference organized with Ann McNeal; participants included Evelynn Hammonds, Venessa Gamble, Darlene Clark Hine, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Rita Arditi and Allan Brandt.

10/81 "Sierra Leonean Women and Nitida Kola: The Organization of a Nineteenth Century Trading Diaspora." Paper delivered at the African Studies Association Meetings, Philadelphia, PA.