First of all, if it was not mentioned this was African literature, then I would have thought it could have taken place anywhere around the world. Some of the actions that occurred during this first reading of the book have similar characteristics to other cultures. They ‘converse’ and abide by whoever is known as the “oracle” and reference a “personal god” of chi. When hearing of an oracle I related the thought to ancient Greece where they would make sacrifices and hear of the future or other information brought to them by the oracle. The chi aspect I thought of the Asian cultures who think of chi as a balance of a life force and doing certain things in your life can affect it.
Another aspect that may have clued me in to this being centralized in Africa is that their main harvest was yams. To Okonkwo and the rest of the village, yams are a “man’s crop” and must be harvested and grown by them. I had heard once that yams have been known to boost the number of multiples in some African tribes; this also brings up the strange point brought up in the book that multiples were deemed evil, and either one was saved or all were gotten rid of. I find this quite counterintuitive because they are eating the food that is creating the multiples and then they are trying to rid of what they created. Once Ezinma got sick, it was made known that Ekwefi had had trouble with keeping her children alive past infancy, and so it looked to me that they were having population control issues or something along those lines.
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