SOURCE: "Okigbo's Labyrinths and the Context of Igbo Attitudes to the Female Principle," in Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature, edited by Carole Boyce Davies & Anne Adams Graves, Africa World Press, Inc., 1986, pp. 223-39.

In the following excerpt, Fido traces Okigbo's treatment of female characters in his poetry and links Okigbo's view of women to Igbo tradition and familial influences.

Igbo culture is a complex entity, and the boundaries which define it are diffuse. Igbo people have intermarried with peoples along their borders, and the colonial intrusion and its aftermath has so changed things that it is hard even for scholars bent on determining essential facts to find them. The process of disentangling colonial influences and non-Igbo influences from the core of traditional Igbo culture is ongoing, but debates persist as to whether one element or another is old Igbo or is the product of a continually...