SOURCE: “Okonkwo and His Mother: Things Fall Apart and Issues of Gender in the Constitution of African Postcolonial Discourse,” in Callaloo, Vol. 16, No. 4, Fall, 1993, pp. 847–59.

In the following essay, Jeyifo explores issues of gender in Things Fall Apart.

In the oral tradition, we often do not know whether the storyteller who thought up a particular story was a man or a woman. Of course when one examines the recorded texts, one might wonder whether a myth or story doesn't serve particular interests in a given society.

(Mineke Schipper)

The Chielo-Ezinma episode is an important sub-plot of the novel [Things Fall Apart] and actually reads like a suppressed larger story circumscribed by the exploration of Okonkwo's/man's struggle with and for his people. In the troubled world of Things Fall Apart, motherhood and femininity are the unifying mitigating principles, the lessons for Africa and the world.

(Carole Boyce Davies...