Is Chimamanda the new Achebe?

By Ng'ang'a Mbugua

First, a confession.
I have only read one of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's books; Americanah. And I came away thinking this is an important work not because it talks about Africans but also because it talks about Africans abroad, which puts them in a globalised context.
And now, to the question which was first raised by Dr Tom Odhiambo, who, in an article published last September in the Saturday Nation, a Kenyan weekly, argued that Chimamanda is the new Chinua Achebe.
It could well be that Dr Odhiambo meant that Chimamanda is the next big thing in African and Nigerian writing, which could all be very well. But this is a mixed metaphor. It is like comparing mangoes and oranges, as they say in the fruit market.
Both Chinua and Chimamanda are important writers. In my view, however, they only thing they have in common is that  they come from Nigeria (and are coincidentally both Igbo) but that is all that they share. Whereas Chinua seeks to explore the broad theme of what ails Nigeria, Chimamanda's spotlight is turned on the individual. That that individual is Nigerian is only coincidental because she comes from that cultural context. Her characters - at least in Americanah - could be from any African country. Indeed, the minor ones are from various African countries including one from Kenya and another from Senegal. Her pre-occupation with Africa and Africans is broader than Achebe's, whose spotlight only focuses on Nigeria. Chimamanda picks her characters from all corners of the continent and explores the world through their eyes, something that one does not see in Achebe.
Secondly, Achebe, like Ngugi wa Thiong'o, explored the intersection between a traditional past and a modern present and the dilemmas that this posed for their countries at that point in time. His writing was cultural. The same cannot be said about Chimamanda. Here is a modern writer. In fact, she is closer to the humanist school of literature which is pre-occupied largely with the individual who is trying to come to terms with the angst that characterises modern life. This comes through in the struggles of Ifemelu, her main character, to find love in a series of relationships that do not always work. Some of the entanglements are sexually satisfying, but that is all they offer in a world where women want much more than mere sexual satiation. Some are simply morally offensive, even to Ifem herself, such as her brief liaison with the weird sports coach that is devoid of any emotional attachment and makes Ifem feel dirty to the point where her romantic ideas - fueled by her memories of her romantic escapades with her first lover Obinze - are buried in a deep pit, filling her with self-loathing and denting her faith in love and relationships. Some are simply destined to fail, either because of cultural, racial, temperamental or geographical barriers or because those involved step on each other's toes in their awkward attempts to tango. This is not a world for Ogbwefu Ndulue, the character in Things Fall Apart, whose wife dies within minutes of realising that he, too, is dead. As young people say on Facebook, it is complicated.
Which means that whichever way you look at it, Chimamanda is not the new Achebe. She is a vibrant voice. She brings a different kind of nuance in her tackling of the existential challenges confronting the modern young African man and woman who finds herself in a multi-cultural and multi-racial society whether at home or in the Diaspora. She is not a cultural activist in the way Achebe is and does not seek to find out what is the problem with Nigeria or with African politics per se. Rather, her overriding concern is: What is wrong with this African man/woman who has been uprooted from her home, who is trying to figure out his/her place in a world without borders, who is trying to make sense - not of the big political issues, which are only mentioned where they affect the individual directly, like when an army general keeps a mistress - but of the mundane day-to-day issues that each one of us confronts: Will this hair-dresser make my hair the way I want her to? Will this cab driver give me space to dream my dreams or will he fill my space with his narratives? Will this man love me the way I want to be loved? Should I answer this e-mail or drag it to the trash can? Will my preferred candidate win the election?
For Chimamanda, Africa is just a canvass on which she paints her work. For Achebe, Africa was the work itself. No two writers could be so far apart in their thinking, even in their points of departure and in their aesthetic goals. Chimamanda is not the new Achebe, even if she wrote Half of a Yellow Sun and he wrote There was a Country, both of which explore the Biafran question.
Critics should just consider each of the two writers on their own merits.

Ng'ang'a Mbugua is the author, most recently, of This Land is Our Land, a poetry anthology.