Throughout history, people have grown a perception of incapability or some sense of inferiority when it comes to previously colonized countries and their effort to resist. However, what most people, including the media, fail to see is the brutality, traps, and negligence within the imperial system. Chinua Achebe dives into how the conservative and diverse traditions of an Igbo society changed after colonization by the British. Here’s my favorite part of this book: the reader is able to have an insight not from the colonizers, but rather the colonized. I’ve grown to realize that people have suffered immensely and were stripped away from their religion, family, and beliefs in the name of colonization. Achebe as an author was a strong advocate for decolonization and as a Nigerian, he writes about a perspective of Igbo culture that I never knew about. After reading this book, I found myself researching decolonization and realized that most media, books, or documents from colonization are passed through white men.
However, Things Fall Apart portrays a perspective of an imperial system through the thought process of natives. I truly enjoyed reading, but at times the novel was a little slow. I would rate this book 4.5/5.