The Headstrong Historian

“Her father found her exhausting, this sharp-tongued, head-strong daughter who had once wrestled her brother to the ground. (After which her father had warned everybody not to let the news leave the compound that the girl had thrown a boy.)”

Even as a child, Nwamgba is shown to have a fighting spirit that matches the men of her community. Nwamgba’s stubborn and decisive traits are both a strength and a weakness; while her inflexibility is the backbone of her resilience, her dedication causes her to act without thinking of the consequences. This causes issues for her family and makes her rely on them for solutions—much like how her father needs to protect her reputation when she wrestles with a boy.

“So she took Anikwenwa on long walks, telling him that the land from that palm tree to that plantain tree was theirs, that his grandfather had passed it on to his father. She told him the same things over and over, even though he looked bored and bewildered, and she did not let him go and play in moonlight unless she was watching.”

Nwamgba’s insistence that Anikwenwa know the land he is meant to inherit and his seeming disinterest in his family’s legacy foreshadow the discord that eventually takes root in the family. While Anikwenwa casts away his family’s culture, Nwamgba remains steadfast in her cultural identity and tries to maintain the family legacy, if not through her son, then through her granddaughter.

“It infuriated him, their overlong talk and circuitous proverbs, their never getting to the point, but he was determined to excel here; it was the reason he had joined the Holy Ghost Congregation, whose special vocation was the redemption of black heathens.”

Though Father Shanahan professes benevolence and offers education to children in the community, this passage shows his honest feelings about the people he is meant to help. By calling Nwamgba and the other parents “black heathens,” he not only indicates that he holds Nigerian culture and traditions in contempt, but he also implies that they are inferior to him, his congregation, and Christian people in general.

“To pay her bride price, Obierika came with two maternal cousins, Okafo and Okoye, who were like brothers to him. Nwamgba loathed them at first sight. She saw a grasping envy in their eyes that afternoon as they drank palm wine in her father’s obi, and in the following years, years in which Obierika took titles and widened his compound and sold his yams to strangers from afar, she saw their envy blacken.”

Nwamgba’s first meeting with Obierika’s cousins sets the tone for their future interactions. Though Nwamgba is quick to identify Okafo and Okoye as exploiters, Obierika’s blind love for them becomes his biggest vulnerability. As their envy grows, they use his vulnerability for their own gain, which sets the story’s main events in motion.

“The waters of Oyi were fresher than those of the other stream, Ogalanya, or perhaps it was simply that she felt comforted by the shrine of the Oyi goddess, tucked away in a corner; as a child she had learned that Oyi was the protector of women, the reason women were not to be sold into slavery.”

Nigerian gods are a constant presence in Nwamgba’s daily life and are responsible for both innocuous occurrences, like the Oyi river’s freshness, and social laws and expectations, like the reason women shouldn’t be sold into slavery. As missionaries spread Christianity across Nigeria, this belief system is eroded and lost to future generations, who will no longer know the indigenous knowledge that the river once held.

“They named him Anikwenwa: the earth god Ani had finally granted a child. He was dark and solidly built and had Obierika’s happy curiosity.”

The birth of Nwamgba and Obierika’s son signals what should be the continuation of Obierika’s family legacy, as Anikwenwa inherits his father’s “happy curiosity.” Despite the odds, they overcome Obierika’s (possibly supernaturally induced) impotency and provide an heir to carry on his family legacy—until Obierika dies, and things begin to go awry.

“Some white men were visiting different clans, asking parents to send their children to school, and she had decided to send Azuka, the son who was laziest on the farm, because although she was respected and wealthy, she was still of slave descent, her sons still barred from taking titles. She wanted Azuka to learn the ways of foreigners, since people ruled over others not because they were better people but because they had better guns.”

Ayaju introduces Nwamgba to the idea of using the white men, their resources, and their language to her benefit by having her son learn English. She decides to register her son Azuka at school for social security. This gives Nwamgba the idea to do the same with Anikwenwa when she hears how successful the white men’s courts are at settling disputes.

“Weeks later, Ayaju brought another story: the white men had set up a courthouse in Onicha where they judged disputes. They had indeed come to stay. For the first time, Nwamgba doubted her friend. Surely the people of Onicha had their own courts. The clan next to Nwamgba’s, for example, held its courts only during the new yam festival, so that people’s rancor grew while they awaited justice. A stupid system, Nwamgba thought, but surely everyone had one”

Nwamgba’s remarks underline how Nigerian society at large is beginning to change and subscribe to foreign intrusions in social and legal functions. Ironically, though she initially deplores the use of the white men’s courts instead of her people’s own, she eventually seeks their legal power to have Anikwenwa’s inheritance reinstated.

“Nwamgba had no desire to speak such a thing herself, but she was suddenly determined that Anikwenwa would speak it well enough to go to the white men’s court with Obierika’s cousins and defeat them and take control of what was his.”

Nwamgba’s decision to send Anikwenwa to school is solely based on her desire for him to be empowered to retrieve what is rightfully his. Unlike Ayaju, who seemingly tolerates the white men’s presence, Nwamgba holds a perceptive distaste for them, to the extent that she will not arm herself with the English language to fight for her son’s inheritance.

“Nwamgba roughly yanked his ear and told him that a foreign albino could not determine when their customs would change, so until the clan itself decided that the initiation would stop, he would participate or else he would tell her whether he was her son or the white man’s son. Anikwenwa reluctantly agreed, but as he was taken away with a group of boys, she noticed that he lacked their excitement. His sadness saddened her.”

As Anikwenwa further accepts Father Shanahan’s teachings, he not only isolates himself from the other boys in his community but also creates a rift between himself and his mother. Choosing to follow the missionary’s teachings effectively makes him choose a different family; in the end, as Anikwenwa loses the footholds that bind him to his mother, father, and ancestors, he comes to be something like “the white man’s son.”

“Nwamgba, who still found it difficult to remember that Michael was Anikwenwa, went to the oracle herself, and afterwards thought it ludicrous how even the gods had changed and no longer asked for palm wine but for gin. Had they converted, too?”

The expansion of the white men’s influence in their community includes cultural practices. Tradition begins to erode, and a new, twisted version of practices that conform to more European tastes and standards takes shape in its place.

“From the moment Nwamgba held her, the baby’s bright eyes delightfully focused on her, she knew that it was the spirit of Obierika that had returned; odd, to have come in a girl, but who could predict the ways of the ancestors?”

That Afamefuna would inherit her grandfather’s spirit—and by extension, his legacy—over her brother signals that the traditional inheritance cycle of fathers passing on their legacy to their sons has fully been broken by Anikwenwa and Nnamdi. Nwamgba has comparatively remained steadfast in her commitment, however, and as Afamefuna also inherits her grandmother’s fighting spirit, has the potential to carry on the family legacy. This reinforces the idea that culture is passed down matrilineally.

“The eminent Mr. Gboyega, a chocolate-skinned Nigerian, educated in London, distinguished expert on the history of the British Empire, had resigned in disgust when the West African Examinations Council began talking of adding African history to the curriculum, because he was appalled that African history would even be considered a subject. Grace would ponder this story for a long time, with great sadness, and it would cause her to make a clear link between education and dignity, between the hard, obvious things that are printed in books and the soft, subtle things that lodge themselves in the soul.”

The inclusion of Mr. Gboyega’s story acts as both a warning and a culmination of the colonial experience. From his extensive education in a Western education system that does not recognize the value of African history, culture, or people more generally, Mr. Gboyega internalizes these sentiments and becomes a man with a strained sense of identity, caught between two cultures that do not fully accept him. Despite his dedication to the British Empire through his studies and his endorsement of their colonial views, Mr. Gboyega continues to be viewed as Nigerian—and lesser for it—by the British Empire, while his own dismissal of Africa and its history puts him at odds with his native roots and ostracizes him from Nigerians.