The Magical Years
On November 16, 1930, in Nnobi, near my hometown of
Ogidi, providence ushered me into a world at a cultural crossroads. By then, a
longstanding clash of Western and African civilizations had generated deep
conversations and struggles between their respective languages, religions, and
cultures.
Crossroads possess a certain dangerous potency.
Anyone born there must wrestle with their multiheaded spirits and return to his
or her people with the boon of prophetic vision; or accept, as I have, life’s
interminable mysteries.
My initiation into the complicated world of Ndi Igbo
was at the hands of my mother and my older sister, Zinobia, who furnished me
with a number of wonderful stories from our ancient Igbo tradition. The tales
were steeped in intrigue, spiced with oral acrobatics and song, but always
resolute in their moral message. My favorite stories starred the tortoise mbe,
and celebrated his mischievous escapades. As a child, sitting quietly,
mesmerized, story time took on a whole new world of meaning and importance. I
realize, reminiscing about these events, that it is little wonder I decided to
become a storyteller. Later in my literary career I traveled back to the magic
of the storytelling of my youth to write my children’s books: How the Leopard
Got His Claws, Chike and the
River, The Drum,
and The Flute: A
Children’s Story (Tortoise books).
