Chinua Achebe\'s Anger at Joseph

Chinua Achebe's Anger At Joseph Conrad

Judith Ortiz/Cofer writes about a young woman of Puerto Rican descent just as she discovers the opposite sex. Elena is not naive about prejudice; she is often teased about being Puerto Rican by Black girls in her school. However, Elena has become a teenager in the mid-sixties, a time when young people were just beginning to consider rejecting notions of their parents regarding whether people from different races and cultures should mix or not.

Elena seems like a sensible young lady. She knows not to try to make friends of the black girls who taunt her, but the handsome and apparently Caucasian boy named Eugene does not taunt her. He seems as interested in her as she is in him. If either of them struggle with whether they should spend time together, the author does not reveal it. However, she does reveal the attitudes of both young peoples' mothers. Elena's mother fears she is headed toward ruin. She is afraid Eugene will take advantage of her. Eugene's mother is more direct. She tells Elena to go away and forget about Eugene.

Elena's willingness to cross cultural boundaries is understandable. She apparently hasn't had any experiences like the one she experiences with Eugene's mother yet. She is fascinated by the life she observes lived by the Jewish couple who lived in Eugene's house before his family moved in. She doesn't care about racial or cultural differences.

Elena was 14 in 1963 - just like my great-aunt, who lived in the South when Kennedy was assassinated. My aunt would not be surprised by Elena's and Eugene's feelings, but also would understand both mothers' reactions. In fact those feelings still exist today. I have friends whose parents were horrified because they dated outside their cultures. There was racial prejudice on the part of my friends' parents: it was OK to date a white boy or girl, because that was a step up, but it wasn't OK to date a black boy or girl.

A doubt anyone can completely ignore racial issues. America is not as racist as it was in 1963, but there's still enough to go around. However, I understand Elena's mother and Eugene's mother better than I do Chinua Achebe's anger at Joseph Conrad. Conrad wrote his book in a very racist time. Achebe acknowledges that we all grow up within a culture whether we recognize it or not. He says of a student that "... The life of his own tribesmen in Yonkers, New York, is full of odd customs and superstitions...." (p. 107) He is offended that others do not recognize the richness of the Nigerian culture he grew up in. In all fairness to the student, how could the student know? It is not the student's fault that African history was left out of the young man's history classes. Perhaps Achebe doesn't realize that when he wrote his speech, in 1975, European-American students who read Heart of Darkness would be appalled at how Africans are portrayed in that book.