Purple Hibiscus: A complex and compelling Novel

One of the ways I put myself in the shoes of other cultures and peoples is to read their literature.  I have read such novels as Endo’s Silence, Potlock’s My Name is Asher Lev,  and Hussein’s Kite Runner.  Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie  is the first novel I can remember reading from an African author. I could not, I believe, have chosen a better one.    Adichie’s novel is set in her postcolonial home country of  Nigeria.  I first encountered her as a novelist when she presented a Tedtalk on the theme of “The Danger of a Single Story” . If you have not seen this Tedtalk I highly recommend you take a look at her presentation. I have finally, several years later been able to get around to reading one of her novels. Purple Hibiscus is a novel that can be read on a number of levels, each of which raises questions of both our diversity as human beings and our shared human brokenness.

The plot centers around a financially well off family in the city of Enugu in the country of Nigeria.  The story is told through the eyes of Kambili Achike, the youngest child and only daughter in a family of four. The plot slowly twists, turning the emotional tension of the novel up a degree with every page. About half way through the novel, the tension is sprung as the result of a small infraction committed by Kambili.  Her father Eugene beats her so badly she has to be hospitalized.
The beating results, in turn in an extended stay with her paternal Aunt Ifeoma. As her aunt states after the incident,  “When a house is on fire, you run out before the roof collapses on your head” (pp. 213-214).  Here Kambili and her older brother, Jaja, have their first real taste of freedom and love. “I had felt as if I were not there, that I was just observing a table where you could say anything at any time to anyone, where the air was free for you to breathe as you wished” (p. 120).  But it is not meant to last and after a period they are brought home. However, their journey home comes after both siblings have realized their father is not simply difficult but dangerous.  In the end steps and taken to protect themselves.  Events are quickly brought to a boil once again. When the story draws to a close, Jaja is forced to protect his mother and sister by  spending time in prison. Thankfully the novel does not end in complete tragedy but a feeling of hope and expectation of redemption. 

 Adichie’s portrait of a broken family is an arresting one.  It is interesting to see how community and extended family play an outsized role in the disfunction compared to what an American novelist might have written. But broken family dynamics are sadly universal. One could map out the classic roles of villain, hero, victim.  One can easily contrast the monetarily poor, but happy and free Ifeoma and her children with the monetarily prosperous but oppressed Achike family.  The narcissistic father who pleads in the moment of violence and betrayal that he is simply trying his best to love those he is hurting. As Aunty Ifeoma describes, “Eugene quarrels with the truths that he does not like.” (p. 95).  Kambili states in one of the most haunting lines of the book that she was, “feeling the love burn my tongue.”   Jaja sacrifices himself to protect his sibling and his mother. The mother who seeks to defend her husband even as she carries the scars of her husband’s abuse.  The lies that are continuously presented to the outside world in order to cover up the sickness within.  All of these elements make for a compelling if heart breaking picture of the Achike’s.

 Another way in which to read this novel, or at least an element within the novel to pay close attention to is the place of religion in the story. Kambili’s father is as abusive physically and emotionally as he is deeply religious.  It is well worth noting that Adiche does not bash religion universal, but again contrasts what is of the husband and father’s religion with the religious faith found in Ifeoma’s network.  In the Achike family religion is used as a means of gagging protest, of keeping those around the father inline with his own desires. It is meant to terrify individuals to proper behavior.  But in Ifeoma’s network religion is of the people, growing into and out of a mix of Roman Catholic Faith and native culture in a unique but orthodox Christianity. One of the most interesting characters is Ft. Amadi. A priest who toward the end of the book journey’s to Germany to do missions work.  His presence, his peace and the love he has for others is literally attractive to Kambili.

Finally, one could also examine this novel in light of colonialism and post colonial struggles.  I imagine this is to be an expected element in any novel out of Africa.  However, I feel Adiche does an excellent job looking at the complexity of the issue.  I feel stung with guilt by Adiche’s words, “We had to sound civilized in public, [Eugene] told us; we had to speak English” (p. 13).  Or when Eugene extols the virtue of his grandfather, “He did things the right way, the way the white people did, not what our people do now!” (p. 68).  Adiche’s characters have perspective on the events and tragedies of their home.



“There are people, [aunt Ifeoma] once wrote, who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not all crawl, once.”  (p. 301).
      
In conclusion, I have appreciated this novel on  number of levels. This novel works as a study of genuine faith verses controlling abusive faith. It works as a story of families broken  by expectations and fears, and families living free under the oppression and failures of others.  It is also a novel of the complexity of cultural identity.  The mixture of different stories trying to find their place in a larger more complete story.

Dreher's mono-colored glasses

         The Benedict Option by Richard Dreher fails as a book, and on the whole as a project. It fails not because of what it is but because of what it so obviously ignores.  The Benedict Option as an argument sets out to convince the reader the Church must preserve at all cost.  The Church will do so by retreating, like a turtle into it’s shell, from the larger world and the chaos of postmodernism. It must do so not only because truth and virtue and not valued in our time but also because the Church defends all that is good and beautiful in the West. Instead of Tolkien’s Aragorn pronouncing “Men of the West, Stand and Fight,”  Dreher would have the Church run and hide.  The Church’s act of preservation as Dreher contends will in the end result in creating a Church that is peculiar in the extreme. A church that is outside of the norm as much as a Division One state university not having a football program is to college sports. He pronounces technology dangerous and current sexual practice on par with the like of Sodom and Gomorrah.  I too believe technology needs to be understood and utilized within its proper limits.  I believe that our  current sexual practices and beliefs leave people in absolute ruin.  What troubles me is the alarmist tone which underlines and shadows every claim and piece of evidence.         No, what is needed is something more. Dreher fails to convince that his book is anything more than alarmist hand ringing because he fails to call for something new based on the examples of the past. Indeed the past must be mined. But we can not simply look to recreate that past that has long since fallen into the history books.  He jumps 1500 years in the past in order to find communities that can provide a model for the future.  What he so clearly misses to me is that the church in the recent past has been living out what he argues. 
              Here is what really dooms his book, his mono-culturalism. One of the benefits, blessings even of postmodernism is our awareness of and interactions with dozens of other cultures.  It is no longer the elite ambassadors traveling to foreign countries but it is the local high school student who is shaped and becomes aware of more then his small community. Dreher’s is fixated with white, European, liturgical expression of church in the first millennia. He ignores rich traditions of other ethnicities.
 The black Church for 100 years at least (since reconstruction at minimum) has been developing a peculiar Christian church.  The Black Church has stood fast in the face of racial injustice and a larger corrupt culture bent on shaping the world not into the kingdom of God but a safe kingdom for a particular ethnic identity. There are many lessons and pitfalls that we should learn from.  Or Dreher might have looked to the Chinese Church under communism. Or the Roman Catholic Church in Japan and authors like Suski Endo. His argument what have felt more substantive had he broadened his research sources.
               What I wish Dreher would have written is an analysis of the black church for white Christians who are waking up to their minority status in American culture.  What lesson does the black church have to teach us about being The Church?  What pitfalls and problems has the Historical Black Church faced? How can we avoid these mistakes in the church that will come about in the next 100-200 years?  I look forward to a future taking the tradition of Dante, Augustine and Bach and seeing the creative explosion of new art, music and literature when it is placed in conversation with Endo, Du Bois, and Ellington. Not to mention the countless other Christian communities living out what he argues for in a non-western context.

               He begins his argument by demonstrating that the Church is losing the culture wars. Really?  Is anyone in Western Christianity really still so naive to believe we are wining against secularism? Why thump us over the head, again with what many of us have already come to decades ago?  I  find only the out of touch, arrogant, and cloistered away in ever smaller churches would hold fast to the belief that power politics and strict moralism will save the Church.