Lil abner and Things fall apart

After seeing the well performed and witty musical this week with our very talented classmates, I was thinking about the general concept of “sadie Hawkins day” and how it relates to our current cultures as well as cultures in our current readings. Sadie Hawkins day is the day where basically if a girl catches a boy in a race, they get to marry them on the spot. In American culture.. well I don’t think I need to summarize how that generally works.. I think we all know. And in the ibo culture, polygamy is clearly quite common. I think it’s interesting to think about different types of loves and the way they develop in different cultures. Like in “Dogpatch, USA” there’s no alotted time to really fall in love before marriage, in regular American culture, relationships typically take their time before marriage for real and true love to develop, and in the ibo culture, you can apparently be in love with more than one person at once. Thinking about the different ways in which we love one another is such an interesting concept to me. I dare you to ponder it as well.

¿Stephen Moore and the Federal Reserve?

Igbo culture the men of the towns will often gather to confer and decide on an urgent matter. Urgent matters have always been something that needed to be addressed, even today. Today, some of our urgent matters include economic stability. A key factor in economic stability is interest rates. The Fed sets the interests rates. Stephen Moore is Donald Trump's pick to help lead the federal reserve bank. There are many economists who say that this is a very poor choice on the presidents part. The Federal Reserve Bank should be completely unpolitical, but many people are of the mindset that people like Stephen Moore are politicizing the most influential bank in America.

¿unemployment?

Chinua Achebe is an African writer is read and studied all over the world. In the United States, there are approximately 327,000,000 African Americans. This is about 13% of the population. The United States has actually reached its lowest unemployment rate for African Americans ever (or at least as far back as 1972, the date when the statistic was recorded) with an unemployment rate of 6.8%. The United States overall unemployment rate is currently 3.8%.

Twins in Balinese Culture

Our discussion today in class about twins being considered evil in many African cultures--and subsequently being left to die--reminded me of a Balinese tradition I once read about. In Balinese culture, it used to be very common for twins of the opposite sex to marry each other. The belief in Balinese culture was that opposite sex twins were literally matches made in Heaven, so it was only right for them to marry each other. I read this article when I was thirteen years old, but I have for some reason always remembered it. Personally, while this tradition is definitely incestuous and weird, this Balinese viewpoint of looking at twins is quite fascinating. Considering opposite gender twins "matches made in Heaven" seems much more logical to me than many other ancient myths I have heard. For cultures that believed in a Heaven (like the Balinese) and believed that babies are 'made' in Heaven, the belief that opposite gender twins are matches made in Heaven and should marry each other is actually a fairly logical step.

New Yam Festival and Mardi Gras

A brief comparison we made in class that I appreciated was comparing the New Yam Festival and the values of the Igbo culture to Mardi Gras and New Orleans culture. Mardi Gras is definitely one of my favorite times of the year and Fat Tuesday always depends on Easter, Lent, Ash Wednesday, etc. each year. You could compare that to the New Yam Festival which annually falls based on the cycles of the August moon. Mardi Gras falls right before a new period: Lent where we are consciously giving up something of our choice for six weeks while the New Yam Festival is focused on bringing in a new time period too: a new year and work cycle. New Yam Festival is also known as an art festival filled with bright colors, dancing, and feasting. I think that goes without saying: what would Mardi Gras be without colorful floats and beads, balls to dance at, and of course crawfish to feast on.

How to Become the "Favorite Child"

Today in English class I started thinking about something—why exactly is Ezinma Okonkwo's favorite child? I'm sure there are a ton of reasons (explored and unexplored in the novel), not to mention the fact that some people just mesh better than others. I think it's especially interesting that Okonkwo's favorite child is a girl, which indicates to me that he didn't consciously choose her to be his favorite. After all, he often wishes (aloud) that Ezinma were a boy.

So why exactly is she the favorite? I started thinking about her upbringing and everything we know about her. First of all, she is an only child whose mother is very attached to her (having lost nine other children). Not only is her mother extremely protective, but her mother also treats her daughter differently than other parents probably do. They have a relationship based on mutual respect and equality, which is odd considering Ezinma's only about 10 years old. Ezinma's relationship with her mother has likely shaped her personality, and her personality is one of the main reasons Okonkwo likes her so much. Ezinma possesses so many of the "masculine" (by Igbo standards) traits Okonkwo admires. She's independent, strong-willed, and (seemingly) fearless.

It's ironic that Okonkwo likes her so much because he believes in subduing and controlling women, but his connection to her seems to stem from his subconscious. He's drawn to her despite the fact that he holds males in much higher regard than their female counterparts. Their relationship is definitely imbued with mystery.

Demon Babies Begone!

In Things Fall Apart, we read about Ekwefi's misfortune in keeping her children alive. The medicine man essentially tells Ekwefi and Okonkow that they keeping having an ogbanje, "one of those wicked children who, when they died, entered their mothers' wombs to be born again" (1136).
I did a little research about these demon babies, and here's what I discovered:

•  Ogbanje literally translates to "children who come and go." Hmm...well, that's definitely one way to put it.
• This evil spirit/wicked child intentionally causes the family grief and continues to do so until...
• Female circumcision was a common tactic employed to stop this horrid cycle.
• Mutilating the dead child was another method of supposedly getting rid of the spirit. However, according to my source, sometimes these spirits were said to return with physical scarring (from the mutilation in their past life). Creepy! 
• Much like what ultimately happens in Things Fall Apart, you can also find the spirit's iyi-uwa, which is what happens in Ezinma's case. To understand the iyi-uwa, you should think of it as a touchstone, or a way for the spirit to keep finding the family. If you uncover it from its hiding place, the evil spirit should stop tormenting you.
• Origin?
• Well, some people argue that the concept of ogbanje was used to explain/understand hereditary diseases, like sickle cell anemia for example. Since this disease could be passed down to many children borne from the same mother and father, many or all of them could've died due to ignorance of and lack of treatment for the disease. In turn, people could've speculated that the deaths were all linked to a common evil spirit.
• Sometimes, Igbo people would use the word ogbanje when talking about a rude or stubborn children. (So it might not always be meant literally.)

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogbanje