A week after Professor Chinua Achebe was buried in
Nigeria, the state of Washington D.C., USA would be hosting a “Celebration of
Life” event on Saturday, June 2, 2013, at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium, 1301
Constitution Ave NW Washington, DC 20240, from 7:00pm to 10:30 pm. An Arts
Exhibition and reception would kick off the celebrations at 6:00pm. The event
is free to the public.
The “Celebration of Life” event
would feature a list of public and private friends and dignitaries, cultural
dance troupes, music, masquerades and tributes. Besides, there would be
performances from the Nigerian music idol, Nneka and the Chuck Mike theatre
group.
The Francesca Harper Project
would also be heading to Washington D.C. Achebe was best known internationally
for the trio of novels globally recognized as “the African Trilogy” – “Things
Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God.” Of the trio, “Arrow of God” is
considered his magnum opus, and his first novel Things Fall Apart – the most
widely read book in modern African literature.
In 2012, he published his memoirs
There was a country – which earned him a spot on Foreign Policy Magazine’s list
of Top100 ‘Global Thinkers’ of 2012. Professor Achebe was credited as the major
20th Century literary voice to bring African culture and literature to the rest
of the world.
A statement from the Nelson
Mandela Foundation in South Africa quoted Nelson Mandela as referring to
Professor Chinua Achebe as a writer “in whose company the prison walls fell
down.” Professor Achebe established the Chinua Achebe Foundation in the early
‘90s.
Chaired by Archbishop Desmond
Tutu, the foundation had worked to promote peace through the arts; showcase
Africa complex cultural heritage to the world, while recapturing lost
components of African fine art, literature and languages.
0 comments:
Post a Comment