Half of a Yellow Sun

It is through works of fiction that I often get insights into historical events, particularly recent ones. Through Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones, I learned about the appalling and gruesome details of the massacre that took place in the Dominican Republic in 1937, when President Rafael Trujillo commanded his army to kill Haitians in the country. Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb gave me a glimpse into the revolution in Ethiopia in the early 1970s. Shauna Singh Baldwin's The Tiger Claw enlightened me on the Nazi Occupation of France during the Second World War. In fact, my dislike for purely historical books have led me often to pick up books that are based on historical events that I could learn from.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, however, caught me off guard completely. I knew from the back cover that this book would be about Nigeria—but I must admit my ignorance here: I had never heard of Biafra until I read this book. While it's true that Africa has always been a bit of an enigma for me, I was still very shocked to learn that I had no prior knowledge of this secessionist state that existed in south-eastern Nigeria for nearly four years.

In the first part of the book, we become acquainted with the main characters: Olanna, the "illogically pretty" Igbo woman, who forsakes her high-end life in Lagos to live with her lover, "the revolutionary" Odeningbo; Ugwu, the houseboy who works in the house of Odeningbo and who enjoys listening quietly to the friends that gather at his master's house every evening. Olanna's twin sister, Kainene, does not share Olanna's good looks but is an ambitious business woman, who in her own way also rebels against her parents; and Richard, the white man and Kainene's lover, who learns to speak fluent Igbo and almost considers himself as one, while being reminded by everyone around him that he is not.

When the events of the late 1960s hit them, it comes as a bit of a shock. The effects are all the more dramatic because we have become acquainted with the characters, whose lives are suddenly and profoundly overturned by the events. Although the book recounts well the diversity of people living in the area, and their contrasting lives depending on whether they live in villages, cities, those who have lived abroad, the servants, etc., the lives of everyone—regardless of their status before the war (unless, of course, they can afford to skip the country)—are hit equally hard by the events.

Ultimately, the book is a love story; a book about love and betrayal. I was particularly struck by the strong words of Olanna's aunt, who reproaches Olanna's devastated state after Odeningbo's first betrayal:

I now know that nothing he does will make my life change... My life will change only if I want it to change... You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man... your life belongs to you and you alone.

The book that one of the narrators in Half of a Yellow Sun wrote, titled The World was Silent when we Died, reminded me of a book I read a few years back: We did Nothing by Linda Polman. When I first read Polman's book, I was appalled to learn how powerless the UN is, and at the dismal state of peace-keeping missions to civil war-torn places such as Haiti and Rwanda. But after a few years as an insider, I now know the process quite well. As Polman demonstrates in her book, it is not the UN that fails, but rather, the Member States; "the UN can do nothing by itself... it can only do what its Member States allow it to do".

If I only knew how to act, and not to be silent, when masses in places faraway die.