Quote by Chinua Achebe: “Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”

Whoever controls the story controls how history is remembered and who gets to look heroic. When only one side tells the tale, the other side disappears or becomes the villain. Reclaiming the ability to tell your own story is a fundamental act of power and survival.

Achebe published Things Fall Apart in 1958, a year before Nigerian independence from British colonial rule in 1960. His novel directly countered the portrayal of African societies in European literature as primitive and without culture, giving a name and a humanity to people who had been written about only as objects of colonial administration.

Nigerian novelist and critic widely regarded as the father of modern African literature. His 1958 novel Things Fall Apart is one of the most widely read works of African fiction, translated into over fifty languages. He taught for decades at Bard College in the United States.