Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart follows a wealthy and respected warrior, Okonkwo, living in a late 1800’s Nigerian tribe. Haunted by the actions that led his father, Unoka, into exile, Okonkwo leads his life by rejecting his father’s feeble and “feminine” demeanor. To fully denounce his father’s scarred reputation, Okonkwo embodies, what he feels, is an ideal warrior to a great extreme. While Okonkwo hopes to gain the respect of his clan, his actions that reflect this warrior construct are interpreted differently by his fellow clansmen.
Achebe immerses readers in pages of pure Igbo culture, bringing readers into a full understanding of the societal customs and government of the Igbo people in Nigeria at this moment in time. However, the end of the novel is met with the growing and consuming influence of British colonial expansion. Through tactics of pacification and outward violence, the colonial missionaries successfully break apart Okonkwo’s tribe. When Okonkwo attempts to resist these abrupt changes, his clan responds indifferently to his ambition. Through this rejection, Okonkwo meets his tragic downfall as a result of his weak collective identity.
Achebe concludes in the novel with a jarring transition into the perspective of a colonial missionary, in which the missionary decides to write a novel, titled The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger, that encapsulates Okonkwo’s tragic and complex life into a single paragraph. The demeaning language used in this title, as well as the arrogance and indifference highlighted in the missionary’s brief inclusion of Okonkwo, struck me the hardest. I felt that the most significant moment of the novel occurred at the end, in which Achebe illuminates a major global issue: outsider perspectives, such as that of the missionary, diminish and flatten the depth of insider perspectives.
While insider perspectives show depth and reality, outsider perspectives can misrepresent, simplify, or erase the lived reality of underprivileged groups. The insensitivity of an outsider can strip the dignity and traditions of an insider, creating a contrast between what readers know and what an outsider records. Ultimately, Achebe’s novel presents readers with a universal message: perspective directs our knowledge and only those with first-hand knowledge and experience should have the privilege of telling their story.
Last summer, I decided to explore contemporary international literature further when I discovered Chinua Achebe’s African Trilogy, starting with Things Fall Apart, a book about an Igbo warrior’s struggle against British colonialism and the devaluation of his culture. I found this book particularly interesting, as it offered a new, first-person perspective of the effects of European colonialism that no history textbook could really replicate.
The book begins with an introduction to Okonkwo, the main character of this novel, who is a wealthy warrior and a “man of title” in his hometown of Umuofia. From a young age, Okonkwo adopts an opposite view of life to that of his father, Unoka, whom he viewed as weak and “effeminate” due to his laziness and love for the arts. Due to this start, Okonkwo worked as hard as possible to rise above his condition, gaining a rigid worldview as a result.
As the story progresses, Achebe reveals more aspects of pre-colonial Africa through his storytelling. After a funeral ceremony ritual involving a gun salute goes wrong, resulting in the death of a 16-year-old, Okonkwo gets exiled for 7 years to his motherland, Mbanta, as a punishment for his direct involvement. In Mbanta, Okonkwo begins to hear stories from his friend, Obierika, about the arrival of European missionaries. As years pass in exile, Okonkwo witnesses the devaluation of their traditional religious beliefs and values.
Through Okonkwo, Achebe attempts to explore the theme of masculinity as one that is central to the novel, particularly through Okonkwo’s rigid ideals about strength and weakness, which render him stoic to a fault. Okonkwo’s rigid categorization of activities that he considers “feminine” and “masculine,” along with his struggle to remain in control throughout the novel, can ultimately be interpreted as reasons behind his inability to adapt to changing circumstances.
Overall, I found Achebe’s storytelling style, as well as the narrative that this book sends, incredibly powerful. Through his usage of proverbs and an accurate depiction of traditional Igbo culture, Achebe paints a vivid picture of pre-colonial African society and gives the reader a new perspective on the effects of European colonialism. I would recommend this book, as well as the other two books in this trilogy, to anybody who is interested in world history, particularly the history of African literature.
Othello by William Shakespeare is a powerful and emotional tragedy that explores jealousy, trust, manipulation, and the destructive effects of insecurity. The play follows Othello, a respected Moorish general in the Venetian army, who secretly marries Desdemona, a noblewoman. Their love is strong, but things quickly take a dark turn when Othello’s trusted ensign, Iago, begins to manipulate him into believing Desdemona is unfaithful.
One of the most fascinating parts of the play is Iago himself. He’s one of Shakespeare’s most clever and sinister villains, and watching how he carefully plants seeds of doubt and twists every situation to his advantage is both impressive and unsettling. Iago doesn’t use violence—he uses words, and it’s a chilling reminder of how dangerous manipulation can be.
What really stood out to me is how the play explores human emotion in such a raw way. Othello is a man of honor and strength, but he’s also deeply insecure about his race, his background, and whether he truly belongs in the world around him. Once Iago starts preying on those insecurities, Othello’s jealousy takes over, leading to heartbreaking consequences. The tragedy doesn’t come from evil alone—it comes from vulnerability, which makes the story feel very human and real.
Shakespeare’s language is rich and poetic, and while it can be challenging at first, it’s worth the effort. There are moments of beauty, especially in the early scenes between Othello and Desdemona, and moments of intensity that hit hard even centuries later. The famous line “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster” really captures the core of the story: how dangerous it can be when we let fear and suspicion control us.
Even though the ending is tragic, Othello leaves a strong impression. It’s not just a story about betrayal—it’s about how trust, identity, and love can be destroyed from the inside when people let doubt take root. I found the themes surprisingly relevant, especially in how it deals with race, manipulation, and the power of words.
I’d give Othello a solid 7/10. It’s emotional, intense, and thought-provoking, and it shows why Shakespeare’s works have lasted so long. If you’re interested in drama, psychology, or timeless human struggles, this is definitely a play worth reading.
In the 21st century, teens and adults alike are bombarded by notifications ranging from depressing news stories to shocking exposés regarding beloved celebrities. Social media has made people emotionally numb as they swipe from one heartwarming post to a sob story on the next page, disrupting their capability to process emotions. In such a mentally taxing world, it seems only natural that some would seek escape through other mediums- this being literature, mainly fiction.
But what do I mean by “escape?” The term for mentally excusing oneself from reality and seeking a sense of calmness, namely through fantasy, is how Oxford Dictionary defines the word “escapism.” While exploring fantastical worlds is okay in moderation, escapism is the excessive use of material to sever one’s connection from reality, resulting in an unhealthy relationship with the real world. This makes it difficult for people to address the root of their problems- whether it be an unfulfilling career, lackluster social life, or an underlying mental health condition, escapism shrouds the problem and allows it to be forgotten in exchange for temporary relief.
Chief offenders of indulging escapist tendencies include the renowned Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series which are known for their elaborate worlds of magic and Greek mythology. While the authors of the franchises themselves aren’t to blame for the problems of others, they certainly provide a plethora of spinoffs and merchandise to keep legacy readers sucked in for several years (if not decades). With the Harry Potter fans, known as “Potterheads,” a thriving community of middle-aged Millennials are present on platforms such as Discord, Reddit, and Twitter. While being a longstanding fan of a book series is not problematic in itself, it becomes an issue when individuals become so enthralled with the stories that they cannot distinguish reality from itself.
For example, when entering a Google search of “Potterheads are convinced Harry Potter is real,” a plethora of social platforms with questions about whether Harry Potter could possibly be real pop up. Through Google’s Q&A system, a worrying, question of “Is it possible that Harry Potter is real?” can also be noticed. As Miriam Margoyles, the actor who played Pomona Sprout in the Harry Potter series concerningly stated, “I worry about Harry Potter fans because they should be over that by now” (Margoyles Miriam, “Miriam Margolyes jokingly tells Harry Potter fans to grow up | Seven Sharp,” 2024). If even those who stand to gain the most from this disillusionment take issue with escapism, it is time for us to address it as well.
Of course, this analysis of human behavior is all in good fun and I appreciate you reading!
Ellison was born in Oklahoma city, Oklahoma, on March 1, 1914. He was named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous American writer and poet of the 19th century, and his father wanted him to be a poet, too. He lost his father at the age of three and grew up in a poor family. He loved music, especially jazz, and decided to be a musician. After high school, he won a scholarship to study music at the Tuskegee Institute, a black college. Because of scholarship problems, he had to go to New York after his junior year of college. He originally intended to earn some money to continue his studies, but he ended up staying in New York, where he started his literary career with the help and influence of the famous black poet Langston Hughes and the novelist Richard Wright, among others. In his early years, he mainly wrote critical articles and published two collections of essays, “Shadow and Act” and “Going to the Territory”, which elaborated his views on literature, music and the political and social life of African Americans. In 1952, the novel “Invisible Man” was published after seven years of careful creation.
The novel described the psychological maturity of a black youth in a society full of apartheid and racial discrimination, which belongs to the genre of growth fiction. Apart from the overture and epilogue, the novel can be divided into three parts: life at a black southern college, experiences in New York’s freedom paint factory, and experiences in Harlem. The novel is a combination of realism, naturalism, expressionism and surrealism. It expresses complex and profound themes through seemingly simple plots, especially the use of a large number of symbols, so that the novel can be understood from different levels and perspectives. Although he did not publish the second part of the novel for various reasons, his creative activities never ceased. After he died, his literature executors published Ellison’s second novel “Juneteenth”.
Mr. Ellison has been criticized for his advocacy of racial integration, cultural diversity, his lack of direct involvement in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Aesthetically, his main point is that “novelists should take moral responsibility for democracy”. His novels are devoted to changing the traditional stereotype of black people and reshaping their humanity. Ellison won the National Book Award in 1953 and 1965 and received the U.S. Medal of Freedom and was accepted as a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences.
-Coreen C.
The works of Ralph Ellison are available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. They can also be downloaded for free from Overdrive.
Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920 — June 6, 2012) was born in Waukegan, Illinois, USA. He loved adventure stories and fantasy novels, especially the fantastic stories edited by Gernsback. When he was twelve, he was given a typewriter for his birthday. He began to practice his writing. As early as middle school, he took an elective course on how to write a novel. He began to contribute to several magazines in 1941, became a professional writer in 1943, and won the Best American Short Story Award three years later. He has written several novels, such as “Fahrenheit 451” is quite famous. But he is also known for his short stories, so far short stories published nearly 20 units, including the famous are: “The Martian Chronicles” (1950), “the Golden Apples of the Sun” (1953), “The Rocket” (1962), “Last Night of the World” (1966), etc. Bradbury is not only a world-famous science fiction writer, but also one of the leading grammarian in contemporary American literature. In addition to writing science fiction, he wrote screenplays and social fiction, and adapted the classic American literary work “Moby Dick” by Melville into a screenplay. He himself drew nourishment from the classics as well.
Bradbury is one of those rare writers whose work has changed the way people think. With over 500 books — including short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, television plays, and poetry — he represented the pinnacle of American imagination. Once you read his work, his words will stick with you. His enduring appeal to both the old and the young proves once again that Bradbury was a true classic of the 20th century.
The works of Ray Bradbury are available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. They may also be downloaded for free from Overdrive.
For all the self-proclaimed literary snobs—you know, those who continually reference books and apply its meanings to the chapters of one’s life—Gabrielle Zevin introduces A.J. Fikry, a middle-aged and depressed bookseller on the coast of Massachusetts. Encompassing this universal feeling, of a storied life, Zevin characterizes all of us through him. Her novel, memoir, a minder—I’m not even sure what to call it—is nothing short of a masterpiece and warmly prompts us to recall why we read and how we love one another.
Fikry doesn’t have a lot of customers and even fewer friends. Mourning the loss of his wife, Fikry prizes his first edition copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tamerlane,” until it goes missing within the first few chapters. Left in its place is a small bundle. Spurring an unexpected change in his life, Fikry stubbornly comes to learn that the capacity of his love is not limited to paperbacks and late wife.
For the most part, Zevin’s writing is optimistic but realistically honest. As an array of characters is introduced, her writing accommodates. For Fikry, his old-fashioned life is personified by careful and calculated narration. However, as new friends find their way into his life, the style of writing expands. It seemingly mimics the path which Fikry takes in order to step outside his bookshop and into the life of others.
A bit like Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin represents the old-fashioned reader within all of us. There is something timeless and special about The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, as it provides an unexpected and touching story for almost any audience. Something Fikry may appreciate, and aligned with Zevin’s writing, I find the Beatles’ “Long and Winding Road” to be a fitting song. Through tones of inevitable and haunting lonesome, the lyrics remind us that the next step is to find a door and walk through it. Until we invite someone else to walk along with us, we will continue to walk along this road of life alone.
Literary snob or casual reader, almost anybody can connect with Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. It is both a New York Times Bestseller and now one of the most memorable books I have read. I highly recommend.
-Maya S.
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It can also be downloaded from Overdrive.
Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in st. Paul, Minnesota, to a family of small businessmen. His ancestors, who had once been rich and powerful, have faded down to his parents’ generation. In 1913, supported by relatives, he attended Princeton University, an aristocratic institution of higher learning in the eastern United States. But he had no interest in his studies, often missed classes and failed exams, and focused almost entirely on social activities. He managed to get into the school’s literary group, was invited to the most famous clubs, shook off his country accent, and developed a standard “advanced” English, trying to subtly erase differences of birth. In 1915, when Princeton’s theater troupe toured the United States with his comedy “The Evil Eye,” he was barred from performing with the group because of his grades.
In the spring of 1917, the United States entered World War I, and Fitzgerald joined the army. In late 1918, Fitzgerald left the army and headed to New York, where he found only a job writing the words for a little-known advertising agency. In June 1919, his lover Zelda lost patience and called off the engagement. Early experiences led to Fitzgerald’s lifelong sensitivity to money. In 1919, Fitzgerald returned home with nothing. Published in February 1920, the novel “This Side of Paradise” became an instant hit for its vivid sense of The Times, and the first edition sold out in a few days. Magazines began to scramble for him.
On December 21, 1940, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack caused by alcoholism at the age of 44, leaving behind an unfinished work, “The Last Tycoon”.
He is a legendary author with a flourishing life, but his outstanding literary understanding and writing abilities did not leave him with a glorious ending.
-Coreen C.
The works of F. Scott Fitzgerald is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. They may also be downloaded for free from Overdrive.
Born into a Hungarian Jewish immigrant family, Von Humboldt Fleischer had the romantic temperament of a poet. Many things were sacred in his eyes, and he dreamed of transforming the world with art. But his success did not last long, and he was vilified by some unscrupulous writers. By the end of the 1940s his romanticism was out of date and the era of fanaticism and poetry was over. Art could not transform society, so he tried to get involved in politics, but his bad luck was so bad that he was sent to an insane asylum. Although he was released from the hospital, he soon died in a New York tavern and was buried in a funeral mound. Charles Citrine was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. After his rise to fame, he went to New York to follow the great poet where Humboldt helped him to become a university lecturer and to write a historical play based on him.
While Humboldt was very poor, Citrine’s play was a hit on Broadway. Fame was followed by money and beauty and he lived a life of luxury. The temptation of material broke his worship of the authority of art and his pursuit of serious thoughts, which made him lose his creative inspiration. At the same time, he could not get rid of the intellectual disposition. His life is full of material and spiritual contradictions, both want to enrich the human soul, but also want fame and wealth. His soul was lost in uncertainty and anguish. After years of spendthrift, divorceable wives, dissolute mistresses, lawyers, and social gangsters trying to cash in on him, he went broke and ended up in a cheap boarding house in Spain. Just when he was at his wit’s end, he was presented with Humboldt’s bequest — two script outlines, one of which has been made into a movie and has become a worldwide sensation. Humboldt’s gift not only saved his life and future, but also gave him a deeper understanding of Humboldt’s pain and madness along with the fate of intellectuals.
“Humboldt’s Gift” is a genre painting of contemporary American society. No street, no building, no car, no dress, and no hairdo is imaginary. Even fictional characters are based on real people living in the real world. “Humboldt’s Gift” is a panorama of American society on a grand scale. From hooligans to senators, from the White House to chicken joints, from mystics to mafia-controlled booty shops, poets, scholars, cultural crooks, big money gamblers, judges, lawyers, psychiatrists, and moneymakers, the list goes on and on.
James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish writer and poet. He was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century and one of the founders of postmodern literature. His works and stream of consciousness had a great influence on the world of literature. He has lived in Paris since 1920. He moved from place to place throughout Europe, teaching English and writing for a living. In his later years, he suffered from eye diseases and nearly lost his sight. His works are complex in structure, peculiar in language and highly original. His main work is a collection of short stories called Dubliners (1914), which describes the daily life of lower citizens and shows the destruction of people’s ideals and hopes by social environment.The autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) describes the psychology of the characters and the world around them with a large number of inner monologues. The masterpiece novel Ulysses (1922) shows the loneliness and pessimism of people in modern society. In his later work, the full-length novel Finnegan’s Wake (1939) borrows the dream to express the ultimate thinking on human existence and destiny, and the language is extremely difficult to understand.
James Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland, on February 2, 1882. His father had a strong faith in nationalism and his mother was a devout Catholic. When Joyce was born, the beautiful island nation of Ireland was a British colony, plagued by war and poverty. He had a large family of younger brothers and sisters, but his father favored the talented eldest son and gave him money to buy foreign books, whether the family had enough to eat or not. He grew up at the Catholic church school. Joyce is the youngest of the students. His academic performance is outstanding, and he initially shows extraordinary literary talent. Since the 19th century, the Irish Renaissance movement formed in Dublin with Yeats, Lady Gregory and Singer as the center, and he received the influence directly. Through friends, he was also influenced by the Irish National Independence movement. But what influenced him even more strongly was the emergence of liberal ideas in European literature at the end of the 19th century. Before he graduated from high school, he became suspicious of religion.
In 1898 Joyce entered University College Dublin, where he specialised in philosophy and language. On January 20, 1900, delivered a speech at the Literary and Historical Society of the College on the topic of Drama and Life. On April 1, the Half Moon Review, an English literary magazine, published his review of Ibsen’s work When We Dead Awaken(1899). This article was praised by Ibsen, who was over seventy years old, which encouraged Joyce and strengthened his determination to embark on a literary career. In October 1901, he wrote a self-published essay, The Noisy Times, criticizing the narrow nationalism of Irish theatrical houses.Joyce graduated from University College Dublin in June 1902 with a Bachelor’s degree in Modern Languages. On October 2, he enrolled in classes at St. Cecilia’s Medical School. However, he only studied here until the beginning of November when he gave up his studies due to financial difficulties.
Joyce’s literary career began in 1904 with a collection of short stories called Dubliners. In a letter to Richards, the publisher, he made it clear that the principle of its creation was to write its own chapter in the moral and spiritual history of our country. This, in fact, became his lifelong literary pursuit. In Joyce’s eyes, Dublin was the centre of paralysis in Ireland, a hopeless country under the double oppression and stranglehold of the British Empire and the Catholic Church. In this city at all times there are numbness, depression, reduced act of living drama. Araby, a short story from Dubliners, reveals the charm of the author’s writing and the beauty of his stream-of-consciousness style novels. At the end of July 1906 he went to Rome as a bank correspondent. Since April 1906, the problem of rewriting a collection of short stories called Dubliners has gone back and forth with Richards. A refusal of publication was received on 30 September.
James Joyce began his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in Dublin in 1908 and finished it in Trieste, Italy, in 1914, which lasted for 10 years. The novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has a strong autobiographical color. Through the story of Stephen Dedalus, Joyce actually raises the issue of the relationship between artists and society and life. Stephen Dedalus himself was exactly what he was trying to escape from the world of Dublin, which had taken its revenge on rebellious young artists. Ulysses, a novel written in 1922, borrowed the framework of the Ancient Greek epic, The Odyssey and compared it to character Bloom wandering in Dublin for 18 hours a day as opposed to Odysseus’s 10 years of wandering on the sea, giving Ulysses a generality of modern epic. Through the life of these three people in one day, the novel shows their whole history, their whole spiritual life and their inner world incisively and vividly.
Finnegan’s Wake, a novel published in 1939, borrows the idea of the world circulating in four different social forms from the Italian ideologist Vico in the 18th century, and develops a complex content within this framework. The book is a metaphor for the Bible, Shakespeare, ancient religion, modern history, Dublin local chronicles and so on. It borrows a lot of foreign words and even makes up its own words. Through exaggerated association, it describes the history of Ireland and even the whole mankind and the movement of the whole universe. In addition to the above three works, Joyce also wrote the poetry anthology Chamber Music and the play Exiles.
Mission Viejo Library Teen Voice 