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In this book, Chief Sylvester Okereke uses the story of his life growing up in Eastern Nigeria to provide a first-hand account of several intriguing Igbo cultural practices such as the horse-acquisition chieftaincy title, the manhood rites, the women fattening/circumcision rites, marriage rites and more. In a highly accessible manner, he recounts how his father encouraged him against challenges to pursue education at a time when it was little valued among the people of eastern Nigeria. As historical background, the author discusses the Anglo-Aro war of 1901-02, the conquering of eastern Nigeria by British colonialists in the early 1900s, the concept of warrant/paramount chiefs introduced by Britain as an indirect rule measure in southern Nigeria, and the British shaping of rural communities in eastern Nigeria. He tells of his life in detail--his travail in boarding homes in distant communities where he was sent for studies, the influence of cultural practices on his decision to go to school, and how he conquered these challenges. The book also covers his sojourn into politics as a young man of 21 and discusses the political structure at the time, county councils, native courts, district councils and more.

This book presents an innovative African philosophical response to coloniality and the attendant epistemicide of Africa's knowledge systems, drawing on Igbo thinking.This book argues that theorizing modernity requires a critical conversation between African and Western scholarship, in order to unpack its links with coloniality and the subjugation of Africa's indigenous knowledges. In setting out this discussion, the book also connects with Latin American scholarship, demonstrating how the modern world is structured to marginalize and destroy knowledges from across the Global South. This book draws on Igbo epistemic resources of solidarity thinking, positioned in contrast to capitalist knowledge-patterns, thereby providing an important Africa-driven response to modernity and coloniality. This book concludes by arguing that the Igbo sense of solidarity is useful and relevant to modern contexts and thus constitutes a vital resource for a less disruptive, more balanced, and more wholesome modernity.At a time of considerable global crises, this book makes an important contribution to philosophy both within Africa and beyond.

At the heart of every marriage union among the Igbo people of Nigeria is the desire to have one's own children, preferably male ones who will perpetuate the family name from generation to generation. Hence, no stone is left unturned to make sure that this aim is achieved in marriage. Oftentimes, this desire, despite every effort, is not realized by every married couple. Some marriages still remain childless. The precolonial Igbo were also confronted with childless marriages. But knowing the consequences of a childless marriage, they designed some methods of circumventing the problem. Almost all the methods they employed to make sure that no man died childless, which are extensively discussed in this work, are condemned by the Catholic Church. The Church proffered child adoption among other things as a solution to infertility in marriage. Child adoption, however, is frowned upon by some Igbo on the ground that it is against their culture. This situation, therefore, places some Igbo childless couples who want to remain faithful to the Christian faith on a crossroad of not knowing what to do in the face of infertility. The present work deals extensively on the meaning and ends of marriage among the Igbo people of Nigeria, on what it means to be childless among the Igbo, and on how the precolonial Igbo handled the situation as well as the importance of children in the Igbo family. The Church's teaching on marriage before and after the Second Vatican Council and especially on childless marriages as found in Gaudium et spes is also discussed in a very elaborate way. Other important topics discussed in this work include the Church`s position on artificial reproductive technologies (ART); the meaning of child adoption; and the Igbo people`s knowledge, attitude, and perception about the practice of child adoption. This work argues strongly that child adoption is something good and noble when it aims at the welfare of the child but at the same time not relegating the welfare of the adoptive parents to the background.

In African Women and the Shame and Pain of Infertility: An Ethico-Cultural Study of Christian Response to Childlessness among the Igbo People of West Africa, Okoro discusses the shipwreck that is associated with infertility in marriage in Africa. Within this space, childlessness places a big question mark on a woman's femininity and the self-esteem of the man. The stigma of infertility most often leads to social isolation and humiliation, particularly of married women, even when the source of infertility may not have come from them. Unfortunately, this situation goes against the highly valued Igbo ethical principle of onye aghala nwanne ya, meaning'no kith or kin should be left behind.'Therefore, the purpose of the book is to help married people in Igbo land and Africa at large to appropriate this indigenous principle in their response to the problem of infertility. To attain this, the author critically evaluates discrimination and oppression of infertile couples, particularly women, and shedding light on the paradoxes found in Igbo cultural expressions. He employs a constructive, ethical, cultural, religious, contextual, and theological approach that explores important Igbo religious paradigms like Chi (an Igbo religio-cultural understanding of personal destiny) and Ani (the feminine deity in-charge of the land and fertility) to argue the case for the liberation and integration of infertile couples.

Refrains about financial hardship are ubiquitous in contemporary Nigeria, frequently expressed through the idiom “to be a man is not a one-day job.” But while men talk constantly about money, underlying their economic worries are broader concerns about the shifting meanings of masculinity, amid changing expectations and practices of intimacy. Drawing on twenty-five years of experience in southeastern Nigeria, Daniel Jordan Smith takes readers through the principal phases and arenas of men's lives: the transition to adulthood; searching for work and making a living; courtship, marriage, and fatherhood; fraternal and political relationships; and finally, the attainment of elder status and death. He relates men's struggles both to fulfill their own aspirations and to meet society's expectations. He also considers men who behave badly, mistreat their wives and children, or resort to crime and violence. All of these men face similar challenges as they navigate the complex geometry of money and intimacy. Unraveling these connections, Smith argues, provides us with a deeper understanding of both masculinity and society in Nigeria.

The Igbo are one of the most populous ethnic groups in Nigeria and are perhaps best known and celebrated in the work of Chinua Achebe. In this landmark collection on Igbo society and arts, Toyin Falola and Raphael Chijioke Njoku have compiled a detailed and innovative examination of the Igbo experience in Africa and in the diaspora. Focusing on institutions and cultural practices, the volume covers the enslavement, middle passage, and American experience of the Igbo as well as their return to Africa and aspects of Igbo language, society, and cultural arts. By employing a variety of disciplinary perspectives, this volume presents a comprehensive view of how the Igbo were integrated into the Atlantic world through the slave trade and slavery, the transformations of Igbo identities and culture, and the strategies for resistance employed by the Igbo in the New World. Moving beyond descriptions of generic African experiences, this collection includes 21 essays by prominent scholars throughout the world.

Among other relevant issues, this book adds new insights to the proposed Igbo Christian rites of reconciliation. Towards an inculturation, the resolutional equations of the Igbo cultural method of reconciliation – oriko in ala di mma – are balanced with the sacrament of reconciliation in operational life of the people who are pastorally concerned. In this context, the author refers to the Owerri archdiocesan working document on emume nsacha na ndozi, meaning a ritual of purification and peace, as well as to the Igbo Christian rite of reconciliation proposed by Augustine Echema. The method of these new rites is para-liturgical in nature which highlights the importance of reconciliation of human beings with themselves, their neighbours and God, whenever sin has taken place. Paradoxically, this new method of reconciliation can broaden ecumenism and strengthens the social, cultural, political and religious lives of the people. In this sense, reconciliation can be seen as a natural spiritual cord that ties people to themselves and to God in a communal and Christian environment.

How do we resolve the insider/outsider interpreting conundrum? Why do readers from different parts of the world read, interpret, or understand foreign literatures the way they do? What drives peculiar critical reactions, canon formations and such issues which determine the survival of cultural productions or their continued adoption as useful bolsters for a people's self-definition or indeed self-preservation and self-determination? African Literature: Gender Discourse, Religious Values, and the African Worldview offers a series of fresh insights into most of the old'problematics'which used to sustain the interpretations of African literature, especially by women. Students, scholars, and general readers wishing to consider issues of gender in relation to African cultural and socioeconomic systems and what Salami-Boukari interrogates and names as an'African worldview,'will find the interdisciplinary discussion of historical analyses, literary criticism and gender discourses a useful method for engaging contemporary African perspectives.

In 1987, more than a decade before the dawn of queer theory, Ifi Amadiume wrote Male Daughters, Female Husbands, to critical acclaim.This compelling and highly original book frees the subject position of'husband'from its affiliation with men, and goes on to do the same for other masculine attributes, dislocating sex, gender and sexual orientation. Boldly arguing that the notion of gender, as constructed in Western feminist discourse, did not exist in Africa before the colonial imposition of a dichotomous understanding of sexual difference, Male Daughters, Female Husbands examines the structures in African society that enabled people to achieve power, showing that roles were not rigidly masculinized nor feminized.At a time when gender and queer theory are viewed by some as being stuck in an identity-politics rut, this outstanding study not only warns against the danger of projecting a very specific, Western notion of difference onto other cultures, but calls us to question the very concept of gender itself.