The Headstrong Historian

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Headstrong Historian” is a narrative that seeks to revise Nigerian history and provide an alternative account that considers the impact of both women and colonialism in 19th-century Southern Nigeria. Inspired by other writers of African and African diasporic fiction such as Chinua Achebe, Adichie’s work dismantles the distorted view of a so-called primitive Nigeria that would have the world believe the presence of colonial powers like missionaries purely benefitted its people. Her narrative demonstrates a more nuanced depiction of events through the lives of an ordinary Nigerian woman, Nwamgba, her family, and her fellow community members. While colonial institutions do assist Nwamgba in certain cases, Adichie reveals the dark underbelly of this assistance in her biographical narrative: the dispossession of Nigerian cultural identity through the missionaries’ education system, the fracturing of families, and the loss of family legacies.

Education in “The Headstrong Historian” is initially presented as a useful tool and a benevolent gesture made by a Christian congregation to Nwamgba and her clan. But while the education missionaries offer does lead to legal opportunities for Nwamgba and Anikwenwa, taking classes and learning from their institution is not without cost; it becomes a trap that removes native cultural identities and instead promotes European ones within an African community.