Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create

Hear now the words of Chinua Achebe, the sage of Africa, who spoke not only with ink but with the spirit of a people: “Each of my books is different. Deliberately… I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.” These words are not merely about literature—they are about the sacred duty of memory, the restoration of dignity, and the power of storytelling to bring a people back into the light after long years of being silenced. For Achebe understood that a society forgotten is a society half-dead, and only through the written word could its spirit breathe again.

In these words we see the purpose of the artist when bound to his land: he does not write for vanity, nor for fleeting fame, but to build a mirror in which his people may see themselves whole. Achebe was born into a Nigeria struggling beneath the weight of colonialism, where European voices told the world who Africans were—often as savages, as shadows, as less than human. He chose to answer with stories, weaving books that spoke of Igbo villages, their laws, their laughter, their griefs, their gods. By making each book different, he gave the world not a single mask but a multitude of faces, showing the fullness of a living society.

Consider Things Fall Apart, his most renowned work. In it, he told the story of Okonkwo, a man of pride and strength undone by the collision between tradition and colonial rule. To the world outside Africa, this was revelation, for it shattered the false images painted by conquerors. To the African within, it was recognition—it was the rediscovery of their own voice. Here Achebe’s words find their origin: the book was not simply art, it was the act of creating society on the page, preserving what history tried to erase.

This calling echoes throughout the ages. Think of Homer, who sang the Iliad not merely to glorify heroes, but to hold before the Greeks a vision of who they were—their courage, their folly, their longing for honor and home. Or think of the Hebrew prophets, who spoke and wrote not only laws but the very story of a people, binding them across exile and captivity. Like Achebe, they knew that to write is to preserve, and to preserve is to keep a people alive.

The wisdom of Achebe’s quote is that true creation seeks fullness, not fragments. Too often the world sees only one side of a society—its wealth or its poverty, its strength or its weakness. Achebe’s desire was to capture all: the songs of children, the authority of elders, the conflicts of men, the tenderness of women, the intrusion of foreign powers, and the resilience that endures. By doing this, he did not simply write books—he raised monuments of memory, more lasting than stone.

The lesson for us is plain: we too must tell our stories in their fullness. Whether through writing, through art, through teaching, or through the quiet passing down of family tales, we must not allow others to define who we are. A society is destroyed not only by weapons but by silence; it is restored not only by struggle but by storytelling. If you do not tell your own story, someone else will tell it for you, and it will not be the truth.

Therefore, O listener, let your actions be these: honor your roots by learning the stories of your people. Share them with your children, record them if you can, weave them into song and memory. If you are an artist, create deliberately, not as a leaf blown by the wind, but as a gardener planting seeds of identity. And when you encounter the works of others, read them with reverence, for each book may be more than art—it may be the vessel of an entire society, speaking across time, refusing to be forgotten.