Elderism #47

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author of “Things Fall Apart,” in an essay in the  new “Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing,” edited by Rob Spillman:

“Of course there are areas of Africa where colonialism divided up a single ethnic group among two or even three powers. But on the whole it did bring together many peoples that had hitherto gone their several ways. And it gave them a language with which to talk to one another. If it failed to give them a song, it at least gave them a tongue, for sighing.”