Joonho Jo, in the 10th grade at Philips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire in the United States of America (U.S.A.) has won the National Writing Award for children in the N.H. Level III (grades 9 to12) by penning a letter to the late literary icon, Chinua Achebe.
The initiative known as Letters About Literature is a reading, writing project of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, New Hampshire State Library. To enter, young readers are expected to write a personal letter to an author, explaining how his or her work changed their view of the world or themselves. Readers selected authors from any genre: fiction or non-fiction, contemporary or classic.
Nationwide in the U.S.A., 52,000 letters were submitted to Letters About Literature in 2015, with 776 letters coming from New Hampshire students. Sixty-eight semi-finalists had their letters sent along to the national competition.
Others who emerged in New Hampshire are Zachary Cassidy, in the fourth grade at Infant Jesus School in Nashua, who wrote the N.H. Level I (grades 4 to 6) winning letter to Robert Lawson and eighth-grader Goyette was the N.H. Level II (grades 7 to 8) winner.
“Week after week, the cover of The New York Times looks like a tattered mosaic, covered with photos of us, the American people protesting and crying out for injustice with red and black marked signs reading ‘Mike Brown: America is racist,’ and ‘Trayvon Martin: Stand up for racial justice.’ Mr. Achebe, please hear me, African colonisation is over, but racism has yet to end,” Joonho’s letter begins.
While confessing that he had preferred video games to Things Fall Apart which his mum described as a classic, the winner goes on to contrast what obtains in the book with present-day protests over race on the streets of America.
“I had been ignorant: the same kind of ignorance the Commissioner had to the Igbo people’s culture,” Joonho explained.
Explaining that he was totally wrong thinking that Things Fall Apart was just another classic text he was required to read for his African History class, Joonho said he began to comprehend the horrors of the ignorance of the European colonisers.
“The entire culture of the Igbo people was beginning to ‘fall apart’, yet the Europeans did not care about their culture and continued colonising,” he wrote.
Colonisation may have ended, Joonho declares, but racism has yet to end.
“Slowly, things may be falling apart right before our eyes, my eyes. And I am just standing here like the scared Igbo people. I am standing here noticing injustice, but not acting against it. I am standing here watching racism gradually evolve into acceptance. Okonkwo would not have acted like I. Okonkwo would have fought back. But is that the best method? Mr. Achebe, when things are falling apart, how should you act?” Joonho ends his letter.