Chinweizu
| Chinweizu | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Chinweizu Ibekwe 26 March 1943 Eluoma, Isuikwuato, Abia State, Nigeria |
| Nationality | Nigerian |
| Occupation | Critic, poet, journalist |
| Notable work |
The West and the Rest of Us Toward the Decolonization of African Literature |
Chinweizu (born 26 March 1943) is a Nigerian critic, essayist, poet, and journalist. Though he has identified himself and is known simply as Chinweizu, he was born Chinweizu Ibekwe. While studying in the United States during the Black Power movement, Chinweizu became influenced by the philosophy of the Black Arts Movement. He is commonly associated with Black orientalism and emerged as one of the leading figures in contemporary Nigerian journalism, writing a highly influential column in The Guardian of Lagos.
Chinweizu was born in 1943 in the town of Eluoma, in Isuikwuato in the part of Eastern Region of Nigeria that is known today as Abia State. He was educated at Government Secondary School, Afikpo, and later attended college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he studied philosophy and mathematics, earning a bachelor of science degree in 1967, the year of the outbreak of civil war in Nigeria, which lasted two and a half years. At the time living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Chinweizu founded and edited the Biafra Review (1969–70).
He enrolled for a Ph.D. at the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo, under the supervision of political scientist Claude E. Welch, Jr. Chinweizu apparently had a disagreement with his dissertation committee and walked away with his manuscript, which he got published as The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers, and the African Elite by Random House in 1975. He took the book to SUNY, Buffalo, where he demanded, and was promptly awarded, his Ph.D. in 1976, one year after he had published the dissertation. Thus, the publication settled his disagreement with his advisers in his favour.
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