A review by celineangelina
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah

4.0

3.5 stars — Really enjoyed this book and the use of the grotesque by Armah. Underneath the filth (the literal shit) I found opportunity for change and it was just a question of how long a person is supposed to wait for change to come (and why wait for someone else). A lot of thoughts. I find it interesting that Achebe saw Armah as squandering his talents when he has so vividly depicted Ghana at a moment in time where the nation’s leaders sought to find an identity in African socialism, often at the expense of the everyday man. I’d be interested to know if Armah was anti socialist and what he thought would remedy “postcolonial” Ghana. To me, Ghana is unrecognizable (something Achebe also critiques) because it was trying to become a nation while grappling with colonial legacies—trying to assert their place in the world as a new nation.

* “So it should be easy to take the rot of the promise. It should be easy now to see there have never been people to save anybody but themselves, never in the past, never now, and there will never be any saviours if each will not save himself”