The Light Under the Bushel

Chigozie Obioma, "The Light Under the Bushel: A Father Ignites a Passion for Reading, " New York Times Book Review, Dec 9, 2018, P20.

     By the fifth month I had read every book my father owned.  One Saturday, he returned home and asked me to get in the car.
     "I have a surprise for you."
We drove through streets clotted with people until we got to a newly painted building with an arch over the gate that read, Ondo State Library. We walked through the arch into the building, the likes of which I had never seen. There were books everywhere, on shelves, on tables, on the floor.
     "I want to register you here and bring you every Saturday here to read, "my father said.
     I wanted breathlessly as he completed the registration at the counter with an elderly, bespectacled woman who seemed in awe of the idea of a child coming in alone to read.  My father, proud, agreed and said that it was all I wanted to do.
     "That is good," I herd the woman say. "Very, very good.  Reading is like finding light, you know.  Jesus said a light cannot be hidden under a bushel"
     "That is true," my father said, nodding as the woman wrote my name on a small, square yellow card.
     "Your son has found the light under the bushel."
     She handed me the card and my father said he would pick me up at noon.  I waved him goodbye and disappeared among the crowded shelves.

COMMENT

     The author tells the story of how he got his first library card at the Ondo State Library in Nigeria when he was eight years old. He receives the treasured card along with a literal blessing from the librarian and from his father.

     Obioma relates how his mother told folktales in Igbo language, but his father's stories, told in English, seemed far more complex and interesting. One day Obioma finds out that his father has been re-telling stories he read in books, He begins reading obsessively himself. Looking back from the perspective of an adult, he realizes that his mother had no Igbo literature to draw from.  English language books were the pathway to education, but also a way to escape the limits of his own culture. He writes, "it struck me that if I could read well, I could be like my father. I too could become a repository of stories and live in their beautiful worlds away from the dust and ululations of Akure."

     Concealed in this triumphant story of education is a sadder tale about the Igbo stories that were never written down and never added to any library. Literature written in English comes to seem more important simply because there is so much more of it.

But a library card is a blessing nonetheless. I got my first library card when I was 5. The school librarian didn't believe a kindergartener could read so she asked me to read aloud from a book which had the word "orphanage" in it. I read the whole book pronouncing the unfamiliar word as four distinct syllables, or-pa-ha-nage. She did not correct my pronunciation until I had read through the entire book.  I was absolutely furious at her for letting me humiliate myself like that. But still, I got the library card and after that could take home all the books I wanted from the school library.  I never asked the librarian for any suggestions.