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I like to think of Achebe as the writer whose work gave me permission to write my own stories. --Chimamanda Adichie (qtd. in Monaghan B7) In his book The African Imagination, Abiola Irele points out that African literature carries with it a particular ambiguity of reference in its present and common usage (5), by which he means that because of its colonial history Africa's literature can rarely be defined in either national or linguistic terms, as is the case elsewhere. There are three broad categories of African literature, by Irele's account: oral literature in African languages, new written literatures in African languages, and new written literatures in European languages.1 Depending on one's perspective, the African is either constrained or liberated by this reality, but in either case the practical result is that writers function under a different set of assumptions than one finds in areas where national and literary identity are more closely linked. In short, intertextuality--the complex relationship between works of diverse nationalities and time periods--works differently and under different conditions in African literature than elsewhere. What is the nature of this African intertextuality? Irele argues that oral literature is an African writer's most significant allusive material; it is the fundamental reference of discourse, and it represents the basic intertext of the African imagination (11). Without disputing this claim, this article asserts that the nature of the intertextual in African literature is becoming increasingly rich and complex as time passes and as new generations of writers create new works. As African writing continues to develop, we increasingly witness the phenomenon of intergenerational intertextuality, as writers respond to and draw from not their oral traditions on the one hand and European literary models on the other but also from an increasing body of recent African writing. This article wishes to explore this dynamic by looking at a specific example of such intertextuality, how Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie responds to her compatriot and elder, Chinua Achebe, through her first novel, Purple Hibiscus. In examining Adichie's relationship to Achebe's text, we can see what happens to the African in such a setting and consider the benefits and shortcomings of this new era in African letters. Purple Hibiscus has received an overwhelmingly positive reception since its publication in 2003. Accomplishments include winning the Commonwealth Prize and the Hurston-Wright Foundation Award, a shortlist ranking in the Orange Prize, and a longlist mention for the Booker. After an equally successful second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie was awarded a MacArthur genius grant. All this has placed Adichie prominently among a group of young Nigerian writers whose efforts are revitalizing West African writing. Increasingly, these young writers are coalescing into a group described as a third generation of modern Nigerian literature. By such accounts, the first generation consists of writers like Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Cyprian Ekwensi, John Pepper Clark, Christopher Okigbo, Flora Nwapa and others who came of age and began to publish in the period around independence. Writers of the subsequent, second generation made their mark in the decade following the Biafran conflict and include names such as Niyi Osundare, Femi Osofisan, Buchi Emecheta and Tanure Ojaide. This leaves the third generation to comprise those writers who were born and educated after 1960, who never personally experienced the colonial period, and whose writings began to appear in the mid-1980s. They include Ben Okri, Helen Oyeyemi, Sefi Atta, Chris Abani, Helon Habila, Okey Ndibe, Uzodinma Iweala, and now also Adichie. (2) Like all generalizations of this type, these generational categories lose coherence and lapse into pointilistic absurdity when examined too closely, but they can serve a meaningful purpose when deployed from a distance, as a general guide. …
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