One of the biggest things that popped out at me in this book was the constant referencing of yams. I don't know why, but I just really find this word enjoyable to say. It’s less enjoyable to write for some reason and this just goes to show that I can enjoy something orally and not literally. The yams in this story are basically the currency of this particular community and a mans worth is associated by a few things, one of which is how many yams he has. Cultures use things that they find around them as currency and I guess the Igbo happened to have a yams in decent amounts such that they could serve as the primary currency. We do get that at one point the Igbo accept a virgin and a young man as currency to stop war, so the culture once again uses things that it has available to it in order to allow transactions. The other culture, in all probability also grows yams, but since it was a blood debt to be paid, it was paid with a higher currency than yams could provide which was with humans.
In addition to them using yams as a currency, they also use it constantly in their language to describe things. We talked about a similar subject in class when we talked about how in Orality and Literacy, oral cultures have difficulty describing a circle and they instead describe it as something which they have had exposure to. Ikemefuna is described as growing like a "yam tendril" which is using the common theme in their culture to describe how fast he grew.
1 comment:
okay I had a huge laugh at that one. I used to hate Popeye with a passion but now I'm cool with him. Anyway, the whole yam thing...I'm not a huge fan of yams in the first place, so I guess it must be a manly thing like the book mentioned...?
I'll stick with my womanly root vegetables, thank you very much.
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