Achebe and his audience

While I think that Ngugi was correct in asserting that Achebe's intended audience is definitely a European one, I don't personally believe it is deserving of the criticism that Ngugi placed upon it. Certainly, there can be no doubt of who Achebe is trying to reach: through his inclusion of the Igbo glossary in the appendix, the liberal peppering of Igbo idioms throughout the novel, and perhaps most especially the detail in which Achebe describes daily life in this culture that is at times alien in custom to Westerners and Europeans, Achebe has succeeded in creating an "Idiot's Guide" to the Igbo way of life. Achebe's goal, I think, was to use his command of English in order to help English speakers empathize with the African perspective and perhaps in a way see things from an African point of view. Although it is presumptuous to assume that a student reading this book in class could, simply by reading the novel, have a complete grasp on the African perspective and completely understand such a non-native worldview, I believe that the important thing to glean from Achebe's work is that he is one of the first African authors to reach out in this way, and through doing so has had more success in globalizing awareness of some pertinent issues that might have otherwise gone unheard.