The Clinton Controversies and the African (Igbo) World

Abstract

For many of us watching from the sidelines through different cultural lens, the controversies surrounding the Clintons raise crucial cultural and epistemological questions that go beyond the first family. Our "uninvited" participation often brings us face to face with the reality and an appreciation of our origins. Sometimes, in the self-generating "Clintonian" controversies, other cultures and other places (for example, Africa - specifically, Igboland in Nigeria) are simultaneously evoked and silenced. The controversy over Hillary Rodham Clinton's book, It Takes A Village, took root at the 1996 Republican Convention when the republican presidential candidate, Robert Dole, dismissed disparagingly the title of the book: "It does not take a village to raise a child; it takes a family." Such a critique can only emanate from limited or no knowledge of the environment that gave birth to the proverb - "It takes a village to raise a child" - and the book which takes the African proverb for its title.