Explanatory essays - The Power of Knowle: Essays That Explain the Important Things in Life - Sykalo Eugene 2025

Literature and the Exploration of Cultural Heritage and Traditions
Comparative literature and cross-cultural analysis

The Ghosts in the Pages

Books don’t just sit there. They’re not inert. They’re like those old houses you inherit from a great-aunt you never met—creaky, full of secrets, and occasionally haunted. Reading literature that grapples with cultural heritage feels like wandering through those houses, each room a different tradition, each creak a story that’s half yours and half someone else’s. I’m thinking about Toni Morrison’s Beloved, where the past isn’t just remembered—it’s a poltergeist that smashes up the present. The way Morrison weaves African-American history into Sethe’s life, it’s not just storytelling; it’s an exorcism. You feel the weight of slavery, the way it clings to the characters like damp rot. It’s not abstract. It’s visceral, like a punch you didn’t see coming.

And then you flip to something like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and it’s a different kind of haunting. Okonkwo’s world, his Igbo traditions, they’re so meticulously drawn you can smell the yam fields and hear the drums. But the whole time, you’re braced for the colonial wrecking ball. When it hits, it’s not just a plot point—it’s a cultural gutting. Achebe doesn’t lecture you about heritage; he makes you live it, makes Compatibly, it’s the same ache, just in a different key. Both books are screaming about identity, about how the past shapes who you are, whether you like it or not. Morrison’s ghosts are personal, familial; Achebe’s are communal, ancestral. Both hit you where it hurts.

Why Does It Hurt So Good?

Okay, but why do these books make us feel so much? I mean, who even reads like this anymore, right? We’re all distracted, scrolling through endless noise, but then you crack open Beloved or Things Fall Apart, and suddenly you’re crying over people who don’t even exist. It’s embarrassing, honestly. But it’s because these stories don’t just tell you about cultural heritage—they make you feel the stakes. Morrison’s not just writing about slavery; she’s making you sit with the unbearable weight of memory, the way it can choke you. Sethe’s choices—her desperate, unthinkable choices—aren’t just plot twists. They’re the kind of decisions that make you wonder what you’d do if your whole world was a trap.

Achebe does it differently. He’s not trying to make you sob into your coffee. He’s showing you a world so alive, so textured, that when it starts to crumble, you’re angry. Not just at the colonizers, but at Okonkwo, at his pride, at the whole damn system of honor and tradition that makes him so rigid. It’s like watching a friend make bad choices and knowing you can’t stop them. These books aren’t just about “cultural heritage” like it’s some museum exhibit. They’re about what it means to carry a whole people’s history in your bones, even when it breaks you.

The Mess of It All

Here’s the thing: culture isn’t clean. It’s not a neat little package of traditions you can put on a shelf. It’s messy, contradictory, sometimes ugly. Take The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. The way she writes about caste, family, and forbidden love in Kerala—it’s like she’s peeling back the skin of a place to show you the nerves underneath. The traditions in that book aren’t just colorful festivals or spicy food; they’re rules that crush people. Ammu and Velutha’s love isn’t just tragic—it’s a rebellion against a whole cultural scaffolding that says who can love whom. Reading it, I wanted to scream at the page, because Roy doesn’t let you look away from the cruelty baked into heritage.

And don’t get me started on Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. That book’s like a fever dream of India’s birth, all tangled up in magic and history. Saleem Sinai, with his ridiculous nose and his life tied to the stroke of midnight, is basically a walking metaphor for a nation trying to figure out what it means to be itself. The traditions in that book—Hindu, Muslim, British, all of it—are like a kaleidoscope that keeps shifting, never settling. Rushdie’s not just showing you cultural heritage; he’s showing you how it’s a constant fight over who gets to define it. It’s exhilarating and exhausting, like trying to keep up with a drunk uncle telling stories at a wedding.

The Internet-Age Hookup

So, why does this matter now? We’re not living in Okonkwo’s village or Sethe’s Ohio. We’re in 2025, drowning in takes and threads and hot messes online. But that’s exactly why these books hit harder. The internet’s like a giant cultural heritage machine—everyone’s shouting about who they are, where they come from, what their traditions mean. It’s Achebe’s village square, but with Wi-Fi. And just like in these books, it’s not all cozy nostalgia. People are fighting over whose version of the past gets to win. Reading Beloved or Midnight’s Children feels like a cheat code for understanding why everyone’s so mad all the time. Heritage isn’t just pride—it’s a battlefield.

I was reading The God of Small Things on the subway last week, and this guy next to me was doomscrolling, muttering about some culture war nonsense. And I’m sitting there, thinking, “Dude, Arundhati Roy already wrote the playbook for this.” The way she shows how traditions can trap people—it’s not just about 1950s India. It’s about now, about how we’re all stuck in these inherited stories, whether it’s caste or class or whatever else we’re yelling about. These books don’t just tell you about the past; they make you see how it’s still screwing us up.

The Books That Break You

Here’s a confession: I didn’t finish Midnight’s Children the first time I tried. It was too much—too many voices, too many metaphors. I put it down and felt like a failure. But I went back, because something about Saleem’s chaotic life pulled me in. That’s what these books do. They don’t let you off easy. They’re not beach reads. They’re the kind of stories that make you question everything—your family, your country, the way you think about “tradition.” Like, what even is tradition? Is it the food your grandma makes, or is it the rules that keep you in line? Is it both? Ugh, I hate how much these books make me think.

Compare that to something like Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Janie’s journey through love and self-discovery in the African-American South—it’s not just a story about finding yourself. It’s about finding yourself in a world that’s trying to define you by its rules. Hurston’s writing is so lush, so alive, you can feel the Florida heat, the pear tree blooming. But it’s also about how culture—Black culture, Southern culture, womanhood—can be a gift and a cage. Janie’s not just fighting for love; she’s fighting for her own story. Reading it, I was rooting for her, but also kind of mad at how much she had to lose to get there.

No Tidy Bows

I could keep going, but here’s the deal: these books aren’t just about cultural heritage. They’re about what it means to be human in a world that’s always trying to tell you who you are. Morrison, Achebe, Roy, Rushdie, Hurston—they’re not handing you answers. They’re handing you questions, and they’re not polite about it. They’re like, “Here’s the mess of history, of tradition, of identity. Good luck.” And yeah, it’s heavy. But it’s also why I keep coming back to them. They make me feel alive, like I’m part of something bigger, even when it hurts.

So, what now? I don’t know. Go read one of these books, maybe. Or don’t. But if you do, don’t expect it to be easy. Expect it to mess you up in the best way. Expect it to feel like you’re arguing with your own ghosts. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll see why literature still matters, even in a world that’s too loud to listen.