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Thank you for the responses. Informed and informative all.
To clarify, this is a third-year university course so the students are all in their early twenties, so youth and utter inexperience is not an excuse. I have, in the past taught many of these same students (we're a small university) and in those courses we did study Achebe and other non-Anglo-American writers and never once did I run into a situation like this where they simply complained that it was a "bad book"...not just, "inaccessible" but "bad'.
Fea: I simply adore your way of expressing it -- The story shouldn't be seen as "it doesn't have girls", it should be seen as "it has boys" -- I am going to say precisely that to my group the next time we meet!
What most shocked me was the instantly closed minds that the women chose to adopt. If presented with a novel about a different culture they would instantly use that opportunity to understand that culture; to engage with its strangeness to begin a dialogue. But they show none of the same interest in doing so across the gender gap. I am definitely going to ask them why this might be...
Alphaelin: enthusiasm for the material and in my delivery is my calling-card. If I have a problem in this regard it would be in sometimes getting too caught up in the material! And I seize every opportunity to read aloud at the class.
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Scribbling scrabbling.
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