Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This is one of Wole Soyinka’s earlier memoirs. He chose a moment in his childhood, from when he was four to when he was 11 and he represented that. He wrote in the voice of an adult – Wole Soyinka, and he was able to capture the magic of childhood and his growing up and the complexity that he faced in a changing culture, the emerging Western culture encroaching on the traditional African culture.
Your next choice is Aké: The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka.
This is one of Wole Soyinka’s earlier memoirs. He chose a moment in his childhood, from when he was four to when he was 11 and he represented that. He wrote in the voice of an adult – Wole Soyinka, and he was able to capture the magic of childhood and his growing up and the complexity that he faced in a changing culture, the emerging Western culture encroaching on the traditional African culture. He shows how things gradually started to change. And the older he gets, of course, the more changes there are.
He uses particular tropes such as family, commerce, etc, to develop this theme of change. So, for example, using an institution like religion. His mother is called Wild Christian in the book, which exemplifies her total commitment to her religious belief. And then you have the church itself, the parsonage, which is just next door to the Soyinkas’ compound, and you see how it interacts with the other side of the town, which is animist and African. There is this symbolic demarcation between the Christian and the traditional. And later in the book there is this growing nostalgia, a lament about the modern taking over from the traditional. Well, not totally taking over, but hybridising it, changing it irrevocably. Another interesting part of the book is how his father, called Essay in the book and who is a headmaster at the local school, pushes him to get a Western education. And through this process we notice the young Soyinka changing, dualising mentally
One other thing he uses very well is the Second World War. The book is set in the 1930s and 1940s, and, without overtly mentioning the war, you still have references to Hitler and the soldiers passing through the village. War is perhaps the best metaphor a writer can use to signify change, cataclysmic change. So you really understand about the West’s influence on his childhood.
What makes Wole Soyinka stand out as one of your top Nigerian writers?
He is first and foremost a dramatist who has written some memoirs. This makes him a master of scene and dialogue and characterisation and, of course, language. In this book, especially, the language is amazing. He is a poet and in every sentence, every page, you get the sense of smell and wonder and imagery. Description is alive in every line. Every sentence is well thought out, well written.
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Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in 1967. His first novel, Waiting for an Angel, won the Caine Prize in 2001. In 2002 he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. His writing has won many prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003. In 2005-2006 he was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York. He is contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review and in 2006 co-edited the British Council’s anthology, New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time was published in February 2007 and his latest novel, Oil on Water, is out soon. He currently teaches creative writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and children. He says Nigeria has a tradition of storytelling. ‘Before we were over taken by TV and video games it was very much part of our culture to tell stories. And this tradition still persists on the streets… you will see people spend hours just talking to each other!’
