There can be no doubt Wole Soyinka as the greatest black man ever has produced the best and the highest population black leadership in millions that black Africa and black folks world wide ever had.I have extensively undergo magnanimous transformation of my medulla about everything I knew about Kongi and what I did found was more than astonishing.Being the first nobel,he was a fellow inspirer to latter Nobels and certainly influenced the accomplishment of Tony Morrison first black female Nobel in black Africa world wide.
Tony Morrison like Derek Walcott and Nadine Gordimer was fond of Kongi and had championed his courses and advocacies worldwide.She saw Wole Soyinka as prime motivation an inspirational figure and personal excitement about kongi was expressed in a 2024 piece in The Republic that discusses her advocacy for him.The Soyinka lecture delivered at the Toni Morrison lecture series in 2016 entitled Sweet Are the Uses Of Adversity,was particularly enthralling.
First we examine the checkered antecedence of the first female black Nobel from her first novel The Bluest Eyes published in 1970 to the controversially acclaimed Songs of Solomon brought her to national limelight and earned her National Book Critics Circle Awards.
Winfrey once wrote on Instagram "In the beginning was the word Toni Morrison took the word and turned it into the songs of Solomon ,of sula, beloved, mercy and paradise love and more." Then she says "She was our conscience .Our seer.Our truth teller.She was a magician with language who understood the power of words.She used them to roil us,to wake us,to educate us and help us grapple with our deepest wounds and try to comprehend them."
Over the years her intimidating laurels and honours certainly speaks volumes of her checkered antecedence . Apparently she was decked with trophies such as Pulitzer prize ,the nobel prize, presidential medal of freedom awardedbto her by president Obama in 2012 and also awarded with the Legion de Honneur.
Obviously she came to her senses one day only to find out according to her the book she wanted to read did not exist and she had to change the world by contributing her quota to black freedom.It took her five years to write Bluest eye and during the period moved to New York city and started her publishing career.She published books by Muhammad Ali, Henry Dumas and Angela Davis.Bluest eye came out with an Initial print runs of 2,000 copies .She resigned in 1983 from Random house and focused on full writing and published Beloved in 1987 at the time of a year after Soyinka got a Nobel.It was a story of slave set in the middle of findesiecle who kills her own baby.When the novel failed to receive her deserved attention and improved the shortlisting on national book award petition from 48 writers signed protest letter accusing the publishing industry of "Oversight and harmful whimsy ".
While complaints were bandied about by writers despite her international status that she has yet to receive the prestige that her five major works of fiction deserve,be it Pulitzer or nobel.And surprisingly five months later the much vaunted awards rolled him in a flux.Beginning from Pulitzer or national book award won by the book Beloved and by 1993 became the first black woman to win the Nobel topped up with national book foundation in 1996 and national humanities medal four years after.
While reacting to the shooting of Travyon Martin he outlined two things":Two things I want to see in life.One thing is a white kid shot in the back by a cop.Never happened.The second thing I want to see:a record of any white man in the entire history of the world who has been convicted of raping a black woman.Just one."
She once called Bill Clinton the nation's first black president in 1998 in the attempt to defend him as a black woman "writing without the white gaze".Her last book of essay collection Mouth Full Of Blood was published in 2019 her last year on earth.
We examined how Wole Soyinka influenced black writers of which Morrison was a paramount ensembles laying wreath and garland at the feet of prime motivation the Kongo himself.Her most powerful word"We die"she said "that maybe the meaning of life.But we do language.That maybe the measure of our lives."
It is not for nothing Margaret Atwood call her "A giant of her times and ours.....That her strong voice will now be missing in this age of the renewed targeting of minorities in the united states and elsewhere is a tragedy for the rest of us."
In the collection of interviews comprising of black creative thinkers and nobels like wole Soyinka,Tony Morrison, Michelle Obama,bonded into a book chronicled by Sarah Ladipo Manyika ,publisher Margaret Busby,poet Claudine Rankine,historian Henry Louis Gates jnr.,film maker Xoliswa Sithole to name a few.The interview was done on the occasion of his third novel Chronicles from the land of happiest people on earth which sees reflect on the theme of his works mainly friendship which he described as" almost a mystical things".
Let me quote or reproduce it here for readership sake or the full write up by Sarah ":
“Friendship, to Me, Is What Saves One’s Sanity”: Wole Soyinka
In this excerpt from Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s Between Starshine and Clay, the Nobel laureate and his friend Henry Louis Gates, Jr. remember another friend: the late Toni Morrison.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
“Friendship, to Me, Is What Saves One’s Sanity”: Wole Soyinka
Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora is a collection of interviews by Sarah Ladipo Manyika. Her guests are prominent Black creatives, thinkers, leaders, and organizers, including Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka and Toni Morrison, former US First Lady Michelle Obama, poet Claudine Rankine, publisher Margaret Busby, historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., filmmaker Xoliswa Sithole, actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, US Senator Cory Booker, parliamentarian Lord Michael Hastings, and civil rights activist Pastor Evan Mawarire. The book, with an introduction by Bernardine Evaristo, was listed among our Anticipated Books of 2023.
The interview below, with Soyinka, is excerpted from the much longer one in the book. Done on the occasion of his third novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, it sees him reflect on a theme in his works: friendships, something he describes as “almost a mystical thing.” And one of his friends makes a cameo: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika - Between Starshine and Clay
Wole Soyinka: In Conversation
Sarah Ladipo Manyika:
Your latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, is, among other things, a story of lifelong friendships. I found it to be a novel that moves to the beats of Fela Kuti and, in visual terms, it made me think of William Hogarth’s painting of eighteenth century London and of Yinka Shonibare’s more contemporary images. It also had a particular personal resonance because I grew up in Jos, one of the main locations for this novel. The novelist Ben Okri said of this novel: ‘This is a novel written at the end of an artist’s tether. It has gone beyond satire. It is a last dance macabre.’ Professor Soyinka, was this book written at the end of your tether?
Wole Soyinka:
Ben Okri, when I see him, I’m going to hammer his head because that particular quotation keeps cropping up and I can understand why. To some extent it is true. I’ve explored this theme, as you remarked, through various genres, including poetry, which in the course of reading I found myself uncharacteristically breaking down. It was as bad as that, when I attempted to read A Humanist Ode for Chibok, Leah I could not complete it. So, this thing has gone beyond mere poetizing, it’s gone beyond fodder for creative transformation, for creative mauling, reconfiguring of realities, even beyond a prospectus for survival. So, Ben is absolutely spot on there. At the same time, however, it is not at the end of one’s tether for the simple reason that there is a challenge implicitly embedded in it. When there’s a challenge, it means you are actually saying that this is not the end of the story; that it’s sufficient to be able to hold up a distorting mirror in an unaccustomed way to a community of which one is a part and from whose existence one takes one’s own definition, has done for decades. And so, that element of challenge, which I hope is apparent there, means that one hasn’t really given up on the nation, on the people, even if one thinks it’s about time one bowed out.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika:
Friendship has always seemed to be something really important to you. We see this in both your fiction and non-fiction, and your latest novel has friendship at its center. The last memoir you wrote, You Must Set Forth at Dawn, was a homage to Femi Johnson, and your latest novel is also dedicated to him, Dele Giwa and Bola Ige. You’ve had so many interesting friendships across the years—from the poet Christopher Okigbo to scholar Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and to your fellow Nobel laureates, Bertrand Russell and Toni Morrison.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Toni Morrison in her home. In her bathroom there are many amazing photographs, one of which was of her with you—a lovely black-and-white photograph. I mentioned this to Toni as we sat down, saying, “Oh, I’ve just seen one of my countrymen”—you see, my Nigerian pride—“I’ve just seen Professor Wole Soyinka in your bathroom.” She said, “Oh yeah, we used to go to Paris and we’d go and have meetings and talk—elegant talk—and solve world problems. And Soyinka always knew how to solve everything.” And then the two of us said in unison, “He still does.” Then she responded, mimicking a deep voice, “Yes, yes! In that voice he has.” So, in that deep voice you have, can you tell us a story about Toni Morrison?
Soyinka:
Well, first I came to Toni Morrison through her works and I said, “This really is genius writing.” I cannot recall when we first met, probably because when we met eventually it was like I knew her already, like we’d already met. But from the very first-time moment, we bonded. There’s no question at all about that. And I set about trying to bring her to Nigeria right away to meet other writers. And then we’d go out together. And she was responsible for an expression which left such an impression on me. She said, “I’m going to take you out to this restaurant. The cooking there, it’ll knock your socks off.” I’d never heard that expression in my life. I said, ‘What?’ She said, “It will knock your socks off!” Well, maybe because in Africa we wear sandals most of the time, who wears socks? Only the gentry! It’ll knock your socks off, and that image was something that came from her language.
It was her language and it endeared me. And more than that, however, was her sensibility toward the problems of the African continent. She was very much involved. She’d ask questions, sort of how-could-that-be-going-on kind of questions. Genuine concern. And so I saw, as we say in Nigeria, she was another country woman, but a very, very close one. Friendship to me is what saves one’s sanity, friendship is seeking nothing, no advantage from the other person, but always knowing that it is there, that it’s assistance if you need it. And you simultaneously are ready any time. It’s almost a mystical thing. Those who have experienced genuine friendship should appreciate how very lucky they are, because it’s not often, to actually say this is a genuine friend. I have had some very deep friendships with people, like Femi Johnson, who you mentioned.
Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora
In Dependence
Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun
Sarah Ladipo Manyika by James Manyika
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Sarah Ladipo Manyika is the author of the best-selling novel In Dependence (2009) and the multi-shortlisted novel Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun (2016), which have been translated into several languages. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Transfuge, among others."
Obviously it shows strategically a little bit bonding and I suspect Henry Louis gates also in the interview collection doing all the connection stuff.Though they met in their stardom definitely Soyinka altered the literature for black race in general
