Search Results for: Wole Soyinka

Since the 1950s, the Nobel laureate has worked in rebellion, carving out a complex, fecund torque of an oeuvre. But as his plays of mythic vigor and Yoruba impulse revitalized Anglophone theatre, raising an art form to ritualistic heights, his force of personality kept him in the political arena, a close witness of an African affliction. Few artists have lived like him. Yet at 91, carrying the mantle of “greatest living writer,” he has one more great battle on his hands — with generations who once deified him.

He inherited the drama of the gods and became the greatest living writer. But at 91, in the long rage of Nigerian nationhood, his deep political legacy is at a crossroads.

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.

“Only one universal ideology answers human cruelties, the excesses of power, bigotries, social inequalities and alienation: Literature,” wrote Africa’s first Nobel laureate in literature, who turned 87 this week.

The event is part of the Museum of the African Diaspora’s “Conversations Across the Diaspora” series.

Longform Profiles on Wole Soyinka and curator Chude Jideonwo, a feature on South African poetry, an essay on an Oscar-winning film, interviews with indie filmmakers, and more: the defining stories of our fifth year.

The novelist, playwright, and theorist left a blistering legacy. He was, with Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, regarded as part of an unofficial trinity: the continent’s greatest pioneering writers.

Centred on his former Ibadan residence, family memories of a young militant Wole Soyinka casts strange light on his increasingly contentious legacy as an activist.

Headlined by a quartet of feted veteran voices in Wole Soyinka, Aminatta Forna, Jennifer Makumbi, and Chris Abani, NYU Accra’s 30-author symposium is a convergence of inspiration. “We have to tell our own story,” said convener and school director Chike Frankie Edozien.

In Between Starshine and Clay, the novelist interviews Toni Morrison, Michelle Obama, and Wole Soyinka, among other major Black figures in the arts and politics. “One of the things that was the most surprising was the actual extent to which they forged their own path,” she said.

He leaves behind a solid legacy, including the movie Fifty, the Netflix series Blood Sisters, a Fela Kuti documentary, and adaptations of work by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Wole Soyinka.

Edited by Adekeye Adebajo, it covers 36 major Pan-African figures including Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko, Maya Angelou, Buchi Emecheta, Miriam Makeba, Wole Soyinka, Bob Marley, and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

The Nigerian social critic riled up online controversies through blunt, unsparing commentary on African literature, politics, and establishment culture. His style has been criticized as abrasive, dismissive, and even unfair. But, in his persistent alarm, he foresaw a moral decay.

As a salesman of youth power, Africa’s most influential millennial curator reinvented himself from new media maven to political power player, and, now, a wellness advocate. Each iteration transformed culture. One left him scarred.

The late great Kenyan writer produced full-length work in all genres except poetry, capturing the tensions between colonizer and colonized, orality and literacy, and tradition and modernity.

Releasing the third annual compilation of the only bestseller list in Nigerian literature: comprising the Top 100 books of the year, alongside the Top 50 in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, self-published, and children’s books.

Born into the music of one of Nigeria’s most famous families, Yeni Kuti is working to preserve the great legacy of her father Fela.

While flying military helicopters, Umar Abubakar Sidi wrote the two top-selling poetry books in Nigeria. Now he has a novel. One day, he will write about military life: “It is a reality I cannot escape.”