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Product Details
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press (November 12, 2013)
Soyinka's book "Africa" is really a lucid book on the essence of "The Truth" that uses a bit African History as a vehicle of expression. His smooth as silk use of the English language makes it worth reading the book just to enjoy his superb ability to write. This book is a testament to the fact that Wole Soyinka is indeed a Nobel Prize class author. Before one reads this outstanding book, I suggest logging on to Cspan Book TV and listening to Soyinka's in person review of this book. Soyinka has an exceptional intellect and a quick wit to match it which not only exposes many facets of the truth but is entertaining as well. It is also fascinating to read his background on Wikipedia as it reads like a good novel but is in fact reality. Soyinka has walked through the "valley of the shadow of death" so to speak being thrown in jail for a couple years and escaping with his life on a motorbike though the desert in the shadow of mass genocide. Depots like Gowon and Mugabe are so afraid of Soyinka's acerbic prose that they denounced and jailed him. Wole Soyinka is lucky to be alive because he dares to speak his truth. There is no greater weapon against secular despots, radical theology, and a myopic view of "The Truth" than a writer such as Soyinka who reveals many facets of the truth in every line he writes without defining a real truth but rather exposing my truth, your truth, his truth and the fallibility and intellectual beauty of those many facets that should be continually revisited, restudied and refreshed as we grow in the never ending search for "The Truth" and perhaps a little more human understanding and equity in the world. Soyinka is a freedom fighter who carries the most deadly weapon of all "a search for the truth".
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In addition to its inert possessions such as mineral resources, touristic landscapes and cheap labour, Africa has dynamic possessions, ways of perceiving, responding, adapting or simply doing, including structures of human relationships, according to Wole Soyinka in this book. These lesser-known dynamic attributes could help resolve some of the social problems experienced by communities in other parts of the world.
The first half of the book discusses how Africa's past has affected its present; the second half discusses African spirituality and what it has to offer the world. After reviewing the perceptions of Africa recorded by European writers over the centuries, the author discusses the legacy of slavery and the slave trade - including the crimes committed by Africans against fellow Africans - and the legacies of colonialism.
The actions of the past, in which Africans were treated as disposable commodities, are compared with modern crimes against humanity such as the situation in Darfur, where Africans are still treated as disposable commodities. African dictators have inherited the mantles of the slave traders and the colonialists. Colonialism gets lingering blame for arbitrary country borders leading to inter-ethnic conflicts, although it seems that inter-ethnic conflicts must have more causes than colonial borders.
Islam and Christianity are both rejected by the author as religions which seek hegemony; instead, the author advocates indigenous African religions and in particular the Orisa religion of his own Yoruba tribe. Whereas Islam and Christianity bring conflict and intolerance, Orisa, and by implication other indigenous religions, bring peaceful co-existence. The author advocates traditional healing methods and incantations as "untapped resources".Read more ›
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In this book, it is encouraging to read Soyinka furthering the rehabilitation of the image of Africa and Africans in the world view as Achebe had done in the 70s in debunking John Conrad's portrayal of Africans as "less than" in his book 'Heart of Darkness'. Here, with the benefit of current "hindsight" Soyinka revisits the troubling view of Africa in the context of the world: a descendant of Africa is the leader of the free world; South Africa has excised the uncivil apartheid regime and "normalized" herself smoothly, emphatic thanks to Nelson Mandela and his team of dedicated, intelligent, honest, diplomatic and talented leaders (formerly persecuted and imprisoned comrades -mostly black) - just to cite a few. Yet, Africa (implicitly Black Africa) continues to receive sneers and turned-up noses. Paradoxically, pride in African heritage is on the increase across the continents.
Soyinka puts Africa in the context of the rest of the world - comparing crises, human behaviours as well as the challenges of governments. He makes the point (implicitly) that Africa is entitled to its challenges just as all others without any unnecessary need for apologies. He leans on the autonomous countries of Africa to tighten up their stride as well.
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These essays by Soyinka are, in my opinion, the best on the themes of negotiating Africa's humanity, its internal dynamics, the politics of slavery, cultural relations and, especially, its spirituality. Although before reading the book, anyone drawn by its crisp title is whet by an expectation of a Soyinkian exploration of Africa in its entire fragments, including political and economic essentials. But it attends more to Africa's cultural and spiritual existence, with occasional digressions to the political. (I really love the title and how it reads on the book's spine. It's like a clever full sentence emphasizing Soyinka as Africa's property. Well, he is.) ;)
In scathing and lyrical prose, Soyinka expresses his disgust for the colonial legacies of Christianity and Islam. These "siblings", as he termed them, robbed Africa of its spiritual and communal essence by their imperial agendas, exploiting the continent's innocence and replacing it with Western & Middle Eastern religiosity, which at best have continued, amidst in guises, to devastate the continent. For Soyinka, the scramble for Africa was not only fought on economic battleground. It involved the spiritual. He portrayed those religions as control freaks, and far from the more humane versions that they condemn and sought to replace for being "pagan". He offers Orisa as a primer for world's spirituality, at least as an alternative to the bullish Judeo siblings. His proposal of the Yoruba brand of spirituality speaks well of his personal reverence and adulation of the Yoruba pantheon.
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