bornAfrican - The Convergence of Africana

A Review of Wole Soyinka’s Ake

Posted April 21, 2007 · Charles O

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s childhood memoirs, a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679725407?ie=UTF8&tag=bornafrican-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0679725407” title=“Ake on Amazon.com”>Ake, had sat in my Amazon.com wish list for quite a while, but because I badly wanted to read his most recent adult memoirs, a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375755144?ie=UTF8&tag=bornafrican-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0375755144” title=“You Must Set Forth At Dawn on Amazon.com”>You Must Set Forth At Dawn, I thought it might make sense to read Ake first.

While I have read some of Soyinka’s other works, (a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199110832?ie=UTF8&tag=bornafrican-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0199110832” title=“The Lion and the Jewel on Amazon.com”>The Lion and the Jewel, a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195119215?ie=UTF8&tag=bornafrican-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0195119215” title=“The Open Sore of a continent on Amazon.com”>The Open Sore of a continent, etc.), Ake took me to quite another place. Soyinka’s writing is crisp and pristine, his powers of evocation bordering on the supernatural. On the journey through Soyinka’s childhood in Egbaland, I saw, as clearly as if I had seen them with my own eyes, “the sprawling, undulating terrain” that was Ake, the “dwaft rusted roofs” of Ibarapa, Itoko, and further onto Mokola, the “gnarled and ancient figures of Isara,” Soyinka’s paternal homeland, as well as an assortment of other imageries that Soyinka conjured.

More importantly than anything else, Soyinka does a wonderful job of documenting life in pre-independence western Nigeria. Like Chinua Achebe’s a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385474547?ie=UTF8&tag=bornafrican-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0385474547” title=“Things Fall Apart on Amazon.com”>Things Fall Apart, Ake captures the confrontation and inevitable conflict between the African and English cultures, but unlike Things Fall Apart, that culture clash is presented as a subtext to the main story.

Ake is an important piece of work; it evokes pleasant nostalgia in those who have lived in Nigeria, and are familiar with Yoruba. For others, it provides an opportunity to vicariously experience unsullied Yoruba life.

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