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Aké, los años de la niñez
A dazzling memoir of an African childhood from Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian novelist, playwright, and poet Wole Soyinka.
"Aké: The Years of Childhood" gives us the story of Soyinka's boyhood before and during World War II in a Yoruba village in western Nigeria called Aké. A relentlessly curious child who loved books and getting into trouble, Soyinka grew up on a parsonage compound, raised by Christian parents and by a grandfather who introduced him to Yoruba spiritual traditions. His vivid evocation of the colorful sights, sounds, and aromas of the world that shaped him is both lyrically beautiful and laced with humor and the sheer delight of a child's-eye view.
A classic of African autobiography, "Aké" is also a transcendantly timeless portrait of the mysteries of childhood.
"Aké: The Years of Childhood" gives us the story of Soyinka's boyhood before and during World War II in a Yoruba village in western Nigeria called Aké. A relentlessly curious child who loved books and getting into trouble, Soyinka grew up on a parsonage compound, raised by Christian parents and by a grandfather who introduced him to Yoruba spiritual traditions. His vivid evocation of the colorful sights, sounds, and aromas of the world that shaped him is both lyrically beautiful and laced with humor and the sheer delight of a child's-eye view.
A classic of African autobiography, "Aké" is also a transcendantly timeless portrait of the mysteries of childhood.
269 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
127 people are currently reading
6770 people want to read
About the author
Wole Soyinka
207 books1,238 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route". Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route". Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".
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February 5, 2020
Estas memorias noveladas me han hecho reír, me han estremecido, pero sobre todo, con ellas he ampliado enormemente mis horizontes. He aprendido con ellas, me he preguntado cosas y me he reafirmado en otras.
El libro nos relata la infancia de Soyinka desde que tiene uso de memoria hasta que cumple 11 años. Es un periodo corto en el tiempo para un adulto... eterno para un niño, y a través de los ojos de ese niño que fue el autor, vemos y descubrimos el mundo. Es una delicia descubrir todo lo cotidiano de la vida con esa mirada siempre sorprendida, optimista y segura de sí misma.
Vamos a aprender cómo era la vida en Nigeria durante los años 40 en una familia acomodada (en ese contexto)... todo el libro parecer una carta de amor a sus padres, pero contado con muchísimo humor e ironía. Descubriremos muchos pedazos de la cultura yoruba, de sus creencias, rituales, del choque de culturas, de la religión y el enfrentamiento cada vez mayor con el hombre blanco y su política colonizadora.
Aunque casi todo el libro parece un compendio de anécdotas infantiles absurdas, escalofriantes, divertidísimas, emotivas... hacia el final el libro comienza a desarrollar un tono mucho más serio al describir la lucha por los derechos de las mujeres, con sus marchas y manifestaciones, en las que el propio Soyinka participó, así como su madre y varios familiares, que tomaron una parte muy activa en el conflicto.
El libro está plagado de eventos reales y personajes Históricos, pero en todo momento sientes que todo lo que el autor cuenta es algo enormemente personal, son los recuerdos de la vida de un niño inocente que no juzga el mundo en el que vive, que aún no se pregunta por qué suceden la mayoría de las cosas, que da por hecho que sus padres siempre tienen razón...
En fin, es un libro maravilloso. No será para todo el mundo, pero yo lo he disfrutado una barbaridad y no puedo dejar de recomendarlo para aquellos que quieran aprender un poco de otras culturas de manera amena y sorprendente.
Wole Soyinka recibió el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1987, fue el primer africano en recibir el galardón en esta categoría.
El libro nos relata la infancia de Soyinka desde que tiene uso de memoria hasta que cumple 11 años. Es un periodo corto en el tiempo para un adulto... eterno para un niño, y a través de los ojos de ese niño que fue el autor, vemos y descubrimos el mundo. Es una delicia descubrir todo lo cotidiano de la vida con esa mirada siempre sorprendida, optimista y segura de sí misma.
Vamos a aprender cómo era la vida en Nigeria durante los años 40 en una familia acomodada (en ese contexto)... todo el libro parecer una carta de amor a sus padres, pero contado con muchísimo humor e ironía. Descubriremos muchos pedazos de la cultura yoruba, de sus creencias, rituales, del choque de culturas, de la religión y el enfrentamiento cada vez mayor con el hombre blanco y su política colonizadora.
Aunque casi todo el libro parece un compendio de anécdotas infantiles absurdas, escalofriantes, divertidísimas, emotivas... hacia el final el libro comienza a desarrollar un tono mucho más serio al describir la lucha por los derechos de las mujeres, con sus marchas y manifestaciones, en las que el propio Soyinka participó, así como su madre y varios familiares, que tomaron una parte muy activa en el conflicto.
El libro está plagado de eventos reales y personajes Históricos, pero en todo momento sientes que todo lo que el autor cuenta es algo enormemente personal, son los recuerdos de la vida de un niño inocente que no juzga el mundo en el que vive, que aún no se pregunta por qué suceden la mayoría de las cosas, que da por hecho que sus padres siempre tienen razón...
En fin, es un libro maravilloso. No será para todo el mundo, pero yo lo he disfrutado una barbaridad y no puedo dejar de recomendarlo para aquellos que quieran aprender un poco de otras culturas de manera amena y sorprendente.
Wole Soyinka recibió el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1987, fue el primer africano en recibir el galardón en esta categoría.
August 31, 2018
"It is time to commence the mental shifts for admittance to yet another irrational world of adults and their discipline."
The closing lines of this childhood memoir made me smile. What a mistake to underestimate the rationality of children while overestimating that of grown-ups! To a child, the grown-up rules and routines, their ideas and dogmas, seem overwhelmingly crazy. The pedagogical value of forbidding shoes in a school remains a mystery, both to the young boy about to change schools yet again on the very last page of this account, and to the reader, who also has to bid farewell to the magic of this very special childhood with a father called Essay (S.A. - how I would love to change my initials!), and a mother called Wild Christian, just to name the closest relatives in Aké. The sheer variety of cultural and natural influences is a brilliant manifesto for human crosscultural learning and understanding.
I have long been an admirer of Wole Soyinka's poetry and plays, and his childhood memories fully explain how he developed the wit, intelligence and empathy to create them.
A noble Nobel!
The closing lines of this childhood memoir made me smile. What a mistake to underestimate the rationality of children while overestimating that of grown-ups! To a child, the grown-up rules and routines, their ideas and dogmas, seem overwhelmingly crazy. The pedagogical value of forbidding shoes in a school remains a mystery, both to the young boy about to change schools yet again on the very last page of this account, and to the reader, who also has to bid farewell to the magic of this very special childhood with a father called Essay (S.A. - how I would love to change my initials!), and a mother called Wild Christian, just to name the closest relatives in Aké. The sheer variety of cultural and natural influences is a brilliant manifesto for human crosscultural learning and understanding.
I have long been an admirer of Wole Soyinka's poetry and plays, and his childhood memories fully explain how he developed the wit, intelligence and empathy to create them.
A noble Nobel!
December 17, 2015
How often do I call something 'Proustian'? Not that often, yes? So, pay attention, because this work brings to mind that languid tidal wave in all the right ways.
Out of the entirety of ISoLT, Swann's Way is the volumetric portion that stays with me, both out of the initial contact of superb wonder and my penchant for childhood narratives that don't talk down to its younger self. To begin to read those pages is to dive and it is the same here in Aké, land calling to faith calling to logistics within the first paragraph in perhaps not as lengthy a sentence but indeed in as dense a phrase. Each and every sentence is more of a beam than a part, interchange of far reaching wave and concentrating of particle as Soyinka conjures up his childhood in as delightfully subsuming a manner as the best fiction often does. He didn't win the Nobel Prize for nothing, I can tell you that.
Of course, that previous reference doesn't persuade as well as I used to think, so there must be more. First off there's the novelty, for how often do you read an autobiography set in a Yoruba village in western Nigeria? Admittedly, the story taking place before and during WWII grounds one a bit, but here the new is traded for the novel lens, a view of things both turned on its head and lushly unique. I wouldn't hold your breath if that's your main incentive for reading, though. Soyinka does not live through the war on paper till he is eleven, and there are memories from three to two to an unnamed farther back in his yearly life to first off contemplate and contend.
If a child is telling you a story, wouldn't you say that it's best they be both precocious and all too young, offering up tales of strange exploits combined with the most precious of thoughts? If that's the case, I cannot think of a more perfect protagonist than little Wole. Always stubborn, always questioning, always following his interests both physical and intellectual, viewing the admonishment of various adults as guidelines he is fully free to evaluate and critique in as vocal a manner as is necessary. That latter audacious insight leads to rampant classifications, formation of definition for everything from the 'without time' guava tree to his own parents, the nickname of his father of especial note:
In contrast, yes there are mentions of colonialism, racism, sexism, and usual age old mix of -isms and co. However, the young Wole's view is always a mix of engagement and critique, accepting what makes sense to him and puzzling over the nonsensical with the aid of knowledgeable adults. I will admit that the last events won my heart in the most biased of ways, but I challenge anyone to not be stirred by those dramatic last pages.
Finally, this boy from a young age has a fervent interest in books. What's not to love about that?
Out of the entirety of ISoLT, Swann's Way is the volumetric portion that stays with me, both out of the initial contact of superb wonder and my penchant for childhood narratives that don't talk down to its younger self. To begin to read those pages is to dive and it is the same here in Aké, land calling to faith calling to logistics within the first paragraph in perhaps not as lengthy a sentence but indeed in as dense a phrase. Each and every sentence is more of a beam than a part, interchange of far reaching wave and concentrating of particle as Soyinka conjures up his childhood in as delightfully subsuming a manner as the best fiction often does. He didn't win the Nobel Prize for nothing, I can tell you that.
Of course, that previous reference doesn't persuade as well as I used to think, so there must be more. First off there's the novelty, for how often do you read an autobiography set in a Yoruba village in western Nigeria? Admittedly, the story taking place before and during WWII grounds one a bit, but here the new is traded for the novel lens, a view of things both turned on its head and lushly unique. I wouldn't hold your breath if that's your main incentive for reading, though. Soyinka does not live through the war on paper till he is eleven, and there are memories from three to two to an unnamed farther back in his yearly life to first off contemplate and contend.
If a child is telling you a story, wouldn't you say that it's best they be both precocious and all too young, offering up tales of strange exploits combined with the most precious of thoughts? If that's the case, I cannot think of a more perfect protagonist than little Wole. Always stubborn, always questioning, always following his interests both physical and intellectual, viewing the admonishment of various adults as guidelines he is fully free to evaluate and critique in as vocal a manner as is necessary. That latter audacious insight leads to rampant classifications, formation of definition for everything from the 'without time' guava tree to his own parents, the nickname of his father of especial note:
It did not take long for him to enter my consciousness simply as Essay, as one of those careful stylistic exercises in prose which follow set rules of composition, are products of fastidiousness and elegance, set down in beautiful calligraphy that would be the envy of most copyists of any age.This mentality counters and swerves around every aspect of life, portraying in astonishing ways every matter encountered by a child, communal bedrooms and hungry house-guests considered just as thoughtfully as culture clash and the passage of time. Amongst all these disparate scenes of a child's life intersecting with events both tickling and somber, a particular favorite of mine is the eclectic rhetoric birthed by the principal at Wole's Grammar School demanding that every student accused of a misdemeanor defend themselves in a schoolyard trial. If the defense meets Daodu's, the esteemed Winston Churchillesque principal himself, standards, the accused goes free, the obviousness of their crime or the absurdity of their argument having little to no impact on the decision.This surprisingly reasonable stance leads to eloquence regarding the matter of a stolen chicken being conducted along the lines of:
I concurred principal, and there being no time like now because action speaks louder than words time and tide waiteth for no man opportunity once lost cannot be regained saves nine, principal, and finally, one good turn deserves another so, with these thoughts for our guide, we spread out, closed in on this cock in order to catch it and restore to the poultry yard from which it escaped.Delightful.
In contrast, yes there are mentions of colonialism, racism, sexism, and usual age old mix of -isms and co. However, the young Wole's view is always a mix of engagement and critique, accepting what makes sense to him and puzzling over the nonsensical with the aid of knowledgeable adults. I will admit that the last events won my heart in the most biased of ways, but I challenge anyone to not be stirred by those dramatic last pages.
Finally, this boy from a young age has a fervent interest in books. What's not to love about that?
I looked at him in some astonishment. Not feel like coming to school! The coloured maps, pictures and other hangings on the walls, the coloured counters, markers, slates, inkwells in neat round holes, crayons and drawing-books, a shelf laden with modelled objects - animals, human beings, implements - raffia and basket-work in various stages of completion, even the blackboards, chalk, and duster...I had yet to see a more inviting playroom! In addition, I had made some vague, intuitive connection between school and the piles of books with which my father appeared to commune so religiously in the front room, and which had constantly to be snatched from me as soon as my hands grew long enough to reach them on the table.
'I shall come everyday' I confidently declared.
August 3, 2014
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
#1 I love thine imagery and art. How the bewilderment of a little boy is captured through his grownup self and laid bare on the page.
#2 I love thee for thine courage. 1982 and thou dared come forth as a work of nonfiction, during a time when your African peers would have scorned your genre, told thee that thou art a bit full of it, that only true stories of kings, queens, or presidents (if even that) are befitting to be set to books.
#3 I love the bursts of poetic verse seen throughout thine chapters. The contradictions: thou art not the easiest to read, nevertheless, thou art very entertaining.
#4 I love how thou narrator calls his bookish father, "Essay," (S.A. turned to Essay, how befitting) his mother, "Wild Christian," his grandfather, "Father."
#5 I love the specific placement of dialect in dialogue to signify cultural context. The dramatic scenes that really come alive with humor and truth. Loved the portrayal of a worldwide fear and resentment of Hitler, how a drunk Hitler in army fatigues, came all the way to the small Nigerian town of Ake and peed in the water pot.
#6 I love thine bookish young narrator. All grown up and now a Nobel Laureate. Go figure.
#7 I love how after reading thee, I felt the same way I did after reading, Houseboy. As if I've been cheated somehow, having missed out on a classic addition to African Literature, one that undoubtedly helped mold the form of creative nonfiction. Of coming-of-age literary memoirs--just as its counterparts did for American coming-of-age literary nonficiton memoirs like: This Boy's Life and A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. I love how like these books about boyhood, thou doesn't t tell me anything in particular, yet thou tells me everything.
#8 I love thine inclusion of what fiction would call magical realism.
#9 I loved hearing of the women's movement, as seen from the eyes of the little boy who wanted to marry a couple of the married women who helped take care of him. Loved seeing the narrator's relationship with his godmother, with the bookseller, and with his mother.
#10 I loved the relationship between father, grandfather, and son.
#11 Most importantly, though I didn't get to read thee while completing junior high and one year of high school in Liberia, not even while completing high school and college in America, I love how I now get to read thee. Someday, I will make thee required reading in my classroom.
#1 I love thine imagery and art. How the bewilderment of a little boy is captured through his grownup self and laid bare on the page.
#2 I love thee for thine courage. 1982 and thou dared come forth as a work of nonfiction, during a time when your African peers would have scorned your genre, told thee that thou art a bit full of it, that only true stories of kings, queens, or presidents (if even that) are befitting to be set to books.
#3 I love the bursts of poetic verse seen throughout thine chapters. The contradictions: thou art not the easiest to read, nevertheless, thou art very entertaining.
#4 I love how thou narrator calls his bookish father, "Essay," (S.A. turned to Essay, how befitting) his mother, "Wild Christian," his grandfather, "Father."
#5 I love the specific placement of dialect in dialogue to signify cultural context. The dramatic scenes that really come alive with humor and truth. Loved the portrayal of a worldwide fear and resentment of Hitler, how a drunk Hitler in army fatigues, came all the way to the small Nigerian town of Ake and peed in the water pot.
#6 I love thine bookish young narrator. All grown up and now a Nobel Laureate. Go figure.
#7 I love how after reading thee, I felt the same way I did after reading, Houseboy. As if I've been cheated somehow, having missed out on a classic addition to African Literature, one that undoubtedly helped mold the form of creative nonfiction. Of coming-of-age literary memoirs--just as its counterparts did for American coming-of-age literary nonficiton memoirs like: This Boy's Life and A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. I love how like these books about boyhood, thou doesn't t tell me anything in particular, yet thou tells me everything.
#8 I love thine inclusion of what fiction would call magical realism.
#9 I loved hearing of the women's movement, as seen from the eyes of the little boy who wanted to marry a couple of the married women who helped take care of him. Loved seeing the narrator's relationship with his godmother, with the bookseller, and with his mother.
#10 I loved the relationship between father, grandfather, and son.
#11 Most importantly, though I didn't get to read thee while completing junior high and one year of high school in Liberia, not even while completing high school and college in America, I love how I now get to read thee. Someday, I will make thee required reading in my classroom.
February 24, 2019
I often forgot I was reading a memoir. Instead, I was there with little Wole, following him around as he explored and learned and discovered. I could see his home and village and school. More importantly, I could feel the presence of Essay, Wild Christian, Father, Tinu and I got scared when he got scared, or bold when he got bold. I heard his questions, oh so many questions he would pester everyone with, that at the ripe age of four he already had a reputation as a too curious-for-his-own-good child. Adults kindly warned each other to prepare for his never-ending barrage of questions. And I loved it. I mean his questions were of genuine curiosity, this was a child thirsting to understand the world, make sense of it, and make use of it way before most children would be forming proper sentences.
I also loved the cultural richness and the way I was exposed to it all. The simplicity of complex issues like someone who was a Muslim but converted to Christianity, or the fact that everyone was afraid of juju even though no one knew what else to make of it, or the desire to abolish taxation in the face of corruption… I come across so much in this novel through the eyes of young Wole which remained innocent and judgment-free, as they should. And I loved all the Yoruba words for food, clothes, relations. Mostly, I loved the support and motivation Wole’s family offered him, even though he never gets sentimental, one can feel the love that nested him.
One of my favorite exchanges:
A terrific memoir.
I also loved the cultural richness and the way I was exposed to it all. The simplicity of complex issues like someone who was a Muslim but converted to Christianity, or the fact that everyone was afraid of juju even though no one knew what else to make of it, or the desire to abolish taxation in the face of corruption… I come across so much in this novel through the eyes of young Wole which remained innocent and judgment-free, as they should. And I loved all the Yoruba words for food, clothes, relations. Mostly, I loved the support and motivation Wole’s family offered him, even though he never gets sentimental, one can feel the love that nested him.
One of my favorite exchanges:
’Have you come to keep your sister company?’
‘No. I have come to school.’
Then he looked down at the books I had plucked from my father’s table.
‘Aren’t these your father’s books?’
‘Yes. I want to learn them.’
‘But you are not old enough, Wole.’
‘I am three years old.’
Lawanle cut in, ‘Three years old wo? Don’t mind him sir, he won’t be three until July.’
‘I am nearly three. Anyway, I have come to school. I have books.’
He turned to the class-teacher and said, ‘Enter his name in the register.’
A terrific memoir.
February 19, 2018
The Flavor of Childhood is Universal
I've never been to Nigeria, nor even West Africa, and though I've known many Nigerians, including a number of Yoruba, I could never say, until I read AKÉ, THE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD, that I had any real idea about where they came from. You can read other Nigerian writers---Tutuola, Achebe, Ekwensi, Nzekwu, Amadi---or listen to Nigerian music from Fela, Ebenezer Obey, `King' Sunny Ade, or Olatunji---there's a vast world of Nigerian culture, but until you've read Soyinka, you haven't tasted the real flavor of it. Seeing that I've just confessed that I haven't been there, how do I dare to say such a thing ? It's because I believe that the human experience has both particular and universal elements and Soyinka is at his best in describing his childhood days in such a way that both are clearly present. Childhood is a welter of impressions, small events, accidents, misunderstandings, broken promises, smells, sounds, and feelings. Everyone's childhood is composed of just these things. But how about a childhood in Abeokuta, Nigeria in the late 1930s and 1940s ? In Soyinka's autobiography, we appreciate the specific qualities of those years in that place in magnificent detail...addiction to powdered milk, getting lost because you followed a marching band, stewing a snake, dislike of being an 'exhibit', learning to love books. Everything is told from a child's point of view, with no attempt to be prescient after the fact. [The thing that annoyed me tremendously about Jean Paul Sartre's "The Words".] Soyinka comes across as a very honest man.
The first few pages are a little bewildering, before you sink into the comfortable flow of humorous, tender, wondering memories. I liked the use of Yoruba expressions and sayings, translated at the bottom of each page-if Europeans could bombard us with German, French, Latin, etc., why not Yoruba ? Soyinka makes no concessions, and that's great. Most of the famous autobiographies of world literature have come from Europe and America. Now Africa has produced one to stand up with the best of them.
I've never been to Nigeria, nor even West Africa, and though I've known many Nigerians, including a number of Yoruba, I could never say, until I read AKÉ, THE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD, that I had any real idea about where they came from. You can read other Nigerian writers---Tutuola, Achebe, Ekwensi, Nzekwu, Amadi---or listen to Nigerian music from Fela, Ebenezer Obey, `King' Sunny Ade, or Olatunji---there's a vast world of Nigerian culture, but until you've read Soyinka, you haven't tasted the real flavor of it. Seeing that I've just confessed that I haven't been there, how do I dare to say such a thing ? It's because I believe that the human experience has both particular and universal elements and Soyinka is at his best in describing his childhood days in such a way that both are clearly present. Childhood is a welter of impressions, small events, accidents, misunderstandings, broken promises, smells, sounds, and feelings. Everyone's childhood is composed of just these things. But how about a childhood in Abeokuta, Nigeria in the late 1930s and 1940s ? In Soyinka's autobiography, we appreciate the specific qualities of those years in that place in magnificent detail...addiction to powdered milk, getting lost because you followed a marching band, stewing a snake, dislike of being an 'exhibit', learning to love books. Everything is told from a child's point of view, with no attempt to be prescient after the fact. [The thing that annoyed me tremendously about Jean Paul Sartre's "The Words".] Soyinka comes across as a very honest man.
The first few pages are a little bewildering, before you sink into the comfortable flow of humorous, tender, wondering memories. I liked the use of Yoruba expressions and sayings, translated at the bottom of each page-if Europeans could bombard us with German, French, Latin, etc., why not Yoruba ? Soyinka makes no concessions, and that's great. Most of the famous autobiographies of world literature have come from Europe and America. Now Africa has produced one to stand up with the best of them.
May 29, 2024
Nicht leicht zu lesen, ich musste mich bemühen dabei zu bleiben.
Dabei habe ich einiges über Nigeria und die Familie Kuti gelernt.
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti war sicher eine der interessantesten Persönlichkeiten, über die ich jemals lesen und mich dann im Internet informieren durfte. Das hat mich bereichert.
Dabei habe ich einiges über Nigeria und die Familie Kuti gelernt.
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti war sicher eine der interessantesten Persönlichkeiten, über die ich jemals lesen und mich dann im Internet informieren durfte. Das hat mich bereichert.
October 2, 2022
Ein Buch, das es mir nicht immer leicht gemacht hat und an dem ich lange Abende mitschreibend und nebenbei recherchierend saß, weil es nicht für den westlichen Leser geschrieben ist.
Es breitet also all die Speisen und religiösen, mythischen Ideen, Traditionen und Familienkonzepte vor dem Leser aus und benennt diese mit den originalen Yoruba-Wörtern. Das Glossar ist nur bedingt in der Lage, diesem Ansturm gerecht zu werden, außerdem weigere ich mich oft, den Lesefluss abreißen zu lassen, um hinten nachzusehen, was "Buka" (Stand), "Abiku" (Teufelskind) oder ein "Ibatan" (Verwandter) bedeuten. Vieles hat sich im Verlauf geklärt, anderes habe ich wohl nur halb verstanden.
Aber das Wichtigste ist natürlich, dass Soyinkas überbordender Roman seiner eigenen Kindheit in Südnigeria ein großes Fest ist: Wir begleiten ihn als 3jährigen, wenn er im Kreis seiner großen Familie vorlaut verkündet, nun reif für die Schule zu sein und diesen Plan rigoros umsetzt. Seine Mutter - "Wild Christian" ist dann auch deutlicher dem Christentum zugeneigt als der Vater "Essay", der die "Ogun", die alten Götter der Yoruba noch am Werk sieht und seinen Sohn wie die anderen Kinder (Dipolos, Capido, Lawanle, Joseph, Folosade...) durch Amulette und Schutzverletzungen immunisieren will gegen das Böse in der Welt. (Nicht zuletzt gegen Hitler, den ein drollig Verrückter in Ake mit seinem Amulett-Gurt vernichten will, wenn ihn diese nervenden Briten denn über den Teich ließen).
Einen Teil des Buchs bilden die Konflikte und auch der Alltag der Familie, die offenbar recht begütert und bedeutend ist, da der Vater Schulleiter ist und sie auf dem Pfarreigelände leben. Von wirtschaftlicher Not ist also nichts zu spüren, eine sozioökonomische Analyse ist allerdings auch nicht das Anliegen des Buchs. Eher geht es um die allmähliche Symbiose aus Christentum ("Sie brachten uns die Kirche und nahmen unser Land, wogegen wir aufgrund des Christentums nichts sagen konnten.") und den Yoruba-Sagen. Spannend fand ich, wie es Soyinka schafft, diese Szenen als optische Feste zu starten, sie dann aber moralisch eskalieren zu lassen, wenn sich Wole fragt, ob ein Egungun überhaupt ein Christ sein kann und ob er nicht vom Teufel besessen ist, weil er regelmäßig Wut empfindet. Wer sich für die "Emi Esu", die Teufelskinder in Nigeria interessiert, findet auf Arte eine erschreckende Doku zu diesen ausgestoßenen Kindern. Dass Wole also wirklich Angst vor dem Dunklen in sich hat, wird hier verständlich. Bettnässende Kinder werden hier auch gerne nackt durchs Dorf getrieben und ausgelacht. Auch wenn man sich als Leser grün und blau ärgert über diese Fiesheiten, schildert Soyinka diese Passage, wie viele andere, ohne moralische Empörung. Wie auch, wenn sie zur Praxis gehören. Ein entscheidender Nachteil der weißen, von Briten geleiteten Schule ist passenderweise auch der Umstand, dass es dort keine Prügelstrafe gibt - Woles Eltern fragen sich, wie man denn so Kinder erziehen kann. Ich vermute, dass dieses Erziehungskonzept um 1940 auch in anderen Teilen der Welt noch begeisterte Anhänger hatte. Man sollte sich nur bewusst machen, dass Soyinka ohne Schonung eine Gemeinschaft zeigt, die noch stark durchdrungen ist von Werten der Unterordnung der Jüngeren, von Mut und männlicher Stärke. Gerade dass Wole viel lieber lesend in der Ecke sitzt, macht ihn für seine Mutter so verdächtig. Er ist aufgrund seiner Interessen eine Randfigur dieser Gesellschaft und kann sie daher so genau betrachten und in ihren Brüchen wahrnehmen.
Nicht immer war ich über die Erzählstimme glücklich. Erschien mir Wole im ersten Teil oft zu vorlaut und altklug, fand ich seine Beobachtungen auf den späteren Seiten zwar interessant als Einblick in die Yoruba-Gesellschaft, die sich allmählich feministisch und nationalstaatlich organisiert. Aber mir hat auch oft die authentische Gefühlslage und Stimme eines 10jährigen gefehlt. Soyinka stattet seinen Wole mit einer hochliterarischen Sprache und einer nahezu grenzenlose Auffassungsgabe aus, die die Figur des Wole zu 90% des Buchs einfach verschwinden lässt, was mich erzählerisch oft ermüdete. Soyinka kann ungeheuer starke Szenen voller Lebendigkeit schreiben, aber der große Erzählbogen fühlte sich für mich etwas trocken an, weil das Buch thematisch vor sich hin mäandert und zu wenige Plotpunkte setzt.
Immer dort, wo Wole als Figur tatsächlich auftritt und nicht bloß als erzählerisches Alibi herhalten muss, fand ich das Buch am immersivsten: Beim Streit mit dem kleinen Bruder, bei der Jagd auf eine Schlange, bei der Schilderung eines - HERRLICH LUSTIGEN - Gerichtsverfahrens in der Schule.
Ein tolles Buch also, das mir tiefe Einblicke in eine südnigerianische Familie um 1940 ermöglicht und mir auf vielen Ebenen die reiche Geschichte der Region vorstellt, das mich aber auch einige Male abgeworfen oder erzählerisch überfordert/eingeschläfert hat.
7 von 10 Punkten. Leseempfehlung für die langen Atemträger, für die Literatur-Emi-Esus unter euch ;-)
Es breitet also all die Speisen und religiösen, mythischen Ideen, Traditionen und Familienkonzepte vor dem Leser aus und benennt diese mit den originalen Yoruba-Wörtern. Das Glossar ist nur bedingt in der Lage, diesem Ansturm gerecht zu werden, außerdem weigere ich mich oft, den Lesefluss abreißen zu lassen, um hinten nachzusehen, was "Buka" (Stand), "Abiku" (Teufelskind) oder ein "Ibatan" (Verwandter) bedeuten. Vieles hat sich im Verlauf geklärt, anderes habe ich wohl nur halb verstanden.
Aber das Wichtigste ist natürlich, dass Soyinkas überbordender Roman seiner eigenen Kindheit in Südnigeria ein großes Fest ist: Wir begleiten ihn als 3jährigen, wenn er im Kreis seiner großen Familie vorlaut verkündet, nun reif für die Schule zu sein und diesen Plan rigoros umsetzt. Seine Mutter - "Wild Christian" ist dann auch deutlicher dem Christentum zugeneigt als der Vater "Essay", der die "Ogun", die alten Götter der Yoruba noch am Werk sieht und seinen Sohn wie die anderen Kinder (Dipolos, Capido, Lawanle, Joseph, Folosade...) durch Amulette und Schutzverletzungen immunisieren will gegen das Böse in der Welt. (Nicht zuletzt gegen Hitler, den ein drollig Verrückter in Ake mit seinem Amulett-Gurt vernichten will, wenn ihn diese nervenden Briten denn über den Teich ließen).
Einen Teil des Buchs bilden die Konflikte und auch der Alltag der Familie, die offenbar recht begütert und bedeutend ist, da der Vater Schulleiter ist und sie auf dem Pfarreigelände leben. Von wirtschaftlicher Not ist also nichts zu spüren, eine sozioökonomische Analyse ist allerdings auch nicht das Anliegen des Buchs. Eher geht es um die allmähliche Symbiose aus Christentum ("Sie brachten uns die Kirche und nahmen unser Land, wogegen wir aufgrund des Christentums nichts sagen konnten.") und den Yoruba-Sagen. Spannend fand ich, wie es Soyinka schafft, diese Szenen als optische Feste zu starten, sie dann aber moralisch eskalieren zu lassen, wenn sich Wole fragt, ob ein Egungun überhaupt ein Christ sein kann und ob er nicht vom Teufel besessen ist, weil er regelmäßig Wut empfindet. Wer sich für die "Emi Esu", die Teufelskinder in Nigeria interessiert, findet auf Arte eine erschreckende Doku zu diesen ausgestoßenen Kindern. Dass Wole also wirklich Angst vor dem Dunklen in sich hat, wird hier verständlich. Bettnässende Kinder werden hier auch gerne nackt durchs Dorf getrieben und ausgelacht. Auch wenn man sich als Leser grün und blau ärgert über diese Fiesheiten, schildert Soyinka diese Passage, wie viele andere, ohne moralische Empörung. Wie auch, wenn sie zur Praxis gehören. Ein entscheidender Nachteil der weißen, von Briten geleiteten Schule ist passenderweise auch der Umstand, dass es dort keine Prügelstrafe gibt - Woles Eltern fragen sich, wie man denn so Kinder erziehen kann. Ich vermute, dass dieses Erziehungskonzept um 1940 auch in anderen Teilen der Welt noch begeisterte Anhänger hatte. Man sollte sich nur bewusst machen, dass Soyinka ohne Schonung eine Gemeinschaft zeigt, die noch stark durchdrungen ist von Werten der Unterordnung der Jüngeren, von Mut und männlicher Stärke. Gerade dass Wole viel lieber lesend in der Ecke sitzt, macht ihn für seine Mutter so verdächtig. Er ist aufgrund seiner Interessen eine Randfigur dieser Gesellschaft und kann sie daher so genau betrachten und in ihren Brüchen wahrnehmen.
Nicht immer war ich über die Erzählstimme glücklich. Erschien mir Wole im ersten Teil oft zu vorlaut und altklug, fand ich seine Beobachtungen auf den späteren Seiten zwar interessant als Einblick in die Yoruba-Gesellschaft, die sich allmählich feministisch und nationalstaatlich organisiert. Aber mir hat auch oft die authentische Gefühlslage und Stimme eines 10jährigen gefehlt. Soyinka stattet seinen Wole mit einer hochliterarischen Sprache und einer nahezu grenzenlose Auffassungsgabe aus, die die Figur des Wole zu 90% des Buchs einfach verschwinden lässt, was mich erzählerisch oft ermüdete. Soyinka kann ungeheuer starke Szenen voller Lebendigkeit schreiben, aber der große Erzählbogen fühlte sich für mich etwas trocken an, weil das Buch thematisch vor sich hin mäandert und zu wenige Plotpunkte setzt.
Immer dort, wo Wole als Figur tatsächlich auftritt und nicht bloß als erzählerisches Alibi herhalten muss, fand ich das Buch am immersivsten: Beim Streit mit dem kleinen Bruder, bei der Jagd auf eine Schlange, bei der Schilderung eines - HERRLICH LUSTIGEN - Gerichtsverfahrens in der Schule.
Ein tolles Buch also, das mir tiefe Einblicke in eine südnigerianische Familie um 1940 ermöglicht und mir auf vielen Ebenen die reiche Geschichte der Region vorstellt, das mich aber auch einige Male abgeworfen oder erzählerisch überfordert/eingeschläfert hat.
7 von 10 Punkten. Leseempfehlung für die langen Atemträger, für die Literatur-Emi-Esus unter euch ;-)
January 27, 2021
Now, here is Ayo, very ambitious for you. He wants to send his son into battle and believe me, the world of books is a battlefield, it is an even tougher battlefield than the ones we used to know. So how does he prepare him? By stuffing his head with books. But book-learning, and especially success in book-learning only creates other battles. Do you know that?
Delightful!
May 13, 2008
The opening pages of Ake did not grip me. Were it not for sheer force of will to finish this book on time for school, I probably would have set it down with a vague intention to return to it another day, when I could linger over the languorous descriptions of parsonage and terrain. Then I got to Wild Christian and the debate over whether Uncle Sanya is an oro. Soyinka’s use of dialogue is so confident, so immediate and nuanced, that I found it entirely effortless to surrender to his narrative authority. Of course, we soon learn that he was not an ordinary boy: extraordinarily perceptive, curious, and wise beyond his years, Soyinka’s narrator melts into the collective “I” of Ake so completely that at times I forgot he was there–much the same way that, throughout the book and especially in the final chapters, his child self is perpetually observing scenes from rooftops, or through closed doors, and reporting back to the reader what he learned with an objective sense of omniscience.
May 26, 2010
This book isn't a classic of African literature- it's a classic, simple! How can one ever forget the memorable and hilarious characters that peopled its pages, characters like Osiki, You-Mean-Mayself and even the author himself, to mention a few.
I recommend this book to you. You-Mean-Mayself? Yes, I mean you.
I recommend this book to you. You-Mean-Mayself? Yes, I mean you.
March 18, 2016
3.5 Stars
It took me a while to read this book, but I'm glad I did. This book was charming, but read more like a series of short stories than a real novel. I guess that's how life is: a collection of our stories and experiences.
I loved being in young Wole Soyinka's head. He was curious and troublesome, and made me laugh on quite a few occasions. After reading it, however, I can't help but wonder how Mr. Soyinka could possibly remember all that happened to him as a child in such vivid detail. Perhaps if a childhood is as eventful as his own, one cannot help but remember the little things. I suppose it also helps to have close family members with recollective memories as well. ;)
It took me a while to read this book, but I'm glad I did. This book was charming, but read more like a series of short stories than a real novel. I guess that's how life is: a collection of our stories and experiences.
I loved being in young Wole Soyinka's head. He was curious and troublesome, and made me laugh on quite a few occasions. After reading it, however, I can't help but wonder how Mr. Soyinka could possibly remember all that happened to him as a child in such vivid detail. Perhaps if a childhood is as eventful as his own, one cannot help but remember the little things. I suppose it also helps to have close family members with recollective memories as well. ;)
May 6, 2013
Aké, the first volume of Nigerian Nobel prize winner Wole Soyinka's (possibly slightly fictionalised) autobiography, is the first book of his I've read. For most authors, an autobiography is probably not the best place to start; most of the time, I want a reason to care about what the author has done before getting into his life story.
In this case, though, it doesn't disappoint at all. Aké chronicles young Wole's childhood up to about 11 years of age, and given that he was born in 1934, that's a fairly tumultuous time. While the world war rages somewhere just beyond the horizon, Nigeria is somewhere in between the old ways and the new ones, stuck between old tribal kingdoms and the new world, the old religion and Christianity, the old language and English, still ruled by the British but beginning to find a new identity of its own - which isn't an easy process, as shown by the occasional sobering flash-forward to Nigeria in the early 80s.
Soyinka spins this into an amazingly vivid tale, which doesn't shy away from dark subjects but tackles it all with a great sense of humour and the wide eyes of a child who, at first, doesn't understand half of what's going on around him. In a slightly unusual but very well-crafted narrative, he tells the whole story from the perspective of himself as a child (I'm somewhat reminded of Roth's The Plot Against America) which means that as he grows up, the story becomes more intricate, the adult characters more three-dimensional, and his observations more astute; mirroring, in a way, a young country starting to find its footing (Nigeria wouldn't achieve independence until 1960). As with many childhood stories, it's more of an episodic tale than a straight narrative, which means that it tends to be a little disjointed and slow-paced at times - but even then the fantastically colourful prose makes it worth it. For all the times the novel makes me crack up laughing, or even be nostalgic for a time I've never lived in in a country I never visited and a culture I was never part of, there's always the sly adult Soyinka somewhere behind it, using his young self as an only mostly reliable narrator to describe how we come to understand - and challenge - the world.
In this case, though, it doesn't disappoint at all. Aké chronicles young Wole's childhood up to about 11 years of age, and given that he was born in 1934, that's a fairly tumultuous time. While the world war rages somewhere just beyond the horizon, Nigeria is somewhere in between the old ways and the new ones, stuck between old tribal kingdoms and the new world, the old religion and Christianity, the old language and English, still ruled by the British but beginning to find a new identity of its own - which isn't an easy process, as shown by the occasional sobering flash-forward to Nigeria in the early 80s.
Soyinka spins this into an amazingly vivid tale, which doesn't shy away from dark subjects but tackles it all with a great sense of humour and the wide eyes of a child who, at first, doesn't understand half of what's going on around him. In a slightly unusual but very well-crafted narrative, he tells the whole story from the perspective of himself as a child (I'm somewhat reminded of Roth's The Plot Against America) which means that as he grows up, the story becomes more intricate, the adult characters more three-dimensional, and his observations more astute; mirroring, in a way, a young country starting to find its footing (Nigeria wouldn't achieve independence until 1960). As with many childhood stories, it's more of an episodic tale than a straight narrative, which means that it tends to be a little disjointed and slow-paced at times - but even then the fantastically colourful prose makes it worth it. For all the times the novel makes me crack up laughing, or even be nostalgic for a time I've never lived in in a country I never visited and a culture I was never part of, there's always the sly adult Soyinka somewhere behind it, using his young self as an only mostly reliable narrator to describe how we come to understand - and challenge - the world.
February 4, 2015
The autobiography of the 1986 Nobel prize winner from about three or four to eleven. I don't generally like stories told from the perspective of young children, but this book was incredible; since it's nonfiction it's not required to be tragic, but it's not all nostalgia either; it is just fun to read, Soyinka comes across a bright, somewhat mischievous child; his parents, "Essay" and "Wild Christian" -- apparently its a cultural norm to refer to close relatives by nicknames -- are very interesting characters. His father was the headmaster of the local school for young children, and his mother ran a small shop. The family was part of the Christian elite of Ak��, a small town near Abeokuta in Southwestern Nigeria, somewhat northwest of Lagos. His grandfather was a pagan, and there are many references to the more superstitious parts of the traditional religion -- Soyinka did not become interested in the religion seriously until somewhat later. This book has many memorable incidents, and the writing is wonderful -- although events are seen from a child's perspective the language is in no way simplistic. Near the end, he begins to understand more of the politics, and the last two chapters deal with a struggle against the local authorities by the women of the community. Although he naturally assumes much of Yoruba culture, the book is not difficult in the way some of his plays based on Yoruba beliefs are.
November 12, 2019
Nigeryjski noblista opisuje w tej powieści swoje dzieciństwo w Aké. Jako syn dyrektora szkoły wychowuje się w stosunkowo uprzywilejowanych warunkach. Wole to bardzo mądry chłopiec, który już w wieku trzech lat zaczyna chodzić do szkoły i swoimi umiejętnościami zaskakuje nauczycieli i rówieśników. Życie w Aké obserwujemy więc oczyma bystrego chłopca, który nie wszystko rozumie i przedstawia wiele spraw ze swojej perspektywy.
Wole opowiada więc o stosunkach w domu, między rodzicami i rodzeństwem. Wspomina o licznych krewnych i znajomych, których rodzice przygarniają, a którzy stają się dla nich kolejnymi dziećmi. Sporo jest o pracy matki, która prowadzi lokalny sklep. Mimo że rodzina Wole jest chrześcijańska, wierzenia ludu Joruba odgrywają ogromną rolę - religie przeplatają się i mają wielki wpływ na życie ludzi. Bardzo istotną częścią powieści jest walka kobiet, w którą zaangażowana jest matka. Kobiety są podporą rodzin, wychowują często gromadę dzieci same i z trudem wiążą koniec z końcem, zwłaszcza że obarczane są wysokimi podatkami. Matka Wole jest jedną z przywódczyń ruchu kobiet, organizuje wyjazdy na protesty, tworzy pisma i postulaty, aktywnie demonstruje, a mały Wole jest cichym obserwatorem i pomocnikiem.
Ciąg dalszy: https://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot....
Wole opowiada więc o stosunkach w domu, między rodzicami i rodzeństwem. Wspomina o licznych krewnych i znajomych, których rodzice przygarniają, a którzy stają się dla nich kolejnymi dziećmi. Sporo jest o pracy matki, która prowadzi lokalny sklep. Mimo że rodzina Wole jest chrześcijańska, wierzenia ludu Joruba odgrywają ogromną rolę - religie przeplatają się i mają wielki wpływ na życie ludzi. Bardzo istotną częścią powieści jest walka kobiet, w którą zaangażowana jest matka. Kobiety są podporą rodzin, wychowują często gromadę dzieci same i z trudem wiążą koniec z końcem, zwłaszcza że obarczane są wysokimi podatkami. Matka Wole jest jedną z przywódczyń ruchu kobiet, organizuje wyjazdy na protesty, tworzy pisma i postulaty, aktywnie demonstruje, a mały Wole jest cichym obserwatorem i pomocnikiem.
Ciąg dalszy: https://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot....
June 8, 2017
Wole Soyinka’s autobiography, Ake: the Years of Childhood, tells of a Nigerian boy’s daily life before and during World War II. His story originally focuses around his household and school, but becomes more emotionally intense as the story of his childhood progresses. This progression is not only because he is growing older, but because he has been given a political foundation from which to actively process and engage with his surroundings. He notices changes around him, specifically regarding women. Soyinka is fascinated by the unrest of the village women regarding taxes and integrates himself in the cause. Soyinka’s foundation for politics may have been laid by his father, but it is his mother’s feminist activities that seize him. The evolution presented is one of feminist awakening.
To read my paper "Wole Soyinka's Feminist Awakening" please visit: http://writerrhiannon.blogspot.com/20...
To read my paper "Wole Soyinka's Feminist Awakening" please visit: http://writerrhiannon.blogspot.com/20...
February 20, 2010
soyinka has received a nobel prize and many people have praised his semi-autobiographical novel ake, but i struggled to reach its end. it was slow, choppy, and difficult to connect with any of the characters. it is the tale of wole, told from his perspective, as he grows from a toddler to a young boy in WWII-era nigeria. soyinka does a fine job of describing things from a child's eyes, but it is hardly enough to carry the book. i found myself daydreaming while i read -- there was no connection to the story or its characters. i read faster as i neared the end, but only to reach the conclusion, not because i was becoming more interested.
February 16, 2016
This is super good, Soyinka is a wonderful writer. He has so beautifully conveyed what his life was like as a child, and very cleverly restricted his story to telling only what he knew as a child. The scene where a young Soyinka follows along behind a marching band and gets lost is delightful.
September 2, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads #African Literature
When I encountered Wole Soyinka’s Aké: The Years of Childhood during my research stretch between 2013 and 2016, it felt like a pause in the fevered intensity of novels like Petals of Blood or The Famished Road.
Where those books roar with allegory and myth, Soyinka’s memoir hums with memory, mischief, and the peculiar clarity of a child’s gaze. Yet beneath its surface calm, Aké is no less political, no less profound. It is a story about growing up in colonial Nigeria but also about how the seeds of resistance, language, and imagination are sown in childhood.
Soyinka, Nigeria’s Nobel laureate, narrates his boyhood in the Yoruba town of Aké in the 1930s and 40s. The voice is deceptively simple: a child trying to make sense of adults’ rituals, arguments, and hypocrisies. We see his fiercely protective mother—nicknamed “Wild Christian”—his school days, his friendships, his flirtations with danger, and his constant questioning. But through these vignettes, a larger canvas emerges: the encroachment of colonial authority, the tensions within Yoruba society, and the stirrings of political consciousness.
Placed beside Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the contrast is striking. Achebe fictionalises the precolonial-to-colonial encounter through tragic epic; Soyinka personalises colonial presence through memory and humour. Achebe’s Okonkwo wrestles with fate and culture; young Wole wrestles with the mysteries of faith, the authority of parents, and the absurdities of British missionaries. Yet both reveal the same theme: how colonialism rearranged African life, seeping into language, religion, and family.
Comparisons with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s memoir Dreams in a Time of War are perhaps more direct. Both writers recount childhoods marked by colonial structures and cultural contradictions. But while Ngũgĩ writes with somber clarity, emphasizing deprivation and the violence of empire, Soyinka writes with sparkle and mischief, capturing the comic side of confusion. Where Ngũgĩ’s boyhood is shadowed by famine and conflict, Soyinka’s is filled with curiosity, wordplay, and misadventures. The difference is tonal, but both testify to the way children absorb politics long before they can name it.
The memoir also resonates with Camara Laye’s The African Child, another classic of childhood recollection. Laye’s book is suffused with nostalgia, a kind of golden glow for a vanishing world. Soyinka, by contrast, is less sentimental. His Aké is not idealised—it is alive, filled with contradictions. The book is not about innocence lost but about innocence sharpened into awareness.
One of the joys of Aké is its treatment of language. Soyinka, dramatist and poet, infuses his narrative with Yoruba idioms, chants, and cadences. For a child narrator, he captures astonishingly well the rhythm of overhearing adult conversations, half-understanding them, and turning them into wonder. It is as if we are learning to see the world anew through words. Compared to Ben Okri’s hypnotic cadences, Soyinka’s style is more grounded, less incantatory, but no less lyrical. Where Okri dissolves reality into myth, Soyinka thickens reality with wit.
The political dimension surfaces most strongly in the women’s revolt toward the end of the memoir, when local market women protest unfair taxes imposed by colonial authorities and local chiefs. Through young Soyinka’s eyes, this becomes both thrilling and bewildering—a first glimpse of organised resistance. It situates his childhood firmly within the broader currents of Nigerian history, foreshadowing his lifelong engagement with politics and justice.
Reading Aké in 2014, after being immersed in the allegorical weight of Ngũgĩ and the dreamscapes of Okri, was refreshing. It reminded me that African literature is not only about exposing corruption or reimagining myth but also about remembering the ordinary textures of life—the meals, the punishments, the laughter, and the street games. Soyinka elevates the local without exoticising it, showing how the global (colonialism, Christianity, empire) is refracted through the small details of a Yoruba household.
In comparison with Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Aké may seem almost gentle, but it carries the same insistence: history begins in the everyday, politics is woven into family dramas, and the seeds of resistance are sown in childhood observations.
Ultimately, Aké: The Years of Childhood is more than a memoir—it is an origin story, both for Soyinka as a writer and for the Nigeria he would later chronicle, critique, and defend. It shows that even in the most ordinary of towns, under the gaze of a mischievous boy, the fractures of empire and the stirrings of freedom are already visible.
For me, it was a reminder that literature can be both playful and profound, both intimate and historical. And in the wide mosaic of African literature, Aké sings in its own key—one of wit, warmth, and the quiet inevitability of awakening.
When I encountered Wole Soyinka’s Aké: The Years of Childhood during my research stretch between 2013 and 2016, it felt like a pause in the fevered intensity of novels like Petals of Blood or The Famished Road.
Where those books roar with allegory and myth, Soyinka’s memoir hums with memory, mischief, and the peculiar clarity of a child’s gaze. Yet beneath its surface calm, Aké is no less political, no less profound. It is a story about growing up in colonial Nigeria but also about how the seeds of resistance, language, and imagination are sown in childhood.
Soyinka, Nigeria’s Nobel laureate, narrates his boyhood in the Yoruba town of Aké in the 1930s and 40s. The voice is deceptively simple: a child trying to make sense of adults’ rituals, arguments, and hypocrisies. We see his fiercely protective mother—nicknamed “Wild Christian”—his school days, his friendships, his flirtations with danger, and his constant questioning. But through these vignettes, a larger canvas emerges: the encroachment of colonial authority, the tensions within Yoruba society, and the stirrings of political consciousness.
Placed beside Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the contrast is striking. Achebe fictionalises the precolonial-to-colonial encounter through tragic epic; Soyinka personalises colonial presence through memory and humour. Achebe’s Okonkwo wrestles with fate and culture; young Wole wrestles with the mysteries of faith, the authority of parents, and the absurdities of British missionaries. Yet both reveal the same theme: how colonialism rearranged African life, seeping into language, religion, and family.
Comparisons with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s memoir Dreams in a Time of War are perhaps more direct. Both writers recount childhoods marked by colonial structures and cultural contradictions. But while Ngũgĩ writes with somber clarity, emphasizing deprivation and the violence of empire, Soyinka writes with sparkle and mischief, capturing the comic side of confusion. Where Ngũgĩ’s boyhood is shadowed by famine and conflict, Soyinka’s is filled with curiosity, wordplay, and misadventures. The difference is tonal, but both testify to the way children absorb politics long before they can name it.
The memoir also resonates with Camara Laye’s The African Child, another classic of childhood recollection. Laye’s book is suffused with nostalgia, a kind of golden glow for a vanishing world. Soyinka, by contrast, is less sentimental. His Aké is not idealised—it is alive, filled with contradictions. The book is not about innocence lost but about innocence sharpened into awareness.
One of the joys of Aké is its treatment of language. Soyinka, dramatist and poet, infuses his narrative with Yoruba idioms, chants, and cadences. For a child narrator, he captures astonishingly well the rhythm of overhearing adult conversations, half-understanding them, and turning them into wonder. It is as if we are learning to see the world anew through words. Compared to Ben Okri’s hypnotic cadences, Soyinka’s style is more grounded, less incantatory, but no less lyrical. Where Okri dissolves reality into myth, Soyinka thickens reality with wit.
The political dimension surfaces most strongly in the women’s revolt toward the end of the memoir, when local market women protest unfair taxes imposed by colonial authorities and local chiefs. Through young Soyinka’s eyes, this becomes both thrilling and bewildering—a first glimpse of organised resistance. It situates his childhood firmly within the broader currents of Nigerian history, foreshadowing his lifelong engagement with politics and justice.
Reading Aké in 2014, after being immersed in the allegorical weight of Ngũgĩ and the dreamscapes of Okri, was refreshing. It reminded me that African literature is not only about exposing corruption or reimagining myth but also about remembering the ordinary textures of life—the meals, the punishments, the laughter, and the street games. Soyinka elevates the local without exoticising it, showing how the global (colonialism, Christianity, empire) is refracted through the small details of a Yoruba household.
In comparison with Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Aké may seem almost gentle, but it carries the same insistence: history begins in the everyday, politics is woven into family dramas, and the seeds of resistance are sown in childhood observations.
Ultimately, Aké: The Years of Childhood is more than a memoir—it is an origin story, both for Soyinka as a writer and for the Nigeria he would later chronicle, critique, and defend. It shows that even in the most ordinary of towns, under the gaze of a mischievous boy, the fractures of empire and the stirrings of freedom are already visible.
For me, it was a reminder that literature can be both playful and profound, both intimate and historical. And in the wide mosaic of African literature, Aké sings in its own key—one of wit, warmth, and the quiet inevitability of awakening.
May 2, 2019
I’ve just finished reading this in preparation of a visit to my wife’s country and city of birth: Lagos, Nigeria.
Well it did what I’d hoped: provided insight into Yoruba society in the early part of the 20th Century and an insight into Wole Soyinka’s character.
Is it an absolutely outstanding novel in terms of plot, writing, character development etc? I didn’t think so, but it was still a very enjoyable memoir to read by one of Nigeria’s literary masters! Definitely worth picking up if you’re interested in Wole Soyinka and/or Yoruba society.
Well it did what I’d hoped: provided insight into Yoruba society in the early part of the 20th Century and an insight into Wole Soyinka’s character.
Is it an absolutely outstanding novel in terms of plot, writing, character development etc? I didn’t think so, but it was still a very enjoyable memoir to read by one of Nigeria’s literary masters! Definitely worth picking up if you’re interested in Wole Soyinka and/or Yoruba society.
November 26, 2010
I've almost finished teaching "Things Fall Apart" with this year's 10th graders, so that story was still fresh in my mind while I read this memoir by another Nigerian writer. Whereas Achebe writes about the Igbo people, though, Soyinka is from the western, Yoruba, part of the country. This made for an interesting contrast between the two cultures, languages, etc. Also, Achebe's book deals with the time right before colonization really took hold, and "Ake" takes place during World War II; by then, many British customs were entrenched in the schools, government, etc., and at the end of the book people are just starting to discuss independence and nationalism.
Overall, I enjoyed this book, but often the writing felt too dense for the light-hearted stories about Soyinka's early years. The young narrator was endearing, though, and I especially loved his descriptions of his parents' interactions--they sound like a pretty amazing family.
Overall, I enjoyed this book, but often the writing felt too dense for the light-hearted stories about Soyinka's early years. The young narrator was endearing, though, and I especially loved his descriptions of his parents' interactions--they sound like a pretty amazing family.
July 9, 2013
في هذا الزمان الذي تـنـدر فيه الصداقات ويشح الأصدقاء ....
لابد أن يـتـشـبّث الإنسان بكل صداقة قديمة كان عطاؤها دفئاً ...
وبكل صديق وفيّ كانت مشاركاته عمراً ...
لابد أن يـتـشـبّث الإنسان بكل صداقة قديمة كان عطاؤها دفئاً ...
وبكل صديق وفيّ كانت مشاركاته عمراً ...
January 20, 2022
مضيعة وقت!
صفحات مليئة برائحة البول والافكار غير المتناسقة .. مجرد سطور بلا هدف ولا فكرة!
لا يستحق القراءة.
صفحات مليئة برائحة البول والافكار غير المتناسقة .. مجرد سطور بلا هدف ولا فكرة!
لا يستحق القراءة.
July 30, 2022
Väldigt intressant att läsa om en kultur som för mig personligen är så okänd. Roligt med ett barns perspektiv och minnen. Kanske var det därför jag ibland tyckte att det dök upp sidospår utan byte av stycke. Ett barns (eller mitt eget) sätt att berätta något på, allt som koms på måste komma med.
July 12, 2022
I basically lived Wole Soyinka's childhood. So witty yet profound.
May 10, 2019
I liked so many things in the book, particularly noteworthy in a savoury searing recollection: a spontaneous embrace of solitude seen in a young boy spending long hours in 'his' tree; a willful principal of transnational experience engaged in resolute punitive handling of his students; a young housemaid shoved from street to street with intermittent profanities rained on her as a necessary cure for bed-wetting; a procession of rightfully protesting empowered women without fear of scorn or dogged indifference.
Everything seemed so neatly placed, like a song in which a trifle of an adjustment or removal, could make shallow, a far reaching depth of meaning.
Soyinka writes not as someone angry or lacking hope in a possibility of a change, but as an offspring of the terrain, insightful, playing a part in a wilful shift to a clear understanding of a glaring rigid deformity in the instilling of discipline, as perfectly encapsulated in the book's final sentence.
A lingering question accusingly hovers introspectively, unmistakably, and with an unshakeable request for honesty. What's taking us so long?
Everything seemed so neatly placed, like a song in which a trifle of an adjustment or removal, could make shallow, a far reaching depth of meaning.
Soyinka writes not as someone angry or lacking hope in a possibility of a change, but as an offspring of the terrain, insightful, playing a part in a wilful shift to a clear understanding of a glaring rigid deformity in the instilling of discipline, as perfectly encapsulated in the book's final sentence.
A lingering question accusingly hovers introspectively, unmistakably, and with an unshakeable request for honesty. What's taking us so long?
September 18, 2015
In Ake, I was treated to a childhood delicacy of inviting sumptuousness which I attacked with great relish and washed down with smile and laughter, enjoying the peppery sensation down my throat.
When I was done, I let out a blurb of satisfaction, relapsed into memory’s embrace and was transported into a life-world that exerted itself on me with nostalgic feeling both liberating because it allowed me the leisure feeling that feeling again, yet tyrannical because it refused me to live the feeling in real life again by just confiding itself into memory’s whim.
Childhood was fun. We didn’t just want to sit and let the world go by. We wanted to live every bit of the moment. We wanted to satisfy every instinct. We wanted to move with the changing world. That insatiable desire manifested itself as an undying inquisitiveness and as well, a dangerous adventurousness that engaged us with the world.
And the young Wole was nothing less than a typical child, but was even of a precocious kind, living under the shades of a religiously conservative mother (Wild Christian) and a disciplined, scholarly and garden obsessed father, SA, a name the boy coalesced as ESSAY. If some of us cringed under the weight of any rebukes from adults, the young Wole weathered through with a pristine innocence that was yet stubborn. Deciding to go to school at an unusually earlier age was a feat that watered down the defenses of adults. Not less daring was his involvement with the women in their fight against unjust taxes and the despotic feudal lord, the Alake of Abeokuta.
But adults are adults. They want to stay still and watch the world go by. There come the rebuke and the embarrassing silence that meet foolish questions like “Why is your stomach bigger than my father’s? Are you pregnant like the organist?” How else could mother have responded to her unusually inquisitive child? The child whom she could not tame with religiosity. If mother was quick to show her displeasure, father was accommodating, and indirect. The child didn’t miss the hint of any reprimand or disciplinary action that may follow even after a long digressed chit chat between father and son, sometimes leading to a silence that was torturing that the actual punishment. The wash hand basin love affair which became an instinct gone wild beyond the will’s measure, always met wild Christian’s impromptu appearance that followed an improvised sharp knock on the head…..”let me catch you again…” If father caught the thief, his manner would be of a knowing pretence that calculatively lingered the punishment….
When I was done, I let out a blurb of satisfaction, relapsed into memory’s embrace and was transported into a life-world that exerted itself on me with nostalgic feeling both liberating because it allowed me the leisure feeling that feeling again, yet tyrannical because it refused me to live the feeling in real life again by just confiding itself into memory’s whim.
Childhood was fun. We didn’t just want to sit and let the world go by. We wanted to live every bit of the moment. We wanted to satisfy every instinct. We wanted to move with the changing world. That insatiable desire manifested itself as an undying inquisitiveness and as well, a dangerous adventurousness that engaged us with the world.
And the young Wole was nothing less than a typical child, but was even of a precocious kind, living under the shades of a religiously conservative mother (Wild Christian) and a disciplined, scholarly and garden obsessed father, SA, a name the boy coalesced as ESSAY. If some of us cringed under the weight of any rebukes from adults, the young Wole weathered through with a pristine innocence that was yet stubborn. Deciding to go to school at an unusually earlier age was a feat that watered down the defenses of adults. Not less daring was his involvement with the women in their fight against unjust taxes and the despotic feudal lord, the Alake of Abeokuta.
But adults are adults. They want to stay still and watch the world go by. There come the rebuke and the embarrassing silence that meet foolish questions like “Why is your stomach bigger than my father’s? Are you pregnant like the organist?” How else could mother have responded to her unusually inquisitive child? The child whom she could not tame with religiosity. If mother was quick to show her displeasure, father was accommodating, and indirect. The child didn’t miss the hint of any reprimand or disciplinary action that may follow even after a long digressed chit chat between father and son, sometimes leading to a silence that was torturing that the actual punishment. The wash hand basin love affair which became an instinct gone wild beyond the will’s measure, always met wild Christian’s impromptu appearance that followed an improvised sharp knock on the head…..”let me catch you again…” If father caught the thief, his manner would be of a knowing pretence that calculatively lingered the punishment….
November 9, 2017
Absolutely wonderful.
I kept laughing heartily at scenes i could not only relate too but remember as a part of my own childhood. There were so many a familiar story, lores and ubiquitous narratives of my own formative years. But most especial where the weighing realizations on how so many things turned out the way they did in today's Nigeria.
Ake is essentially a if-you-close-your-mind-you'll-miss-it slingshot into the Yoruba side of the story of Pre-colonial Nigeria.
Now it makes sense why the Kutis are such a long line of activists, why the quality of education then is so much better than now never mind the advancement in years and technology, how women have always been a powerful force in the Yoruba setup, how through eroding proper education, a generation of meek, Yesmen and women were born etc etc.
I was mildly heartbroken when i finished.
I am on a Soyinka Book Trail and i'm definitely enjoying it.
I kept laughing heartily at scenes i could not only relate too but remember as a part of my own childhood. There were so many a familiar story, lores and ubiquitous narratives of my own formative years. But most especial where the weighing realizations on how so many things turned out the way they did in today's Nigeria.
Ake is essentially a if-you-close-your-mind-you'll-miss-it slingshot into the Yoruba side of the story of Pre-colonial Nigeria.
Now it makes sense why the Kutis are such a long line of activists, why the quality of education then is so much better than now never mind the advancement in years and technology, how women have always been a powerful force in the Yoruba setup, how through eroding proper education, a generation of meek, Yesmen and women were born etc etc.
I was mildly heartbroken when i finished.
I am on a Soyinka Book Trail and i'm definitely enjoying it.
February 19, 2018
Aké. Hmm
I love how Wole Soyinka told the story. So descriptive. You could almost picture or imagine yourself in there growing up with him.
He was such a stubborn, inquisitive and adventurous young man and I can’t help but think those were the qualities that made him who he is today. I watched him on the news two days ago talking about President Buhari and it was amazing because he has always been passionate and vocal even as a child and it’s good to see he still is.
It was a good read. There were some sad moments and hilarious moments. The part where his sister died on her first birthday was quite rough. The questions he asked, his experiences at Abeokuta Grammar School got me rolling. He seemed like that kid you can’t stand but absolutely love! I also love that he talked about the historical events that happened as a child. I’ll definitely give this book a 3.5/5.
Full review https://t.co/rHugNQKAtS
I love how Wole Soyinka told the story. So descriptive. You could almost picture or imagine yourself in there growing up with him.
He was such a stubborn, inquisitive and adventurous young man and I can’t help but think those were the qualities that made him who he is today. I watched him on the news two days ago talking about President Buhari and it was amazing because he has always been passionate and vocal even as a child and it’s good to see he still is.
It was a good read. There were some sad moments and hilarious moments. The part where his sister died on her first birthday was quite rough. The questions he asked, his experiences at Abeokuta Grammar School got me rolling. He seemed like that kid you can’t stand but absolutely love! I also love that he talked about the historical events that happened as a child. I’ll definitely give this book a 3.5/5.
Full review https://t.co/rHugNQKAtS
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