“The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”

-Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

A Nigerian playwright, poet, author, teacher and political activist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986.

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

Wole Soyinka was born on July 13, 1934, in Nigeria and educated in England. In 1986, the playwright and political activist became the first African to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He dedicated his Nobel acceptance speech to Nelson Mandela. Soyinka has published hundreds of works, including drama, novels, essays and poetry, and colleges all over the world seek him out as a visiting professor.

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

Early LifeWole Soyinka was born Akinwande Oluwole

"Wole" Babatunde Soyinka on July 13, 1934, in Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western Nigeria. His father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka, was a prominent Anglican minister and headmaster. His mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka, who was called "Wild Christian," was a shopkeeper and local activist. As a child, he lived in an Anglican mission compound, learning the Christian teachings of his parents, as well as the Yoruba spiritualism and tribal customs of his grandfather. A precocious and inquisitive child, Wole prompted the adults in his life to warn one another: “He will kill you with his questions.”

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

After finishing preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government College in Ibadan, Soyinka moved to England and continued his education at the University of Leeds, where he served as the editor of the school's magazine, The Eagle. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in English literature in 1958. (In 1972 the university awarded him an honorary doctorate).

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

Plays & Political ActivismIn the late 1950s Soyinka wrote his first important

play, A Dance of the Forests, which satirized the Nigerian political elite. From 1958 to 1959, Soyinka was a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship and returned to Nigeria to study African drama.

In 1960, he founded the theater group, The 1960 Masks, and in 1964, the Orisun Theatre Company, in which he produced his own plays and performed as an actor. He has periodically been a visiting professor at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale.

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

Soyinka is also a political activist, and during the civil war in Nigeria he appealed in an article for a cease-fire. He was arrested for this in 1967, and held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969.

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

Nobel Prize and Later CareerIn 1986, upon awarding Soyinka with the Nobel

Prize for Literature, the committee said the playwright "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence." Soyinka sometimes writes of modern West Africa in a satirical style, but his serious intent and his belief in the evils inherent in the exercise of power are usually present in his work. To date, Soyinka has published hundreds of works.

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

Nobel Prize and Later Career

In addition to drama and poetry, he has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965) and Season of Anomy (1973), as well as autobiographical works including The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972), a gripping account of his prison experience, and Aké ( 1981), a memoir about his childhood. Myth, Literature and the African World (1975) is a collection of Soyinka’s literary essays.

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

Now considered Nigeria’s foremost man of letters, Soyinka is still politically active and spent the 2015 election day in Africa’s biggest democracy working the phones to monitor reports of voting irregularities, technical issues and violence, according to The Guardian. After the election on March 28, 2015, he said that Nigerians must show a Nelson Mandela–like ability to forgive president-elect Muhammadu Buhari’s past as an iron-fisted military ruler, according to Bloomberg.com.

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

Soyinka has been married three times. He married British writer Barbara Dixon in 1958; Olaide Idowu, a Nigerian librarian, in 1963; and Folake Doherty, his current wife, in 1989. In 2014, Soyinka revealed he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and cured 10 months after treatment.

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

Wole Soyinka's Works•1958 The Swamp Dwellers, drama•1959 The Lion and the Jewel, drama•1960 The Trials of Brother Jero, drama•1965 The Interpreters, fiction (discussion)•1965 Before the Blackout, drama•1965 Kongi's Harvest, drama•1965 The Detainee, (BBC Radio Play)•1967, "The Writer in a Modern African State"•1967 Idanre and Other Poems•1969 Poems from Prison•1969 The Road, drama•1970 Madmen and Specialists,•1972 The Man Died, (notes from prison)

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

•1972 A Shuttle in the Crypt Discussions of individual poems•1972 Ogun Abibiman, poems•1976 Death and the King's Horseman•1979 Season of Anomy, fiction•1981 Aké: The Years of Childhood, autobiography•1981 "The Critic and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy, and Other Mythologies"•1981 Opera Wonyosi, an adaptation of Brecht's Three Penny Opera•1982 "Cross Currents: The 'New African' after Cultural Encounters"•1983 "Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist"•1985 "Climates of Art"

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

•1986 "The External Encounter: Ambivalence in African Arts and Literature"•1987 Six Plays•1989 Isara: A Voyage around Essay, autobiography•1989 Mandela's Earth and Other Poems•1992 From Zia With Love•1995 The Beatification of Area Boy•1996 The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis

Wole Soyinka Activist, Playwright (1934–)

References

•Wole Soyinka. In Wikipedia. Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wole_Soyinka

•Wole Soyinka Biography. In Bio. Retrieved from: http://www.biography.com/people/wole-soyinka-9489566#synopsis

Photos:

•Wole Soyinka Photos. In Grimot Nane Zine. Retrieved from:https://grimotnanezine.com/category/ecocide-2/