The echoes of history, mysticism, and cultural reclamation resonated on Sunday at the J Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History, Lagos, as writer and culture advocate, Dr. Bunmi Oyinsan, presented her latest novel, A Ladder of Bones.
The public conversation, themed Ènílólóbo: Mysticism, Beliefs, and Cultural Emancipation, featured discursions from cultural entrepreneur, Qudus Onikeku, as discussant, with veteran arts journalist, Jahman Anikulapo moderating.
Oyinsan explained that the novel was born out of a refusal to accept colonial-era depictions of Africa as passive recipients of empire.
She added that the book deliberately highlights Ellen Thorp’s colonial history text of the same title, reclaiming the imagery of bones not as symbols of British sacrifice but as testimony to the trauma, displacement, and survival of Africans.
Oyinsan said her Ladder of Bones “reclaims the imagery to expose the human cost of colonisation and its lingering shadows.”
“They are in your DNA. A refusal to acknowledge them is automatically cutting yourself short. You cannot reach your full potential without acknowledging that you stand on the shoulders of people who sacrificed so that you can be here,” she said
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The novel follows Enilolobo, a mysterious child with two navels, who arrives in Canada carrying the weight of untold histories.
From Sierra Leone’s brutal child soldier wars to the struggles of Jamaican migrants and Liberian refugees, their stories converge in Canada, where they grapple with identity, violence, and survival in a world still marked by white supremacy and colonial residue.
By weaving these voices together, Oyinsan explained, the novel becomes both a reckoning and a refusal to let history be sanitised.
On his part, Qudus Onikeku described the book as a timely intervention in Nigeria’s cultural discourse.
“What Bunmi has done is more than storytelling; it is memory work. She is challenging us to see that our past is not behind us, it lives within us, shaping our present choices and future possibilities. This book is a mirror, but also a map,” he said.
Moderator Jahman Anikulapo guided the dialogue into broader reflections on mysticism, beliefs, and cultural emancipation, drawing connections between literature, identity, and the collective African struggle to reclaim its narratives.
