Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka has said that he regretted missing the presence of his late parents when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm, Sweden, in December 1986.
Soyinka, who turned 91 on Sunday, stated that their absence in Sweden was sorely missed, particularly his late mother, who would have been very joyous and taking photographs at the occasion. He spoke in an online conversation, Talking Books Africa, organised by Rainbow Book Club over the weekend.
“That is one of the things I regret. I just imagined the two of them sitting there witnessing the event. For my Dad, he would have absorbed it and said ‘Good, yes, yes. Let’s go for dinner.’ But my mother would have been insufferable. And I would have teased her because she used to tell me that I have ‘emi esu’. I would have asked her, “EMI ESU is not bad after all?” he said.
On his decision not to grant further interviews to the press, he said: “I was getting a little bit exhausted because I was being taken out of context. In spite of the fact that I have said these things before, the meaning should be clear, especially these days of social media, which has become problematic. There comes a time when you feel you are overexposed. I have been overexposed.”
Reacting to reading about your life through someone else, particularly his new biography by Koko Kalango of Rainbow Book Club, he noted that it is possible for him to be objective about himself. He added that there are moments he has given different answers to the same issues lately. “And I took some actions at certain times…And I find it difficult to believe certain actions I did.”
He observed that though the biography did not say everything about his childhood, it said enough, revealing that he had contradictory names as a child, which the book did not capture.
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“My stepmother gave me the name Okunrin jeje….. Yet, while growing up, I was described as Onijongbon (troublemaker). Now, reconcile these two names. However, it is a marvel that I survived till now,” he recalled.
He also spoke on his attempts at writing for children.
“My publisher kept telling me I should write a children’s book. It makes sense because I enjoyed reading as a child. Again, it makes sense both from an economic point of view and that of sharing the scope of my imagination. For me, I cannot dare to talk down to children. I must speak to them in the language they understand. One should not talk down to children because, as a child, I resented it. I wanted to re-enter the minds of children.
“The consequence, however, was not too negative. It was these efforts that resulted in Ake because I didn’t want to write about my childhood. I wanted to capture the environment of my childhood through the biography of an Uncle, Rev. Ransome Kuti, the father of late Afrobeat Legend, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, whom I admired a lot. He was a colourful and impossible character.
“He was the first Secretary General of NUT. I then decided to capture that period of my childhood through the way I saw him. Unfortunately, after getting his consent about the biography, he travelled and came back. But he died on me, so I dropped the project. Then there was a flash, I reentered that period completely, and I was able to begin writing Ake.
“I wrote the first couple of chapters. After attempting to continue the writing, it failed, so I dropped the book and went into other things and ran for politics. I was detained, and during that period, I was able to reenter my childhood years. I actually began all over again. A year or two out of prison, I was able to continue. But, when I went through what I wrote before the detention and what I wrote in detention, they were almost the same, almost word for word. From there, I was able to finish the book.
Soyinka eulogised the duo of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, whom he described as his mentors.
