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A dazzling memoir of an African childhood from Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian novelist, playwright, and poet Wole Soyinka. "Ake 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 Ake. 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, "Ake" is also a transcendantly timeless portrait of the mysteries of childhood.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member GingerbreadMan
I don’t really have that much to say about this. It feels like I’ve read this kind of childhood story a thousand times. We get loving but stern parents, the magic of the everyday, a vague sense of politics, society and change seen through the eyes of a child - and a string of episodes and
There are good things in here, of course. Soyinka can write, and he manages to present a world where the old beliefs of Egúngún are still pretty much real. The spirits exist, amulets and curses are a reality to believers and Christians alike, even if their influences are dwindling. Some of the episodes are funny, some gripping or even heart wrenching. The short chapter about the attack on the crazy homeless woman Sorowanke will stay with me for a long time, as will the episode when Wole almost beats his younger brother to death after being taunted into fighting him. But the fact that there is no orchestration here, no sense of structure besides mere chronology makes my reading experience detatched and vague. And the abrupt and disappointing ending almost leaves me with a feeling of a writer suddenly losing interest in his own material. There are pearls in this book, but they aren’t lined up on any necklace, so to speak.
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events put together in a way that feels haphazard, almost random. There are good things in here, of course. Soyinka can write, and he manages to present a world where the old beliefs of Egúngún are still pretty much real. The spirits exist, amulets and curses are a reality to believers and Christians alike, even if their influences are dwindling. Some of the episodes are funny, some gripping or even heart wrenching. The short chapter about the attack on the crazy homeless woman Sorowanke will stay with me for a long time, as will the episode when Wole almost beats his younger brother to death after being taunted into fighting him. But the fact that there is no orchestration here, no sense of structure besides mere chronology makes my reading experience detatched and vague. And the abrupt and disappointing ending almost leaves me with a feeling of a writer suddenly losing interest in his own material. There are pearls in this book, but they aren’t lined up on any necklace, so to speak.
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LibraryThing member kant1066
Wole Soyinka, the first African to ever be awarded the Noble Prize in Literature, grew up in Nigeria in the fifties, when both his native country and much of the rest of Africa was still roiling under imperial European rule. To no one’s surprise, this results in a memoir that very much reads as
This volume of Soyinka’s memoirs (there are several more by now: see below) is bound up mostly with his domestic life, though later there are memorable recollections of an emerging political consciousness which I’ll mention later. His father (“Essay”) is a local schoolmaster; his mother (“Wild Christian”), the very embodiment of a free spirit who occasionally takes in boarders to their house. Because the memoir uses the limited perspective of a very young boy in a mostly domestic environment, the voice can have the naiveté of a boy this age; however it never has the provincialism that you would expect to accompany that innocence. From the very first episodes of the story, we are able to envision him as a vibrant, curious, enthusiastic, and very precocious little boy.
Though he is stuck at home, the family’s recent acquisition of a new television set gives Wole an initial way of understanding the complex political world around him. He heard of Hitler faintly and vaguely knew that he was an important figure. Later in “Ake,” Soyinka begins to track the actions of a group called the Egba Women’s Union which fights against excessive taxation. Wild Christian becomes prominent in the Union and begins a series of talks with the Alake of Egbaland, a native administrator.
Soyinka’s recollections of his early childhood resemble the kind of person I have seen him to be in interviews – joyous, thoughtful, intellectually curious, and appreciative. He displays the kind of wonderment and delight that we can only hope to have in fully grown adults. From the first chapter which describes the beautiful geography around Ake to the tumultuous politics of colonial Nigeria, the reader walks away from this memoir feeling that he has inhabited the shoes of a child who is bigger than the land that contains him, but at the same time will grow up to write its stories and tell its histories like none of his contemporaries have. Oh, and the language. The language! I will not quote anything directly, but suffice is to say that’s simply magisterial.
To compliment this volume, readers might also be interested in “Isara: A Voyage Around Essay” (1989) which deals with the years directly before the ones in “Ake,” “Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years” (1994) which discusses tracks Soyinka’s life after “Ake” through the time of his arrest and two-year imprisonment, “The Man Died: Prison Notes” (1972) detailing those two horrific years, and most recently “You Must Set Forth at Dawn” (2006), about his experiences from young manhood until publication.
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if the writer is being torn between two priorities, two sets of values, two worlds. Soyinka’s “Ake: The Years of Childhood,” which cover his earliest memories up through approximately age eleven, is no different: he grew up in a world of ancestral religious, social, and cultural practices that mostly coincided easily with, but occasionally butted heads, with the imperial English culture with which it had to share its lebensraum. This volume of Soyinka’s memoirs (there are several more by now: see below) is bound up mostly with his domestic life, though later there are memorable recollections of an emerging political consciousness which I’ll mention later. His father (“Essay”) is a local schoolmaster; his mother (“Wild Christian”), the very embodiment of a free spirit who occasionally takes in boarders to their house. Because the memoir uses the limited perspective of a very young boy in a mostly domestic environment, the voice can have the naiveté of a boy this age; however it never has the provincialism that you would expect to accompany that innocence. From the very first episodes of the story, we are able to envision him as a vibrant, curious, enthusiastic, and very precocious little boy.
Though he is stuck at home, the family’s recent acquisition of a new television set gives Wole an initial way of understanding the complex political world around him. He heard of Hitler faintly and vaguely knew that he was an important figure. Later in “Ake,” Soyinka begins to track the actions of a group called the Egba Women’s Union which fights against excessive taxation. Wild Christian becomes prominent in the Union and begins a series of talks with the Alake of Egbaland, a native administrator.
Soyinka’s recollections of his early childhood resemble the kind of person I have seen him to be in interviews – joyous, thoughtful, intellectually curious, and appreciative. He displays the kind of wonderment and delight that we can only hope to have in fully grown adults. From the first chapter which describes the beautiful geography around Ake to the tumultuous politics of colonial Nigeria, the reader walks away from this memoir feeling that he has inhabited the shoes of a child who is bigger than the land that contains him, but at the same time will grow up to write its stories and tell its histories like none of his contemporaries have. Oh, and the language. The language! I will not quote anything directly, but suffice is to say that’s simply magisterial.
To compliment this volume, readers might also be interested in “Isara: A Voyage Around Essay” (1989) which deals with the years directly before the ones in “Ake,” “Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years” (1994) which discusses tracks Soyinka’s life after “Ake” through the time of his arrest and two-year imprisonment, “The Man Died: Prison Notes” (1972) detailing those two horrific years, and most recently “You Must Set Forth at Dawn” (2006), about his experiences from young manhood until publication.
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LibraryThing member cbl_tn
Nigerian Nobelist Wole Soyinka (b. 1934) gifts readers with a glimpse of his African childhood from his earliest memories until he’s on the brink of leaving for boarding school. Soyinka writes from his younger self’s perspective, so his interpretation of people, places, and events is a bit
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distorted by his childhood innocence and inexperience. He was a precocious child whose thirst for knowledge had him following his older sibling to school at just two years old. Thankfully, the adults and older children in his life didn’t squelch his curiosity, and the literary world is all the better for it. Show Less
Awards
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (Nonfiction — 1983)
Notable Books List (1982)