Wole Soyinka - Africa's Literary Treasure

Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet, and lecturer born on July 13, 1934, to a Yoruba family in Abeokuta, Nigeria. Wole studied at the University College of Ibadan and graduated from the University of Leeds in Britain in 1958. He subsequently accepted a position at the Royal Court Theatre, where he began producing his plays. In both countries, Soyinka wrote plays presented in theaters and broadcast on the radio. On the eve of Nigeria's independence, he returned to the country and founded the 1960 Masks Drama Troupe, later the Orisun Theater, where he staged his pieces and those of other African playwrights. Soyinka's writings use Western literary forms to describe native myths and traditions.

He was a key figure in Nigeria's political history and struggle for independence from British colonial rule. He seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio in 1965 and broadcast a call for the Western Nigeria Regional Elections to be canceled. During the Nigerian Civil War in 1967, he was arrested by General Yakubu Gowon's federal authority and held in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has been a vocal opponent of successive Nigerian (and other African) regimes, particularly the country's numerous military rulers and political tyrannies such as Zimbabwe's Mugabe regime.

Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, making him the first African and Black writer to do so. “This Past Must Address Its Present,” his Nobel acceptance speech, was dedicated to South African independence hero Nelson Mandela. Soyinka's speech was a vehement condemnation of apartheid and the South African government's racial segregation policies enforced on the majority.

Soyinka's autobiography, Ake: The Years of Childhood, was released in 1981 and was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1983. In 1988, he published Mandela's Earth and Other Poems, and in Nigeria, he published Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Articles on Literature and Culture, a collection of essays. In the same year, Soyinka obtained a position at Cornell University as professor of African studies and theater. Isara: A Voyage Around “Essay,” his third novel, was published in 1990 and was inspired by his father's intellectual community. His radio play A Scourge of Hyacinths was broadcast by the BBC African Service in July 1991, and his play From Zia with Love premiered the following year in Siena, Italy. Both pieces are scathing political parodies based on events in Nigeria during the 1980s.

Soyinka received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University in 1993. Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946–1965) was published the next year, a continuation of his autobiography. His drama The Beatification of Area Boy was published the following year. He was named UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for African Culture, Human Rights, Freedom of Expression, Media, and Communication in October 1994.

Following the postponement of Nigeria's democratic elections in 1993 and the country's takeover by a military government, Soyinka went into exile in 1994. Nigeria's leadership charged Soyinka with treason in 1997. The allegations against him were dropped the following year, and he returned to Nigeria in October 1998.

Soyinka has had three marriages and two divorces. From his three marriages, he has five children. In 1958, he married Barbara Dixon, a late British writer whom he met at the University of Leeds in the 1950s. Olaokun, his first son, was born to Barbara. In 1963, he married Olaide Idowu, a Nigerian librarian, with whom he had three daughters - Moremi, Iyetade (deceased), Peyibomi - and a second son, Ilemakin. In 1989, Soyinka married Folake Doherty, and in 2014 he made public his struggle with prostate cancer.

Soyinka taught Comparative Literature at Obafemi Awolowo University, previously known as the University of Ife, in Nigeria from 1975 to 1999. In 1999, when civilian rule was restored in Nigeria, he was promoted to professor emeritus. From 1988 to 1991, he was the Goldwin Smith Professor of African Studies and Theater Arts at Cornell University. In 1996, he was named the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts at Emory University. Soyinka has taught Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has been a scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.