Ake: The Years of Childhood

 Nigerian-20th century-Biography

This is one of Wole Soyinka’s earlier memoirs. He chose a moment in his childhood, from when he was four to when he was 11 and he represented that. He wrote in the voice of an adult – Wole Soyinka, and he was able to capture the magic of childhood and his growing up and the complexity that he faced in a changing culture, the emerging Western culture encroaching on the traditional African culture. He shows how things gradually started to change. And the older he gets, of course, the more changes there are.

He uses particular tropes such as family, commerce, etc, to develop this theme of change. So, for example, using an institution like religion. His mother is called Wild Christian in the book, which exemplifies her total commitment to her religious belief. And then you have the church itself, the parsonage, which is just next door to the Soyinkas’ compound, and you see how it interacts with the other side of the town, which is animist and African. There is this symbolic demarcation between the Christian and the traditional. And later in the book there is this growing nostalgia, a lament about the modern taking over from the traditional. Well, not totally taking over, but hybridising it, changing it irrevocably. Another interesting part of the book is how his father, called Essay in the book and who is a headmaster at the local school, pushes him to get a Western education. And through this process we notice the young Soyinka changing, dualising mentally

One other thing he uses very well is the Second World War. The book is set in the 1930s and 1940s, and, without overtly mentioning the war, you still have references to Hitler and the soldiers passing through the village. War is perhaps the best metaphor a writer can use to signify change, cataclysmic change. So you really understand about the West’s influence on his childhood.