The Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka has told students that if
\nDonald Trump is elected president of the United States next week, he will
\nleave the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf in the unlikely event he does win, the first thing he\u2019ll do is to say
\n[that] all green-card holders must reapply to come back into the US. Well,
\nI\u2019m not waiting for that,\u201d said Soyinka, who is scholar-in-residence at
\nNew York University\u2019s Institute of African American Affairs this autumn.
\n\u201cThe moment they announce his victory, I will cut my green card myself and
\nstart packing up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Nigerian playwright and poet, who was imprisoned in Nigeria during its
\ncivil war, later fleeing the country and receiving a death sentence in
\nabsentia, urged young people to stand up against oppression.<\/p>\n
Giving a seminar to students at Oxford University, he also laid into
\nBrexit, saying it was a \u201cridiculous decision\u201d, and part of an
\ninternational rise in what he called \u201cultranationalism\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is happening in Europe shouldn\u2019t surprise any of us \u2026 It has
\nhappened before,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were here when Enoch Powell was leading his
\nthugs out to drive blacks from here \u2026 it\u2019s a constant fight to try to get
\na nation to recognise its own noble persuasions, its own persuasions of
\nthe loftiness of human possibility. It\u2019s for young people like you to say
\nno to them whenever that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soyinka was Africa\u2019s first Nobel laureate in literature, winning in 1986
\nfor writing that \u201cin a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones
\nfashions the drama of existence\u201d.<\/p>\n
He told the students that African literature today was \u201crobust, without a
\nquestion, especially with the younger generation\u2026 I think we of the older
\nare getting a little bit tired, and I think our production gets thinner
\nand thinner. But fortunately, it doesn\u2019t worry any of us, as far as I
\nknow, because the body of literature that is coming out [is] varied and
\nliberated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfrican literature suffered from some kind of ideological spasm in which
\nthe younger generation was bombarded by a sense of ideological duty, in
\nother words it was bombarded with a very simplistic notion by leftist
\nradical writers, very reformative revolutionary thinkers, that all
\nliterature is ideological and therefore writers must ensure that their
\nwriting illustrates progressive ideologies.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, he said, had \u201cinhibited a number of very talented writers, crippled
\ntheir sense of liberal creativity, forced them to try and narrow
\nthemselves into a very tight prism of viewing phenomena, humour,
\nrelationships, even politics.\u201d But \u201cfortunately this next generation has
\nbeen freeing itself and the result is really marvellous, very varied \u2013 the
\nwomen in particular\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked about Bob Dylan\u2019s unexpected crowning as winner of this year\u2019s Nobel
\nlaureate, Soyinka was reluctant to be drawn, though he did say: \u201cSince
\nI\u2019ve written quite a number of songs for my plays, I would like to be
\nnominated for a Grammy\u201d.
\nTheGuardian.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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