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  A Treasury of Childhood Memories

  Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

  "Childhood is the lost Eden that all adults recall with nostalgia, and in this collection of 13 scintillating stories, one of the finest living writers in the Yoruba language, Akinwumi Isola, plunges back into the archives of memory, and recreates for us some of the delightful episodes of that nirvana of his youth." "Told with his customary poetic skill and wit, his unmatched gift of the gab, his command of the opulent rhetorical resources of the Yorùbá language, the episodes sparkle like precious stones, telling of a time of innocence and of a world that, sadly, can no longer be retrieved." "Here therefore is a narration that is more than a fitting paean to friends that are no more, to a cohesive rural community that time has swallowed, to an ethos of communal living and sharing that modernity has erased. As we follow the adventures of these rumbustious young boys, relishing their triumphs and failures, sharing their pains and laughter, we come to recognize ourselves as we too once were, and we come to a better understanding now of the weaknesses and the strengths of our societies. So compelling indeed is Isola's evocative skill that these youthful escapades turn on to a mirror of the dreams and the longings that have brought us to where we are today, the flaws that undid us, and the virtues that strengthened us and might still redeem us." "We cannot thank Pamela Olúbùnmi Smith enough for her wonderful courage and her brilliant work of translation, in bringing these stories to readers in the English-speaking world."

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  THE FREEDOM FIGHT: A Novel of Resistance and Freedom

  Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

  Pamela Olúbùnmi Smith's The Freedom Fight is an English translation of Adébáyò Fálétí’s Yorùbá novel, Omo Olókùn Esin Though written in 1958 to coincide with Nigeria's Independence (celebrated on October 1st, 1960), Omo Olókùn Esin was first published in 1970, long after the novel had gained pre-eminence in Yorùbá letters. Fálétí's imagination was captured by a consuming interest in how people would have liked to have expressed the "self government now or never!" slogan that rent the air in the decade before formal negotiations for independence were begun. Set in 19^th century traditional Yorùbáland, The Freedom Fight is an historical tale about feudalism and enslavement, freedom and independence. It chronicles the attendant frustrations of advancing any kind of liberation movement in a rule-of-fear, exploitive system, sanctioned by traditional authority. Àjàyí, the idealist son of Chief Olókùn-Esin, mounts a violent revolt against the injustices of enslavement and feudal practices. He eventually wins freedom and independence for the people of Òkò from years of servitude under Olúmokò, signaling the beginning of the end of feudalism in Yorùbáland. An unrivalled eloquent marker of a historical and linguistic age gone by, Omo Olókùn Esin remains the longest novel and sole example of the revolutionary novel sub-genre in Yorùbá literary corpus. More than a work of literature, this English translation affords the modern reader a primer of Yorùbá culture.

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  EFÚNSETÁN ANÍWÚRÀ: ÌYÁLÓDE ÌBÀDÀN AND TINUÚBÚ, ÌYÁLÓDE ÊGBÁ, The Yorùbá Historical Dramas of Akínwùmí Ìsölá

  Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

  Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith's Efúnsetán Aníwúrà, Ìyálóde Ibadan and Olú Æmæ (Tinuúbu), Ìyálóde Ëgbá, is an annotated English translation of Akínwùmí Ìsölá's trailblazing dramas of two powerful, nineteenth century Ìyálóde during the seventy-year protracted internecine Yorùbá wars. Besides important male historical figures, change agents included a number of very distinguished women who have been written out of history, but whose trajectory, undoubtedly, did not stop with the nineteenth century. Thus, in capturing the stories of Ìyálóde fúnsetán and Tinuúbu, Ìsölá speaks on behalf of the collective who make up the vast list of distinguished women in African history whose life stories and contributions to the economic, social, and political development of their respective societies are waiting to be told for posterity and for scholarship. More than a work of literature, Eúnsetán Aníwúrà, Ìyálóde Ìbàdàn & Olú Æmæ (Tinuúbu), Ìyálóde Ëgbá, affords the modern reader a primer of Yoruba culture.

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  ALA ANNUALS, Vol. 10, Tongue and Mother Tongue

  Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

  Tongue and Mother Tongue is takes on two compelling challenges: the language question and the place and role of the mother tongue in African literature. This collection is the culmination of the fierce, decades-old debates on the question of African literature and its criticism. The fourteen essays, which range from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives, have been organized in to five thematic categories whose sequence should be experienced as a continuous dialogue rather than a collection of discrete statements: Five essays engage the more theoretical aspects of the language question and examine whether or not African writers should write in African languages. The ideological implications of each side of this debate are also explored in these essays. A compelling essay examines the nature of criticism by examining the state of the literary discourse of the past decade and the immediacy of its implicit concern for the fate of mother-tongue literary discourse. An essay explores the influence of the oral tradition on African literature and uses indigenous tropes within African orature to define systems of interpretation in African literature. Two essays examine scholarship and the critical analysis of mother-tongue African literature and demonstrate the "respectability and legitimacy" of the creative and scholarly work being done in the field, as in the example of Yoruba metalanguage and literature. Five critical essays contain general, textual analyses.