I was a boy when I read The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka, an incredibly powerful and memorable book written by the Nigerian poet, novelist and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, while he was a political prisoner courtesy of Nigeria’s dictatorial military regime in the late sixties to early seventies. During his two-year confinement, Soyinka wrote The Man Died in secret, handwritten between the lines of books smuggled in to him by friends and favorable jailers. My most significant memory from that book is the following sentence that Soyinka wrote: “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny”. For decades, those words rang so loudly in my head and mind. As I got older, the words seemed to haunt me as they frequently returned to me as a guilt trip that tugged me over and over to reflect on my life, my positionality, my agency and my responsibility to speak truth to power even in circumstances and times when truth may not be popular. This is why I write. I write because, for a man who has neither interest nor desire for violence in a world that has shed more blood than it has had reason to, if ever there was a reason to shed any blood, my only way of fighting tyranny is through my writing. Therefore, when I write that we now live in a world riddled with despots, would-be tyrants, and sycophants who give them life, it is because it is true; but it is also because I want them and their supporters to know that their shenanigans do not impress me and many others and that I believe that they will end up the way many others before them did.
Often now, I dream of being a grandfather and I imagine my grandchildren socializing with their grandparents as their grandmother and I watch them soak and glow in the innocence of childhood. It is because of them that I write. I write for the grandchildren that I do not yet have, but hope to have, because I want them to know my thoughts and deeds and to proudly hold the memories in their hearts even long after I am gone. Then I hope that they would both cherish and share their thoughts about their grandparents with their own children. I want my grandchildren to know what I thought and did about the issues of my time. I want them to see that I loved genuinely, spoke and wrote fearlessly as a man for whom truth had no responsible substitute, and advocated for a better world for their generation. If times change so drastically that some of the things that I now write become irrelevant or even rude and offensive in their own time, I want my grandchildren, and their generation, not only to forgive me but to think of the context and times in which I wrote. I want them to understand that I was doing my best to bring about a better world and to stand proud of me even if the ideas that I proffer today become quaint. I want my grandchildren to have a window into my heart even if I am no longer here when they arrive. I want them to know who I was, the kind of parents that raised their parents – and with what values. I want them to have a picture of the home in which their parents were raised and to understand why their grandparents marched when history called on them to do so in the interest of social justice. This is why I write.
One of the intriguing realities of being a writer is that by telling one’s personal story, one gets to tell the stories of many others, including those that one has never met. Whenever I run into a person or receive a message from someone who tells me the extent to which he/she relates to my written story because of similar experiences that they had, I am reminded of the link that we all share as humans. This is why I consider writing a privilege that enables me to be a blessing to others. This is also why I would never take my writing for granted, believing as it were that I have a responsibility to share my thoughts and to carry others along in the process, so that they too can reflect on their own experiences and feel their own uniqueness even within the bonds of humanity that we all share. This sense of duty draws me closer everyday, not only to others but to myself because I realize that I have a front row seat in the cathartic experiences that my own writing provides. I write, therefore, because I must. To do otherwise is to deprive myself and my world of the opportunity to experience my personal thoughts and in many cases the collective and often unspoken thoughts of those who read what I write.
This is why I write.
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If you are a writer and wish to share why you write, please leave a comment on this site after reading this or email me at ruminantionsb@gmail.com
Books and photographs are all we have to capture today.
Indeed, my friend. Indeed.
I write as a form of healing. To share with others my story and the ability to heal. I write to model vulnerability because we live in a world
Where such vulnerability is equated with weakness instead of strength. I write to spread my love to
Others and to interrogate and go deeper into the human condition. This is why I write
Indeed. I write for the same reasons that you write. It helps me to get into my soul and to connect with myself and others at that level and from a place where a sense of vulnerability leads one to understand that we are all connected. The strength that comes from that place is one that only those who truly know this experience can understand.
I have always read your writings. I have always remembered you as a writer. Your writings always remind me that I have stories I need to tell
Thank you for your wonderful ways of awakening folks like me,
Thank you very much. Writing is a talent that many of us have but its power lies in the writer’s willingness to use his/her talent and the potential reader’s willingness to read and think. Thanks for reading and, by so doing, helping me to continue to respond to my calling.
This is truly a blessing. Your writing is truly personified no doubt in each of us. I believe you do speak for most of us and we thank you immensely. This is the truth.
Thank you very much. I can say the same about you in “Unveiling Africa”. Yesterday, I watched the one with Dino just as I was myself about to head to the golf course. It was great to see and hear what he is doing with golf in Nigeria.
This is so beautiful to read. Thank you for making people like me want to start writing to tell my own life story. Maybe, one day soon! Thank you for the inspiration and the privilege of reading all your beautiful piece of work. God bless!!!
Thank you very much. As I wrote, there is a story in each of us that is waiting to be told. Please start writing! There are people waiting to read your work.