writer. researcher. editor.
What happens when a 1997 Yoruba classic meets a new generation of heritage learners? In my class, Oleku sparked rich conversations on love, family, and the tug-of-war between tradition and modernity, revealing that some stories remain timeless, even decades later.
A complexly woven narrative, which straddles three West-African countries and goes back and forth between the present and the past, Fire in the Wind narrates Angela’s moving struggle against the overwhelming tide of an unfair fate, aided by a partial society.
Dare’s greatest feat, in The Last Wedding Anniversary, could be said to be the way she has masterfully steered the course of its plots, when she could just have settled for an easy, tried and tested, escapist hurtle towards an otherwise anticipated story-end.
Tobi Idowu 