I read this for an African Autobiography class at UW, though it was my first year of school and I wasn't exactly a model freshman student...

Really struggled to finish this book. Found it boring and uneventful

wonderful book, and can't wait to read more by this author.....

Absolutely wonderful.
I kept laughing heartily at scenes i could not only relate too but remember as a part of my own childhood. There were so many a familiar story, lores and ubiquitous narratives of my own formative years. But most especial where the weighing realizations on how so many things turned out the way they did in today's Nigeria.
Ake is essentially a if-you-close-your-mind-you'll-miss-it slingshot into the Yoruba side of the story of Pre-colonial Nigeria.
Now it makes sense why the Kutis are such a long line of activists, why the quality of education then is so much better than now never mind the advancement in years and technology, how women have always been a powerful force in the Yoruba setup, how through eroding proper education, a generation of meek, Yesmen and women were born etc etc.
I was mildly heartbroken when i finished.
I am on a Soyinka Book Trail and i'm definitely enjoying it.

Without a doubt the most stunning aspect of this book is the vividness with which Soyinka recalls conversations in his boyhood. With World War II as the distant yet pervasive backdrop for this coming of age story, Soyinka introduces a wide cast of characters that somehow manages to stay straight in your mind and never get old. His account of himself as simultaneously an admirably curious boy and an annoyingly arrogant one deserves some credit--it truly feels as if he remembers the details and significance of his own behavior in these distinct and impactful times in his life. Another curious factor in this book is the very subtle acknowledgment of colonialism, which really only majorly comes into play in the book's closing. I'd be curious to learn more about the disposition and politics of the people depicted in the book, and to get some larger context for the work as a whole--but as an independent piece of art, the book succeeds at many levels.

A very interesting book about a priviledged boy growing up in Nigeria. This memoir allows the reader to see how life was for locals under British colonial rule, and how that began to break down.

The making of a giant writer

It was hard to be fully immersed in the book. Soyinka's writing style demands attention and commitment.. Somewhere in the 1st third of the book I finally surrendered and that's when the magic happened. Beautiful and detailed descriptions took me to Aké; consistent dialogues gave me a sense of omniscience and of course, the stories in the story just gave the whole book depth. It's easy to understand why he is a Nobel prize winner. This is a great piece of literature, but not only that, a glimpse at History and of a time where Africa didn't make it in History books, well, at least not this Africa. Bravo!

Soyinka's childhood memoirs are so detailed and finely drawn that the question has to be asked how much is true memory and how much owes itself to the adult writer's creativity. In writing a very impressionistic, sensually described narrative, Soyinka, it feels, is trying to capture the sense of infant discovery, of not entirely understanding your surroundings and the way the world works. There is confusion and mystery and wonder. All three combine to make Ake very difficult to read casually and, at times, gorgeously magical - not at all magic realism, more childhood realism, vague, hazy, new, a slowly revealing picture of the world.

That means that at times Ake is dense to the point of being a drag, but when realisation shines through Soyinka creates moments of true beauty. There is also a sense of the joy of growing up and discovering things, like the time he follows his sister to school secretly when he is three years old, or the day he follows a travelling band of musicians alone for miles and ends up in a distant village. Young Wole comes across as the brightest of children, naturally impudent and curious, full of questions and determination not to be overshadowed or pushed into the background by the adults around him, whom he names as he wishes after character treats (Wild Christian, his mother) or professions (Headmaster). One scene killing and cooking a snake on a neighbouring farm brings together all those revelatory emotions, the joy of being part of the natural world, a little like Arthur Ransome evokes that childish sense of adventure which is so much more thrilling and innocent than the adult variety. Soyinka also describes the sadness of life with great beauty. The death of his sister on her first brithday makes use of that initial confusion to create a powerful sense of tragedy and shock when Wole sees her in her coffin and realises what has happened.

The second half of the book is a little clearer, written as a young man going through the rights of growing up, a disturbing night with the priest during which his ankles and hands are ceromoniously bled, and his time at school including his experiences of coporal punishment. He muses on the bizarre practices of the adult world, such as why are white school children allowed pockets and black children not. Finally he narrates his time helping the town's women in their political activities, playing the part of teacher for some illiterate girls and experiencing the riots and unrest in the town when the women march on the "king" and government demanding an end to unfair taxation of women. A fascinating look at childhood elsewhere that is at times a trudging read and at certain moments as bright and beautiful as a shaft of sunlight through a blanket of clouds. 5

In Ake, I was treated to a childhood delicacy of inviting sumptuousness which I attacked with great relish and washed down with smile and laughter, enjoying the peppery sensation down my throat. 

When I was done, I let out a blurb of satisfaction, relapsed into memory’s embrace and was transported into a life-world that exerted itself on me with nostalgic feeling both liberating because it allowed me the leisure feeling that feeling again, yet tyrannical because it refused me to live the feeling in real life again by just confiding itself into memory’s whim.

Childhood was fun. We didn’t just want to sit and let the world go by. We wanted to live every bit of the moment. We wanted to satisfy every instinct. We wanted to move with the changing world. That insatiable desire manifested itself as an undying inquisitiveness and as well, a dangerous adventurousness that engaged us with the world. 

And the young Wole was nothing less than a typical child, but was even of a precocious kind, living under the shades of a religiously conservative mother (Wild Christian) and a disciplined, scholarly and garden obsessed father, SA, a name the boy coalesced as ESSAY. If some of us cringed under the weight of any rebukes from adults, the young Wole weathered through with a pristine innocence that was yet stubborn. Deciding to go to school at an unusually earlier age was a feat that watered down the defenses of adults. Not less daring was his involvement with the women in their fight against unjust taxes and the despotic feudal lord, the Alake of Abeokuta. 

But adults are adults. They want to stay still and watch the world go by. There come the rebuke and the embarrassing silence that meet foolish questions like “Why is your stomach bigger than my father’s? Are you pregnant like the organist?” How else could mother have responded to her unusually inquisitive child? The child whom she could not tame with religiosity. If mother was quick to show her displeasure, father was accommodating, and indirect. The child didn’t miss the hint of any reprimand or disciplinary action that may follow even after a long digressed chit chat between father and son, sometimes leading to a silence that was torturing that the actual punishment. The wash hand basin love affair which became an instinct gone wild beyond the will’s measure, always met wild Christian’s impromptu appearance that followed an improvised sharp knock on the head…..”let me catch you again…” If father caught the thief, his manner would be of a knowing pretence that calculatively lingered the punishment….

This autobiography by Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka describes his childhood and British/Christian education during the wartime years of 1940's in the western Nigerian village of Ake. One of my favorite stories was that of a group of three school children caught stealing and roasting a chicken. When being examined at the school court, Iku, ring leader and spokesman, gave the following defense: "It was this way, principal. There was I at the lower perimeter of the fields principal, with my friends about to engage in a scholastic experiment, Chemistry to be exact, principal, relating to the phlogiston theory of spontaneous combustion. It succeeded, principal. To our scientific delight a small fire erupted among the twigs and oguso (fiber kindling) which we had gathered for the purpose, principal. We were about to put out this fire, it having served its purpose of proving a scientific point when along came a cockerel, whose patination and regal bearing identified it beyond doubt as having emerged from no other place than from the private poultry yard of Mrs herself." This story ends in the acquittal of the accused, however they are sentenced to subsist on the remains of the chicken for the next week.

I don't normally rate assigned readings for school, but I am genuinely admiring of Soyinka's prose and devoted political strife, both of which I had never heard of before and discovered in this novel. Truly a remarkable author and activist, and if Aké: The Years of Childhood is any indication of the rest of his bibliography, then his Nobel Prize is entirely deserved.
Not giving it five stars though because some parts were more strenuous and hard to get through.