Description
History and Its True Colors is the poet’s reflection on history from the multiple positionalities of creativity and self, personal relations, society, nationality, race, humanity, and life. The nine unique and yet interrelated movements of the collection not only memorialize the African past but also represent the journey to the past, for its remains still affect human experiences today. It is a past that has not fully passed because the past and the present are connected and capable of shaping the future. The poems also reflect a journey within and without the poet’s life experiences.
Praise
“In History and Its True Colors, Tanure Ojaide revisits the themes that define his phenomenal poetic career and elongates his engagement with the protean oddities of contemporary reality. Fluid, lucid, musically rendered, and familiar yet exotic, the poems are rendered as reflections on a world that has changed but appears not to have changed. Here, history not only lives in the past but also in the present, confronting us and racing ahead, teasing humanity. Standing sentry is Aridon, the Muse, shining light on the poet’s experience across time and place. Courage, elevated content, and craft vivify the collection’s grand theme and locate it as a magnum opus!”
—Sunny Awhefeada, Professor of African Literature, Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria.
“A poet of history returns to history. Tanure Ojaide takes us from his imaginative supplications to the Urhobo memory god, Aridon, reflections on changing gender roles, our relations with the earth, racism and imperial crimes, and other histories. No sacred stones are left unturned in these poems. A collection of depth and wide amplitude. A brave and ambitious collection. This collection is Ojaide at his poetic best, reflecting on history in its manifest variants.”
—Tijan M. Sallah, veteran Gambian poet, prose writer, scholar, and retired World Bank official.
“History and Its True Colors is another important addition to Tanure Ojaide’s persistently impressive oeuvre. It includes topical, reflective, refreshing, critical, and entertaining poems on issues ranging from history to the environment, race, class, orality, memory, and COVID-19. It is a must-read for lovers of African poetry and poetry worldwide.”
—Adetayo Alabi, Professor of English, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA
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