Yemi D. Ogunyemi

Yemi D. Ogunyemi (pen name Yemi D. Prince) is a Nigerian writer, punster, philosopher, and founder of the Institute of Yoruba/African Narrative Philosophies.
Biography
Ogunyemi was born in a fishing boat on the Lagos Lagoon in the poetic year—01/01/01, when the earth and heaven were drawn nigh with-and-by the divine ditties of praise and happiness. He is the seventh child of Chief Reuben and Matilda Ogunyemi, members of the keepers of traditions in Atlantic Yoruba. Due to the fact that his unregistered birthday is disputable, and owing to the truth that he has fallen head over heels in love with immortality, as reflected in his memoir, he has retained 36 years as his spiritual age. His name is derived from Ogun, the Yoruba deity of steel and iron. Ogun is the only deity whose name coincides with August, the eighth month in the Yoruba calendar. Ogun sanctifies and clears the road/earth, and stops the road from being the driver for whosoever propitiates the artificer. From the years of innocence, he still recalls the rites that often subjected the immolation to its final pyre and imagines how Ogun regaled on the choicest and wielded his double-edged sword in apocalypse and felicity.
Personal life
The seventh child of Chief Reuben and Matilda Ogunyemi of the Oduduwa dynasty, Yemi D. Prince was a founding student of Zion-Ipepe Primary and Junior High Schools, in Zion-Ipepe, one of the littoral town-lets east of the metropolitan Lagos. Having received his High School Diploma from Ijebu-Ode Gramamar School, he obtained his Diploma in journalism from London School of Journalism. Consequently, he joined Webster University and obtained his Masters in International and Human Relations, in absence of journalism or literature. Years later, he went for his PhD and DLitt. at Debrecen university and Avadh university, respectively. His passion for literature (African/African-American Literatures) made him join Harvard University as a research fellow, in 1994.
Father of five children (3 males & 2 females), Ogunyemi has been married two times and divorced twice. First divorce occurred because the spouse was scared to death of coming to the land of Crazy Horse, Pollyannaish Talents and Global Dreams. Second divorce occurred owing to the fact that the spouse had an overmuch love for money at the expense of happiness and unconditional love. Since then, he has learned his lesson, vowing to uplift and charm his next queen/princess into a solid-built house of ever-fresh and ever-blossoming flowers whose bedroom is perfumed with the grains of paradise, embodying harmony, happiness and unconditional love. (According to him, there are many breakages of marriages around the world because the foundations are not based on the pursuit of unconditional love, rain or shine.)
His sweetest dream is to set up an online university, which he calls "The International University of Diaspora," whose temporary website is (http://universitydiaspora.tripod.com.)
He was inspired by the Terracotta Artists of the 900 AD, founder of the Arts Guilds or the Cultural Schools of Philosophy, which today can be likened to many Europe's old institutions of learning that were originally established as religious bodies; vide chapter six, page 49 of "The Oral Traditions in Ile-Ife."
Literary career
Yemi D. Ogunyemi's (Yemi D.Prince's) literary career started in Vienna when he founded the Institute of Creative Writing, 1983-1993. The institute was established to promote research into the Nigerian/African literatures through seminars, conducted lectures, symposia, conferences, book presentations and writing workshops. This was after working as a correspondent for the African Interpreters based in Frankfurt, Germany, and after his stint with the Vienna News and the World of Diplomats, also in Vienna, Austria.
He holds a caparisoned belief that literature is life, indispensable in the whirligig of time. With debonair and joie de vivre, he often verbalizes that an imaginary literature is the foundation of pleasure that nourishes the human emotions, reaffirms the present and reconstructs the future. Such foundation of pleasure is invariably found in his stories that inform, enlighten, inspire, educate, entertain and above all, inoculate the body with the happiness and other ingredients of life.
Knowing that some of our writers are called upon as "societal prophets," he often suggests that the governments and the powerful media should be making available the uplifting words—epigrams and aphorisms of these "societal prophets," as reflections for the present and the future. Reading from a book may be much harder than sitting before a television, hearing these uplifting words.
Sighing like a panda and pouting like a ship-wrecked, stranded nymphet, he said that he is only the 100th writer he might have loved to be, had he understood all the tongues spoken in his country or the five official languages of the United Nations.
Major literary works
Ogunyemi, a student of Yoruba/African philosophy and magic realism (that belongs to the Movement of Cultural Enlightenment) is being influenced by the writings of D.O. Fagunwa, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Maya Angelou, Obi Egbuna, NgÅ©gÄ© wa Thiong'o, Camara Laye and Salman Rushdie. Even if he has not received notability from the mainstream publishers, editors and critics, most of his books (fiction and nonfiction) speak volumes to the current issues that concern man.
By adding some eclectic and disquisitional gamut to the whirligig of the Nigerian literature, Yemi, has since 2000, hewn a new boat and rowed it to a new island full of the grains of paradise. He has built a new parachute and flown with it to the firmament where the multi-colored clouds are the skyscrapers.
Published in 1991 is Studying Creative Writing in Nigeria. The textbook that is regarded the first of its kind in Africa, is to introduce Creative Writing in Nigerian colleges and universities.
The Melodrama of the Last Word published in 2003, was idea-born in 1997 when he dreamed of Princess Diana saying to a group of young ladies, "Who Shall I Send?" Jola, the heroine of the novel, rejoined thusly, "Here I am, Send Me," and her rejoinder is the subtitle of the book.
Literatures of the African Diaspora, his major research project at Harvard University, and an important book for Africans in Africa and Africans in Diaspora, was published in 2004. Its research took him to the six continents of the world in search of the people of the African descent and the avant-garde writers.
The Literary/Political Philosophy of Wole Soyinka, published in 2009 is a book that chronicles the literary and political savvies/activities of Wole Soyinka. The book lets us know that the political philosophy of Wole Soyinka actually started in 1962, the very year the Nobel Laureate had his unique telephone conversation with his London landlady.
The Oral Traditions in Ile-Ife, published in 2010, is as unique as the holy city of Ile-Ife. This is the book in which the keepers of traditions refer to Ifa-Ife-Board of Divination as the Book of Enlightenment. The book sheds light on Yoruba philosophy as a cultural/folk philosophy, explicating and pointing to the knowledge of the causes and the nature of things, affecting the corporeal and the spiritual universe.
Stealing Amongst the Citizens, published in 2010 is an Anthology in which two heavyweight political leaders discuss their shortcomings and thieveries rather cathartically and tearfully--(on the blood of their sorrows) promising to pay their fellow citizens what they have brazen-facedly stolen. The book is dedicated to Governor Fashionable (Fashola) of Lagos State for being a leader who knows what to do with his faculty.
In 2011, "Three Plays," the book of his first collection of plays, was published by the Foundation University Press. A book, whose on-going review has been up-standing, pays homage to the keepers of traditions, the terracotta dramatists, the doyen/godfather of the modern dramatist Chief Hubert Ogunde, and the follow-up voices of Kola Ogunmola, Duro Ladipo, Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Wale Ogunyemi, Zulu Sofola, Femi Euba and many others who have added cockney humors, tragi-comedies, tearful and side-kicking guffaws to the Nigerian theatrical scence/soil where the king-Sango never hangs himself. According to the keepers of traditions, Yorubaland which has the largest number of dramatists for every 5,000 people in the world is the only land where anyone who is familiar with Oduduwa dynasty and his oasis of mythologies can become a dramatist or a playwright.
Religious beliefs
Religiously, Ogunyemi believes that man has wasted much of his time by worshipping God under so many denominations. The question he always asks is, "Has God (our highest Spiritual Ancestor) a particular religion?" He noted that God, our highest Spiritual Ancestor, has distanced himself from his people because his people have taken to worshipping Olodumare corporeally instead of worshipping him spiritually. Thus we have problems with our prayers—not always answered. "Anything you can recollect," he rejoined, "anything you can relate in the past, in the present or in the future belongs to the realm of history. Thus it is a cowardly and ungrateful bag-eyed bahavior for an apostate to throw away his/her humble historical past just because he/she has been washed ashore by a new wave of religion. The past is a sage while the present is a page. Whatever defiles the values of the past, defiles the present."
"Any society that fights and sheds blood because of religious differences/opinions does not know or respect the loving God of all creatures, and so does not belong to my notion of civilization," he added.
Referring to the nonBiblical and nonKoranic names, this is what he credits to Oshun, the Queen Mother of sweet waters and productivity, "A name is honey-sweet: a name is honor: a name is dignity. I will not close my womb until all my children born in Diaspora in the 21st century begin to bear some African names--honoring their long pedigrees, accentuating their enlightenment, dignifying their freedom and sweetening their birth-water."
Political views
A minimalist nay a maximalist, Yemi D. Prince loves the aesthetics of political rhetoric as long as it is backed by actions. He believes that so many political leaders have failed their countryfellows. He regards many of them as lords and toastmasters, but in the Hall of Shame, for reneging on their promises to deliver, thus brutalizing the pride and the collective consciousness of their counrtymen and women. On the United Nations, he wonders why the World Organization has defied to put forward an African country as a permanent member of the Security Council. In assessing all the Nobel Prize lectures in literature since its foundation in 1901, he rgards that of Wole Soyinka's Nobel Prize lecture in 1986 to be the most rhetorical, poignant, historical, reflective, chronological and downright that helps tear down the 27-year-old Apartheid prison walls, making it possible for Nelson Mandela to gain his freedom in 1990, as the Berlin walls were being torn down.
Philosophical heart-beats
Philosophically, Ogunyemi has much to reflect upon since he wrote The Literary Philosophy for the Year 2000 in 1991. This is the year in which he predicted more research and more interest in Yoruba/African philosophy as from the year 2000. The establishment of the Yoruba/African Institute of Narrative Philosophies, in 1995, evidences such an interest and research. He is cognizant of the fact that African/Yoruba philosophy is a witness of two epochs—the cosmological and mythological epoch and the metaphysical epoch—the epoch-making history of unwritten philosophy and the epoch-making history of written philosophy. "The radical temperature of nature in which man has found himself increases the uncertainty that man is immortal. But immortality is as good as nature, therefore nature is immortality and I am part and parcel of that immortality," he will say whenever calamities occur. He reminisces, perceives and believes that any lore that widens people's horizons and presents food for thought is the beginning of philosophy.
Reflecting on the rhythms of life: the nature and its contradictions of balances, he subscribes to the novelty that philosophy precedes religion and other forms of learning, for philosophy, according to his opinion, is the thought of man and the reasoning of the mind that actually dictates and leads the faculty to the creation and the practice of any religion and other forms of learning. The wordsmith is a connoisseur of both idealism and realism.
Enlivening his spirit and energizing his body are the following nine of his many philosophical quotes/aphorisms:
*As long as man has ori (head in Yoruba), man has a body of philosophy, for ori (head) is the substrate onto which other parts of the body are answerable to.
*Friendship is a grain of paradise that never withers, but on developing into love, that love becomes a universal mystery, to be understood only by people with mysterious minds.
*Happiness is a lifetime treasure—a spring water that never dries. Life is a whirligig. And man's philosophy of happiness is found or evidently apparent in the whirligig of time, inasmuch as man is answerable to his five senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, as he grows everyday to make a mark in the world.
*It may be regarded a slap on God's face anytime man defies to utilize the talent given to him by Olodumare.
*The natural thirst that's never quenched is the thirst for unconditional love.
*Vanity is likened to the wind that strikes hardest at the rock without a mark worthy of glory.
*If one adheres to one's tenor, one's tenet is almost established.
*It is the mind that interprets what the eyes behold, for without the mind, the eyes will be likened to a blurred mirror.
*Good literature quickens imaginatiobn, gladens the heart, and adds fullness to the meaning of life, to be found in the aesthetics of contradictions, alive in our seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching.
Essay
*The Revolution of Chief Awo
*The Telephone Conversation
Play
*Three Plays—embodying The Charmed Comforter, Peddlers Strike and Farmers's Burden.
*The Ankh of Enlightenment, forthcoming.
Award
*Doctor Honoris Causa, for his scholarly and intellectual career, BIU, 2008.
*Awarded a plaque-like certificate (for his continued contributions to the world of letters) by
Marquis Who's Who in the world, 2002.
*Golden Trophy—World Poetry Contest, Las Vegas, 1990.
*Ambassador of Hope Cert, Austrian Institute for Social and Political Research, 1989.
Books
Ogunyemi is the author of Literatures of the African Diaspora (Gival Press, 2004) which traces the history and worldwide influence of African literatures. Prof. Joshua 'Kunle Awosan of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth has stated that the collection "proves that African literatures are, without mincing words, a fountainhead of literary divergence."
Since his first book Trans-Continental Poems was published in 1974,
Ogunyemi has authored over forty literary works, ranging from fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children's literature. In 1990, he won the Golden Trophy for his poetry book, "The African Soul." Pastor Johnson Ade Odewale of C A C Calvary Assembly, Boston, Massachusetts observed that Yemi D. Ogunyemi's dream to set up an online "International University of Diaspora," has helped to popularize the word, Diaspora, buttressed by the establishment of "Diaspora Press of America" in 1995 and the publication of "Literatures of the African Diaspora" in 2004.
His current books in progress are Growing and Living With Happiness, A Hundred Week-Days in Paradise and The Revolution of Chief Awo. Others awaiting publication are: The Last Cowrie Queen, Twice Anagram, Modicums of O, The Enchantress of Triple A and The Birth of a Child in a Fishing Boat—memoir.Yemi published "The Literary/Political Philosophy of Wole Soyinka." The book is the chronology of the literary and political savvies/activities of the avant-garde Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature. The most significant of his nonfiction works on Yoruba culture is "The Oral Traditions in Ile-Ife," published in 2009. The book investigates the quintessence of the Yoruba culture, delving into their literature, religion and their folk philosophy. For the first time ever, the keepers of traditions refer to "Ifa-Ife Divination" as the Book of Enlightenment, embodying philosophy, religion and literature. Yemi is currently Professor at BIU and Foundation University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
Formerly a Research Fellow at Harvard University is currently a BIU professor, Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
Recent publications
*Studying Creative Writing in Nigeria (1991)
*Introduction to Yoruba Philosophy, Religion and Literature (1998)
*The Covenant of the Earth (1998)
*Path to Ifetherapy and Its Healing Poems (2001)
*The Political Philosophy of Wole Soyinka (2001)
*The Melodrama of the Last Word (2003)
*Literatures of the African Diaspora (2004)
*The Writers and Politics (2005)
*The Anthologies of the Diaspora (2006)
*My Gazar With My Geisha (2008)
*The Literary/Political Philosophy of Wole Soyinka (2009)
*The Oral Traditions in Ile (Ife, 2009)
*Stealing Amongst the Citizens (2010)

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu