ABSTRACT
Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, one of Nigeria’s leading scholars in women’s studies and women-in-development studies, was born in Ogun State. Her parents, the late Right Rev. L. M. Ogundipe and Chief Mrs. Grace Tayo Ogundipe, were among the earliest Nigerian Christian converts, and so she had an early exposure to Western education. Taught early by her mother, an elementary-school teacher, Ogundipe-Leslie later attended the then University College at Ibadan, from which she graduated with a First Class Honors degree in English in 1963. The years a little before and after Nigeria’s independence, which took place in 1960, saw great changes in the lives of Nigerians. It was during her undergraduate years at Ibadan at this time that Ogundipe-Leslie found her voice as a writer. The English Department at the time, under the leadership of two prominent scholars, Molly Mahood and Ulli Beier, became a center of creativity. It launched the Mbari Artists and Writers Club and gave support to the Horn, a student poetry and criticism magazine founded by J. P. Clark, in which Clark himself as well as other major figures—Abiola Irele, Wole Soyinka, and Christopher Okigbo—who were later to give direction to literary creativity in Nigeria also made their debut as writers. She participated actively in the Mbari Artists and Writers Club and wrote poetry and criticism for the Horn. Her student publications reveal her nuanced attitude to the events of that time and laid a solid foundation for her long struggle for women’s rights and her commitment to the dual tasks of theoretical work and practical action in advocacy.
