ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the construction of the political activist as a certain kind of heroic figure in the life writing of a creative writer. It also explores the writings of Wole Soyinka, analyzing the processes through which he engages in self-fashioning of a public persona, as paradigmatic of how African writers employ life writing for purposes of activist self-(re)representation. The status of literary fiction as a prominent mode of expressiveness in African literature is being destabilized by the increasing popularity of diverse typologies of life writings. Scholars of African literature and African writing have taken a variety of approaches to African life writing and literary non-fiction. Essentially focused on political happenings in Nigeria, Ibadan spans a period of about two decades, between 1945 and 1965, a time when the young Soyinka left home for Government College in Ibadan and the outbreak of the civil unrest that would lead to and culminate with the Nigerian Civil War.
