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• Q & A with Mr. Soyinka
• About You Must Set Forth at Dawn
• Mr. Soyinka's bio

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Tavis: I'm honored to welcome playwright, author, and activist Wole Soyinka to this program. His lifelong battle to bring democracy to his native Nigeria landed him in prison for two years back in the late sixties. In 1986, he became the first African ever to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Stirring details of his remarkable life are told in the new memoir, "You Must Set Forth at Dawn.' Nice to have you here.

Wole Soyinka: Thank you.

Tavis: It's an honor to see you. This is a wonderful piece of work. It is really the second tome that you put together about your life. The first part of your memoir was really your personal journey, and this is really about your political journey. I'm curious why you felt the need to do this particular piece. It's a blessing to live long enough and to have done enough to have two parts to your autobiography. But why the need to tell the political story, and were you at all concerned about the ramifications that might come from what you write in this book?

Soyinka: In fact, accurately, I will call it - it is the two and a half.

Tavis: Two and a half. (Laughs)

Soyinka: Yes. (Laughs) There's one between 'Ake, The Years of Childhood,' and this one. And that was a sort of hurried work, at a time when I wasn't too sure what was going to happen. And so it's the same motivation that created that half biography that has led to this one. I began it during the period of Sani Abacha, when life was rather precarious.

Tavis: Good word, yeah.

Soyinka: And so I wanted to set some things down, I thought. And then I was a little bit tired of people writing monographs about Wole Soyinka, a writer and so on, but very often rather fantasized. And I thought well, in between fighting Sani Abacha, let me start putting some things down.

Tavis: When you said you got tired of reading stuff about you that was fantasized, most of us would love to have people write stuff about us that's fantasized. It's oftentimes better than the reality, or certainly nicer than the reality. But when you say that you were tired of reading people write about you with a sort of fantasization, what, what, what do you mean by that? What was bothering you about what you were reading?

Soyinka: Oh, I wouldn't mind outright fiction, which can be very interesting reading on any subject. But usually, it's those who are colleagues who call themselves scholars and want to dissect or analyze something you've written in terms of your existence, without knowing the first thing about your existence. And doing a disservice both to truth and to literature. So the many years of irritation about this led partially, it's only part of the story. There are other even more profound reasons, but that was also a factor.

Tavis: You said something a moment ago that got my attention. When you said that they write things about you without knowing the first part of your story, for you, what is the first part of your story? What is it that is critical to understand about Wole Soyinka if you're going to write anything about him? What's most critical to understand about you?

Soyinka: No, I used it first in a metaphorical sense. Basic. I wasn't thinking temporal, in a temporal way, no. No, I'm just saying that they don't know the context. Maybe that's the word I should have used. Very often when you write about somebody, you write about an action. Participation in some event. You have to know the background. You have to know the context.

Tavis: And they know content, but not context.

Soyinka: Yes, precisely. You cannot transplant a being into, let us say, California, (laughs) in order to understand something about that individual or that event. You must have some sense of background. And that is what is often lacking in many of these theorists about the lives of other people.

Tavis: Since I asked that question, though, I'm not gonna waste it. It really was a good question. So I'm gonna go back and ask it again. (Laughs) Even though it ain't what you meant, I'm gonna ask it again, 'cause I want an answer to it. So, if one is going to write, we know what Wole Soyinka has to say. But if one is going to write something about you that is true to the spirit, true to the manner, true to the essence of who you are, what is the first thing that one needs to understand or know about you, since I suspect that as the years go on, because of who you are and what you've done, more folk will write about you.

Soyinka: The cultural background, the political background, the very history of one's environment. A little bit of the antecedents of the individual. That kind of complexity is essential for really interpreting any human being. To talk about Wole Soyinka, you must know something about Nigeria. Otherwise, you misattribute motivations, directions, purpose.

Because you're looking at that person in a totally different context. And the same thing applies to anyone. Writer, musician, bricklayer, politician, anybody. Even a villain. Somebody in the underground. You must know something of the background.

Tavis: You have, in a very modest way, said heretofore that what you've really tried to do, the Nobel Prize notwithstanding for your work in literature, you in a very modest way, I think, have suggested that what you've really tried to do, all you've tried to do, is to use your work to draw a distinct line between what is just, my words, not yours, if you were saying it, it'd be much more poetic, obviously.

But you've tried to draw a distinct line, make a distinction between what is just and unjust in your native land of Nigeria. I wanted to ask you, I guess I will now, whether or not you think it is easier, more difficult, or just the same to see what is just and what is unjust in Nigeria or on the continent of Africa, or in the United States, since you've spent so much time here. Does that question make sense?

Soyinka: Yes, of course. I think that one's sense of justice is always paramount. There's an element of the sense of justice which is subjective. But I think most of us understand, for instance, let me be very, let me take an extreme case. We all understand that it's wrong to kill somebody, or to torture that individual. And you can go along the same line and say it's wrong, it's unjust to deprive an adult of the right to a voice in his or her existence.

In other words, we're not moving towards Democracy. We're moving towards dictatorship. So, if you believe that it's wrong to cut off the part of a sentient being, that is by depriving that individual of a voice, then you're on the territory of justice, of what is just, and what is not. And that also defines your political ideology.

Tavis: To your point, do you think that we live in a world now where we have become too subjective about what justice is? About what is just?

Soyinka: I'm afraid so. Especially if you're talking about powerful nations. Powerful nations very often mistake what is just for what they think suits, what is a benefit, what profits, especially in a short term, their own people. They cannot think of justice in a global sense. And so, when you talk of nations, yes, I think you're talking about a kind of collective subjectivity.

Tavis: You write a lot about Nigeria, obviously, as I mentioned a moment ago, in this text. I wanna come back to that in just a second. We'll get to that. But before I get to that, to your point about nations, you spend a lot time here, obviously, in the United States. Can you, I don't know if you can do this, let me ask, though. Can you tell me what you recall your views were about the U.S. before you started spending so much time here in the U.S.?

And I deliberately don't wanna color the question any more than that. I'm trying to draw a comparison here between what you thought of the U.S. before you started spending time here, as an African.

Soyinka: One, I just moved in and out, in and out. I always found, first of all, and I'm sure everybody does, the United States very fascinating, because a very varied country. Culturally varied. A lot of energy. Some of it very often misused. But certainly a vitality. Nobody can deny the United States vitality. And when I came here for the first time, that was in the early sixties, I noticed that very much.

But I was mostly interested in the Black, the African, we're now in the States African-Americans, because I've been through colored, Negro, and so on. (Laughs) And very difficult to keep up. And I came here principally to get to know the Black American writers, artists. This was during the period of the Black Liberation. I like to call it Black Liberation Movement.

I met people like Imamu Baraka, Ed Bullins, McClintock, and so on and so forth. So I found I wasn't so much interested in the United States in entirety. In entirety. But of course, as I came here more and more, I began to take in the rest of the natives, and began to look at Americans termed in by something, what you might call a collective culture. There are many cultures.

Attitude toward the rest of the world. I always found Americans very insular. That is, little knowledge about the rest of the world. They think the entire globe is bordered by the boundaries of the American nation. So all of that, not much of that has changed. Not much of that has changed.

Tavis: To your point, two other questions I hope I can get out right quick here before I have to lose you. One, to your point about the United States being very insular, I couldn't have said it better myself. Let me ask you a very simple, very prima fascia question, but I think that your presence on this set draws a distinct contrast to what so many people think of when think of the continent of Africa.

We do not think of Black men or Black women, for that matter, but certainly not Black men who grow up to be Nobel laureates. You are such a rare gem in the minds of what most Americans think when they think of the people running around this continent called Africa. Does that ever occur to you? Is there a certain pride that you have as a result of that? Or a certain burden, contrast, that you feel?

Soyinka: Well, let me say first of all that we're both on the same terrain. I never grew up thinking of an African or of Wole Soyinka or indeed, I didn't even know what the Nobel Prize for literature was.

Tavis: You didn't know what it was, yeah, yeah.

Soyinka: No, no. Well, I knew about it, but it was something for other people. It was a European construct meant for European writers with the occasional Asian. I didn't write thinking of prizes and so on. No, no. And Nobel was an exotic territory, yes. Only heard about it from time to time. In fact, I think, I always like to quote this, if you've heard it before, forgive me.

My knowledge of the Nobel, especially in literature, was what Bernard Shaw once said. That he could forgive the man who invented dynamite. But that it took a real diabolical mind to invent the Nobel Prize for literature. (Laughs) And he was right, by the way. He was right. So in those days, it was something meant for Europeans. I wasn't really, it wasn't within my territory. It wasn't within my purlieu, so to speak.

Tavis: Let me close with this question, which is really unfair to ask as a final question. You write so much about your homeland, about your country of Nigeria. Your sense of where it is today? And I ask that against the news of late that the president wanted to run for a third term in this growing, this budding Democracy. The Senate says no, you're not going to run for a third term. People are hailing that as Democracy on the move in Nigeria, and perhaps around the continent of Africa. Your thoughts?

Soyinka: I don't know why you said the cynics said no. No, because I'm not a cynic.

Tavis: No, no, I said the Senate.

Soyinka: Oh, the Senate.

Tavis: The Senate, yeah.

Soyinka: Oh, I beg your pardon, okay.

Tavis: It's my bad accent. S-E-N-A-T-E. (Laughs) The Senate. Not the cynics, yeah.

Soyinka: No, the Senate said no.

Tavis: The Nigerian Senate, yes.

Soyinka: the Nigerian people said no.

Tavis: Exactly.

Soyinka: And we were very disappointed, because we thought Nigeria at least, we're trying to escape what is known outside as the African power disease. Wanting to stay, overstay your welcome. Wanting to stay outside what the Constitution allows. And working blatantly, unscrupulously, in the meanest possible way, to try and achieve that. And of course, the whole country objected to it. So it's a very good step, very good decision, result, for democracy in Nigeria.

Tavis: It's impossible to do justice to a Nobel laureate's work in a 15 minute conversation, so you must pick up, and I highly recommend the new book from Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, "You Must Set Forth at Dawn.' We didn't scratch the surface here at night, but anyway, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Soyinka: Thank you very much.

Tavis: Up next, "C.S.I.' creator Anthony Zuiker. Stay with us.