Yoruba Boy Running

September 1, 2024
Time and space are willfully shifted around in this historical fiction inspired by the life of a Nigerian-born man who, after having been enslaved, became a clergyman, linguist, and abolitionist in the 19th century. Samuel �j�y� Crowther (ca. 1809-1891) set an astonishingly triumphant example for his fellow West Africans in his rich, accomplished lifetime. After he was freed from Portuguese slavers by Britain's Royal Navy and left in Sierra Leone, he added the first and last names to the one he'd had from birth, studied languages, and was eventually ordained an Anglican minister. He translated the Bible and other church texts into Yoruba, became the first African bishop of the Anglican Church, and campaigned against the slave trade throughout his life. This posthumously published novel by B�nd�l� (1967-2022), who was also a celebrated playwright and filmmaker in his native Nigeria, presents an impressionistic, mostly nonlinear narrative of this extraordinary life, beginning with �j�y�'s childhood in his hometown of �ṣog�n just before it is laid siege by the "Malian swordmen" who sold its thousands of residents into slavery. He tells his mother of a premonition he had of a god of "health and well-being" looking malarial, a sign of troubles ahead. B�nd�l� imposes his own imaginative resources on this and subsequent events of Crowther's life. Only occasionally do B�nd�l�'s imaginative projections lead him to an anachronism--"We have heard of white men who turned the ocean into a highway," �j�y�'s mother tells him early on--but not often enough to obstruct the novel's rich stew of historical perspective, storytelling brio, and humane insight. He shows as much acumen in staging conversations between the older, much-traveled Crowther and the people of his erstwhile homeland as he does in rendering a real-life meeting Crowther had with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, whom he holds spellbound when he recites the Lord's Prayer in Yoruba. The novel's collagelike approach to Crowther's story not only gives a rich sense of the dimensions of his achievement, but also offers a keener, broader perspective as to the nature of African slavery and those who were complicit in its execution, making B�nd�l� as effective a historian as he was a dramatist. You'll leave this book fulfilled in knowledge of its main subject, yet still yearning to know more.

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Starred review from October 14, 2024
Nigerian filmmaker and novelist Bándélé (Burma Boy), who died in 2022, provides a fitting capstone to his career with this astonishing novel based on the life of Samuel Àjàyí Crowther (1809–1891), who obtained his freedom from slavery and went on to become the first Black African Anglican bishop. The tale begins in 1821, when 13-year-old Àjàyí is stolen from his Yorùbá village, along with his mother, sister, and best friend, by Malian slavers. From there, Bándélé alternates scenes of heart-pounding suspense with political satire and excerpts from Crowther’s journal. After enduring devastating brutality at the hands of Portuguese slavers in Lagos, Crowther and some 200 other enslaved men, women, and children are loaded on to a vessel and prepared to be shipped across the Atlantic. Before departing, however, their boat is captured by the British, who have outlawed the slave trade. Crowther is sent to make a new life for himself in Sierra Leone, where his abolitionist speeches attract attention from English missionaries, who encourage him to study at Oxford. He goes on to meet Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, translates the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, and, in a dramatic and complex scene, pressures a king in Lagos to sign a treaty that will prohibit the slave trade at the price of ceding an island to the British Crown. It’s an unforgettable chronicle of an extraordinary man. Agent: Veronica Goldstein, UTA.