1. Wole Soyinka Pronounced Wo Lay (Stress on the First Syllable) Shaw Ying Kuh

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WOLE SOYINKA

(b. 1934 – still alive)

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Wole Soyinka [pronounced wo lay (stress on the first syllable) shaw ying kuh

(stress on the second syllable)] was “the first black African writer to receive the ______Prize in Literature” (Ramazani 2:627).

2. Born in western Nigeria, he received most of his upper-level collegiate education in England, taking his doctorate in 1973, when he was 38 (627).

3. Not just a poet, he has written significant dramas and novels (626).

4. His work has denounced “both the degradations of Western ______[in Africa] and the . . . [African] ______and thugs” who replaced this colonialism with brutal, repressive regimes (627).

5. Soyinka’s “courage has landed him repeatedly in Nigerian ______” (626) or forced him “into exile” (627).

6. Stylistic devices of his poetry: wit, verbal ambiguity, satire, punning, and violent juxtapositions (627).

II. “TELEPHONE CONVERSATION”

A. STRUCTURE

1. Stanza one(1-9): An African who is living in London, England, telephones a landlady who has advertised an ______(called a “flat” in Britain) for rent. Knowing that many people in England discriminate against Africans, he quickly tells the landlady, “I am ______” (5).

2. Stanza two(10-17): He expects an outright rejection or acceptance concerning the apartment, but her answer surprises him. She asks, “ARE YOU ______/ OR VERY ______?” (10-11).

The implication is that she will accept him as a tenant if he is a light-skinned African. Her question offends him more than an open ______would have: He marvels to himself that what she had asked “was______!” (14).

3. Stanzathree (18-26): In the last part of the conversation, he slyly makes ______of the landlady, showing her to be not only bigoted but also ignorant. For instance, he uses a word which she does not know, “______” (22).

4. Stanza four (27-35): His closing list of the different ______of the areas of his body shocks the landlady, who slams down the ______, finally aware that she is being made ______of.

B. THEME

1. The poem is a protest against discrimination on the basis of ______color.

2. The petty nastiness of racial ______is shown through a person being denied an apartment because of the color of his/her skin.

C. IMAGERY

1. Many color words are used.

2. Red is the color of the telephone “______” (13), the pillar-box (13, the British term for mailbox), the bus (13), and presumably the lady’s imagined “lip-______” (8). Thus redseems to be identified with racism.

3. The other colors are those which the African uses in describing himself: “______” (22), brunette (26), “______blonde” (30), and “______black” (32).

4. The key color word is “______” (23), since a spectroscope is a scientific instrument for studying color bands.

5. The word prepares us for the band of colors which the speaker implies makes up every person’s ______.

6. It also goes back to the distinction insisted on by the prejudiced landlady, who would need such an ______to distinguish the lightness or darkness of a prospective tenant.