Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka is traveling back to America a year after he tore his Green Card, following the victory of Donald Trump at the Presidential election.
The novelist will be delivering the Richard D. Cohen Lectures at Harvard University Centre for African Studies from November 14 to 16.
“I’ll go in as an alien, an alien from outer space. I love that designation,” Soyinka said in an interview with Financial Times of London published on Friday.
The lectures will be in three parts, under the theme: BEYOND AESTHETICS: Use, Abuse and Dissonance in African Art Traditions.
“My life has been involved with the diaspora on a very personal and visceral level,” he said of his interaction with prominent African-Americans.
Soyinka had promised to tear his Green Card and leave America if Donald Trump emerges as President.
He said:-
In 2016, ”I was in New York during the run-up to elections. I watched this face, its body language, listened to his uncouth, racist language, his imbecillic harangues, the insults to other peoples, other races, especially the Hispanics, Africans and Afro-Americans, even citing once – I was told – Nigeria as an instance of the burdensome occupation of global space.
I watched and listened, disbelievingly, since this was America, supposedly now freed to a large extent – as we like to believe and have a right to expect – from its lamentable history of racism.