Literature, Widsom, and Freedom

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“The first freedom is mental freedom. We have to seize the freedom to be what we can be, to write whatever we want, with all the mystery and fire of art. It is our responsibility to illuminate the strange corners of what it is to be human.

Literature is the index of our intelligence, our wisdom, our freedom. We must not let anyone define what we write, what we see as worthy of playful or profound investigation in words. “The aim of art,” wrote Aristotle, “is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

Not the appearance, but the inward significance, radiated from the genius of inner freedom.”

Ben Okri

Writing Africa to the World

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What role should African literature play in presenting the continent to the world?
"To write truthfully, beautifully and to raise high the possibilities of literature. Literature is not advertising; it is all the truths that we cannot take and sometimes all the beauty that we cannot bear. It is about our enrichment and about compelling us, through its dreams, to face ourselves. The best contribution that literature can make is to be the best literature that it can be."

Ben Okri, New African magazine