Yorùbá Identity and Power Politics

Toyin Falola and Ann Genova have done Yorùbá studies an excellent service by thoughtfully bringing together a collection of essays that draws from the inspiration of previous works but avoids the pitfalls of rehashing old ideas. The result is an imaginative, refreshing, and beautiful scholarship without the pretensions of textual and theoretical jargons. We finally have that long-sought single volume that superbly captures major and diverse historical themes in Yorùbá experience from the precolonial to the present in wholesome interdisciplinary frameworks. Yorùbá Identity and Power Politics is a superior work in the genre, an excellent book to teach and think with on a myriad of topics relevant to contemporary Africa. -- -- Akin Ogundiran, Associate Professor of History, Florida International University, Miami
Yorùbá Identity and Power Politics is a breath of fresh air and a critical watershed in the discourse of the ever-so-challenging and complicated web of the idea of Yorùbáness. This work is indeed an assemblage of serious intellectuals of Yorùbá history whose collective voice projects a cutting edge in the discourse of the socio-political dichotomy of identity and power. This is a must read for anyone who is either genuinely interested in the knowledge of the Yorùbá history or truly excited about a people whose culture, history, and identity remain most enduring and most visible in the vast world of the African diaspora. -- -- Michael O. Afoláyan, PhD, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville