The following tribute was delivered by Professor Chinyere Okafor at the Feminist Roundtable in honor of Professor Mary Kolawole at the African Literature Association conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, May 25, 2023:
Ululation in Honor of Professor Mary Modupe Kolawole
by
Professor Chinyere G. Okafor,
Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, USA
@ALA Conference 2024, Knoxville, TN, USA
Professor Modupe Mary Kolawole departed from this world on the 16th of February 2021 in Nigeria where she was a full professor of languages and literature at Kwara State University, Malete-ILORIN, Kwara State, Nigeria. News of her passing travelled with expressions of shock, questions, and laments in a world barely recovering from the trauma of the covid-19 pandemic. Modupe would never support sadness or queries to the Ultimate Spirit, so I have chosen to focus on my notable memory of her at Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center where we were both Rockefeller Humanist-in-Residence Fellows in 1991-2, and occasional meetings at conferences, which accorded me appreciation of her as a person and a scholar.
When I met her in 1991, she introduced herself to me as Modupe, but she also went by Mary. I got to know her more as we shared an office at the Center. Her gentle demeanor, permanent smile, and affability stand out in her personality. Some know her as their loving mother, so I am not going to intrude into that space ruled by Folake Taylor and Temiloluwa Kolawole, whose childhood stories were fondly shared with me at break times in Hoyt Fuller Room of the Center. I will not speak about her kindness to students who called her Mama and a model for teaching and mentoring. I will not speak of her as a wife, even though she shared stories of her marital abode overshadowed by the suzerainty of the Holy Spirit. Her loving husband, Professor Deboye Kolawole, later added evangelization beside his scientific prowess.
In addition to anecdotes about personal issues, my discussions with Modupe centered on our research that intersected on the poetics of African oral and written literatures and performance. Women’s social, political, and economic activities in different ethnic nations of Nigeria and Africa came up frequently in the debates about feminism, womanism, and afrocentricism. I began to appreciate Modupe as a woman who wore many hats as professor, researcher, author, mother, wife, and person of faith. My focus in this memorial is on her as a renowned literary professor and African feminist scholar whose academic prowess was rooted in research in oral and written literatures as well as her knowledge of Nigerian and Yoruba folklore and folkways.
In Kwara State University website, Kolawole described herself as “a professor of English, Literary Studies, African Cultural and Gender Studies.” My interaction with her and reading of her works reveal feminism as the uniting factor in her academic output. As a stance for the development of women and their children (men and women), feminism frames the literary and cultural discourse of Kolawole’s research, papers, and service including her religious activities replete with her counsels that strengthened many in their endeavors. Mary’s religiosity may suggest the so-called meekness of some women of the bible such as Esther and Miriam acclaimed in Christian circles, but I hasten to qualify their humbleness as packages of their determination, focus, and strength. Modupe also identifies with the drive, activism, and foresight of African heroines who blended the terrain of marriage, motherhood, and leadership in the spirit of omumu ideology derived from fecundity and creativity. Growing up, she admired the guts of her grandmother, who was noted for hunting down anyone that hurt her grandchildren, be they teachers or strangers. Her grandmother’s audacity ignited Mary’s interest in stories of heroic women such as Madam Efunroye Tinubu (c. 1810 – 1887) and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1900-1978) from her Yoruba background as well as other heroes beyond her ethnic region.
Her research in African folklore exposed her to numerous prototypes of female assertion and leadership all over Africa during different epochs of African history from precolonial to modern, which constituted the backbone of her academic achievement. In her outstanding book, Womanism and African Consciousness, she emphasized the contribution and leadership of women in the fight against imperialism foregrounding numerous examples such as the Igbo and eastern Nigerian women’s war against the colonialists, women’s mobilization during the Zimbabwean war, Kenyan women’s contribution to the liberation struggle, and South African women’s engagement of apartheid. She emphasized their strength in combating multiple infringements from traditional patriarchies as they fought the imperialistic strangulation of African peoples.
Professor M. Kolawole’s gusto in Womanism reveals her passion for women and gender. This passion has been with her since childhood when her feminist father refused to uphold the expected silent presence of women which would have lent voice to inferiorization of women. Modupe’s motivational story was the conversation she heard between her father and his friend who tried to convince him not to send her to school but to save the money for the boys. Her father rejected the advice because Mary was his first child, and he was not sure that the boys would be brilliant like her. This incident was the bedrock of Modupe’s motivation to fight for women through her teaching, service, research and publications.
At Cornell, our fellowship research was enriched by the intellectual ebullience of African scholars at the Africana Center such as Ali Mazrui, Micere Mugo, Don Ohadike, N’dri Assie-Lumumba, Salah Hassan, and Nanji, as well as the robust diasporic input of James Turner, Locksley Edmondson, Robert Harris, and Ann Adams. The controversial invisibility and voicelessness of African women came up in seminars organized by Nanji at Hoyt Fuller Room. Mary’s voice was heard as she laid the foundation for further academic pursuit which did not stop at Cornell. She soared in academia and made her voice heard across continents. She did not disappoint her father and regretted that he did not live long enough to see her soar beyond his imagination. Had her father conceded to the inhibitive notion of his friend, Modupe would not have had the foundation that propelled her across the globe including the following:
Cornell University (USA) - Rockefeller Humanist-in-Residence Fellow.
University of Kent (UK) - Commonwealth Visiting Fellow,
University of Cape Town (SA) - Research Associate at African Gender Institute.
Nordic Africa Institute (Sweden) - Researcher.
No doubt, Professor Kolawole has made her family and all of us proud. For the academy, she left a robust legacy of books and other publications that engage the voices of African women through oral and written literatures to elicit their communication of identities unique to African women that shaped their brand of feminist engagement long before the term feminism was coined in early nineteenth century France. Kolawole employed her strategic position at the intersection of feminism with gender and cultural studies to great advantage in expounding African women’s audibility and identity. She left the academy with numerous publications including the following:
Womanism and African Consciousness. Africa World Press, 1997.
Gender Perceptions and Development in Africa. Arrabon Academic Publishers, 1998.
Zulu Sofola: Her Life & Her Works College Press Publishers, 1999.
I take pride in celebrating Professor Mary Modupe Kolawole, and the remarkable impact she had and still have, with this parting verse inspired by the spirit of her scholarly message:
A gentle wind touched the lip of my left ear.
Her touch was like drums as it made its way,
In my head compelling me to mark her words:
In or out of the room, she holds the yam and knife,
Dead or alive, her voice carries bitter nuts and honey.
Please respect the voice. Voice is God’s gift to women.
