Esu-Elegba's Crossroads

Transcultural Creativity in the Works of Femi Euba

Eric Mayer-García, Solimar Otero

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040353615
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: African Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book features a collection of essays and testimonials that provide new perspectives and incisive criticism on the writings and theatrical productions of Nigerian American author, director, and theorist Femi Euba. Esu, the Yoruba trickster deity of the crossroads, brings cohesion to this project and serves as a guiding principle for its contributors who draw upon Esu's mysteries to illuminate distinctive characteristics of Euba's oeuvre. As a key figure of Wole Soyinka's circle, Euba's literature, theory, research, and artistic practice deeply engage with the works of Soyinka. The contributions to this volume uncover multiple connections between these two artists and break ground in scholarship by considering their works together through comparative analysis. The voices of leading and emerging scholars bring together African Drama, Comparative Literature, and Theatre History in an interdisciplinary discourse on Euba which greatly complements his vast achievements. Chapters delve into Euba's cultural theory informed by Esu, particularly his theory of satire, and offer insight into many of his creative works, including Camwood at Crossroads, Tortoise!, The Gulf, and The Eye of Gabriel.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Atlantic Studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Crossroads of generational thinking
• 1 The Man Died: Wole Soyinka’s imprisonment and the Yoruba trickster tale in Femi Euba’s Tortoise!
• 2 Ritual and theatre at the crossroads of poetics, politics and epistemology: Femi Euba (and WS)
• 3 Esu’s crossroads and Ogun’s crossing over: Intercultural creativity and postcolonial futurity in the theater of Femi Euba
• 4 Words to choreograph: Ritual archetypes of/at Esu’s crossroads
• 5 Camwood: African and African American identities at the crossroads
• 6 Myth, performance, and creation: The achievement of Femi Euba
• 7 A conversation between Femi Euba, Wole Soyinka and Biodun Jeyifo
• 8 Globalization and a grain of salt: Reflections of a participating emigrant-playwright
• Index