Yoruba Mythology will bring scholar Oludamini Ogunnaike and Nigerian illustrator Data Oruwari together in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Friday, 23 October, for a free public discussion about the stories and art behind the book.
New Dominion Bookshop is hosting the evening at 7pm local time on the city’s Downtown Mall. Robert Trent Vinson, director of the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies, will lead the conversation.
Ogunnaike wrote Yoruba Mythology: Stories of the Orisa from West Africa and the Diaspora with his brother, Ayodeji Ogunnaike. The bookshop says Oruwari will discuss her illustrations alongside the author’s presentation. The University of Virginia has also announced the event through its Department of Religious Studies.
The collection gathers more than 300 stories, drawing on the brothers’ childhood memories and years of research with elders and practitioners. Its geographical reach includes Nigeria, Cuba and Brazil, following Yoruba religious storytelling across West Africa and the diaspora.
Published by Black Dog & Leventhal, the 632-page hardcover includes accounts of the orisa, narratives about the founding of Yoruba kingdoms, stories of heroes and fables. Its final section turns to Ijapa, the trickster tortoise whose resourcefulness and appetite frequently bring trouble.
The publisher describes an oral tradition centred on Olodumare, the Supreme Being, and the orisa associated with human life and the natural world. Oruwari’s illustrations accompany stories rooted in several places, with visual references drawn from West African and diaspora traditions.
In an interview published by C-VILLE Weekly on 21 October, Oruwari described a personal search that began around 2015. Born in Nigeria and raised in a predominantly Christian environment, she said she began studying Indigenous African knowledge and using art to understand that experience.
“Art became one of the ways I tried to make meaning of what I was experiencing,” she told the newspaper.
For the book, she worked with references gathered by the authors, including research on Yoruba traditions and their continuations in Brazil and Cuba. She said their guidance helped her identify the clothing, ritual objects, animals and other symbols associated with particular traditions.
Oruwari also explained that the project expanded her usual black, white and gold palette. Colours in the illustrations carry associations with the orisa, while the proportions and forms of Yoruba carving provided another influence on her approach.
Oludamini Ogunnaike is an associate professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy at the University of Virginia. His research examines the philosophical and artistic traditions of West and North Africa, particularly Sufism and Ifa. His teaching includes Introduction to Yoruba Religions and Religion and Society in Nigeria.
He earned his doctorate at Harvard University. His undergraduate studies there combined cognitive neuroscience and African studies, according to the university. His earlier book, Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions, received the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora’s Outstanding First Book Prize.
The Charlottesville discussion is open to the public without an admission charge. New Dominion Bookshop recommends arriving early for the best seating.
Archive location photograph: Charlottesville Downtown Mall, 7 January 2024, not the event or participants. Wcedmisten via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Resized for display.
