Soyinka: If Trump wins, I’ll destroy my American green card
Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate, has said he would destroy his green card if Donald Trump becomes president of the United States.
Soyinka said this on Wednesday while giving a speech to students of Oxford University, England, reports the Guardian UK.
“If in the unlikely event he does win, the first thing he’ll do is to say [that] all green-card holders must reapply to come back into the US. Well, I’m not waiting for that.
“The moment they announce his victory, I will cut my green card myself and start packing up,” said Soyinka, who is scholar-in-residence at New York University’s Institute of African American Affairs.
The internationally-acclaimed playwright and poet described Britain’s decision to exit the European Union as a “ridiculous decision”.
He said: “What is happening in Europe shouldn’t surprise any of us … It has happened before. We were here when Enoch Powell was leading his thugs out to drive blacks from here.
“It’s a constant fight to try to get a nation to recognise its own noble persuasions, its own persuasions of the loftiness of human possibility. It’s for young people like you to say no to them whenever that happens.”
Soyinka also informed the students that the torch of African literature is being carried by the younger generation.
“I think we of the older are getting a little bit tired, and I think our production gets thinner and thinner. But fortunately, it doesn’t worry any of us, as far as I know, because the body of literature that is coming out [is] varied and liberated.
“African literature suffered from some kind of ideological spasm in which the younger generation was bombarded by a sense of ideological duty, in other words it was bombarded with a very simplistic notion by leftist radical writers, very reformative revolutionary thinkers, that all literature is ideological and therefore writers must ensure that their writing illustrates progressive ideologies.”
Better do that now. intellectuals like you are the problems of this world. Your judgment in recommending this present government as against the progressives has put serious question in your judgement. America don’t even need you.
Great point my dear! After destroying it, he should never apply to go there until he is no more.
I will be very glad if u do that now because u people r the problem we r facing in the zoo called Nigeria.I wish trump could b a winner of d election and I pray that he will win amen.
Mr Soyinka, return home to Nigeria if ever it was the one to you. What do you mean by “progressive ideologies”? And as for Mr Trump I have to say this, the notion that he will make all of the people there wealthy is a pie in the sky. He already has many detractors now, if he fails to meet people’s expectations,he will blame the same people. Hillary can give her people four more years to think what they want to do with themselves. These are tough times for America.
Your comment..Soyinka is no stake holder of any sort in the US.Going for American green card in the first place makes him a pariah- a wife of the white. And his comment on Trump lack premise for it’s only reactionary. Most Yorubas, so called elites and none elites are only mouthy,loud and empty, void of ability to introduce action.Even if Trump failed to be president or not, it has nothing to do with you QED
Wole Soyinka made no significant difference in Nigeria. I am a nigerian. All he contributed to the Nigerian Economy was english statements that some journalist cant even understand talkless of the inadequately educated politicians – no difference. He has nothing to contribute to America. And frankly his speech here is racially inflammatory.