Amatoritsero Ede
Amatoritsero "Godwin" Ede is a Nigerian-Canadian poet. He had written under the name "Godwin Ede" but he stopped bearing his Christian first name as a way to protest the xenophobia and racism he noted in Germany, a "Christian" country, and to an extent, to protest Western colonialism in general. Ede has lived in Canada since 2002, sponsored as a writer-in-exile by PEN Canada. He was a Hindu Monk with the Hare Krishna Movement, and has worked as a Book Editor with a major Nigerian trade publisher, Spectrum Books.
Quotes
[edit]- Growing up within the traditional Yoruba worldview of accommodation, religious and otherwise, as emphasized by Yoruba traditional religious pantheism, I also did not understand such fascist utterances like, “Jesus is the only way” and, “No one comes to the father except through me.
- I grew up speaking in English. I refer to it as my step-mother tongue in one of my poems–“Speaking in Tongues.” I can’t remember when I did not speak English! But chronologically I spoke Yoruba first because you did not begin school till the age of 6.
- I was simply amused at the irony and contradiction of sections of a Christian country going against the grain of the Lord’s prayer and murdering foreigners in Germany due to the way they look—black, brown, Jewish or Asian. The irony is complicated by the Biblical injunction—one of the Ten Commandments—“Thou shall not kill.
