In Arts of Being Yorùbá, Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́ asks a deceptively simple question: What does it take to be Yorùbá (p. xiii)? To find the answer, he examines what he calls ‘cultural being as art’ (xv), practices old and new, from those often framed as timeless, on through literature, and then to recent phenomena that some might argue are not Yorùbá at all. Adéẹ̀kọ́ delivers a bold new take on each of these practices, showing how the older forms are far from unchanging, while the newer ones rely on the logics of those that preceded them. Ultimately, all of these are ‘being-Yorùbá practices’ (xiv) because they help self-identified Yorùbá people respond to contemporary circumstances in ways that signal their Yorùbá-ness to themselves and others.

In Chapters 1 and 2, Adéẹ̀kọ́ rejects the idea that Ifá divination and Yorùbá proverbs are simply fixed forms rooted in ancient cultural wisdom. A diviner casting palm nuts or a chain, and a Yorùbá person quoting a proverb convey much more than storied knowledge; the meaning of a diviner's reading or an age-worn proverb relies just as much on the contemporary situation onto which it is brought to bear. The meaning of these bits of wisdom must be interpreted in relation to inscriptions from the past, not simply at face value, but within the context of each usage that grants it meaning for people in the present.

In Chapters 3, 4 and 5, Adéẹ̀kọ́ examines the novels of D.O. Fágúnwà, written during Nigeria's colonial period, and the plays of Akínwùmí Ìṣọ̀lá, written shortly after Nigeria's independence. Rather than seeing these works as evidence of some move from preliteracy and tradition to literacy and modernity, Adéẹ̀kọ́ argues that they show a continuity with older Yorùbá logics despite their shift to new media. In Fágúnwà’s novels, Adéẹ̀kọ́ finds evidence of the volatile conditions in which they were written, with both the frame story of a hunter–adventurer relating his exploits to a scribe and the treatment of female characters betraying the shifting roles of these groups in contributing to concepts of being Yorùbá under colonial rule. Likewise, in Ìṣọ̀lá’s play about the fate of a powerful woman known as Ìyálóde Ẹfúnṣetán Aníwúrà, Adéẹ̀kọ́ shows how her downfall owes little to her being ‘unwomanly’ – a misreading created by English translations and their imposition of foreign ideas of gender – despite the allegations of her male enemies.

Adéẹ̀kọ́ concludes by arguing that the relative newness of two emergent arts makes them no less Yorùbá, thanks to the cultural logics that guide them (Chapter 6 and Conclusion). In Nigerian praise magazines and at book-launch ceremonies, the author sees new iterations of Yorùbá panegyric praise poetry via celebrations of ‘eminence’ in ways that make the eminence accessible to others. In Ovation magazine, glossy photographs of successful and up-and-coming Nigerians translate praise poetry into images, while book launches borrow the structure of Yorùbá baby-naming and -outing ceremonies to commemorate new publications rather than infants, and to praise authors rather than their works.

Arts of Being Yorùbá is a needed contribution to Yorùbá studies and a welcome rejoinder to a more culturally essentialist understanding of what it means to be – or not be – Yorùbá. Adéẹ̀kọ́’s concept of ‘cultural being’ as art – practices that rely on borrowing and mixing as much as on speaking a particular language, living in a certain territory, or preserving a primordial past (xiv–xv) – would benefit any study of how collective identities are manifested and understood, whether in Africa or elsewhere. If the book has one major shortcoming, it is its almost exclusive focus on middle-class Nigerians, mostly ignoring Yorùbá with fewer means, as well as Yorùbá from other parts of West Africa and the Americas, whose different experiences of class, slavery and colonialism give them, perhaps, different answers to the question of what it means to be Yorùbá. But Adéẹ̀kọ́’s focus is probably intentional; he wants to dispute the idea that middle-class Nigerians are somehow less Yorùbá for writing novels or for giving their children Christianised names (xxiii–xxiv). As he shows, these things can be perfectly Yorùbá, too.