“‘Street Talk’: Pamphlets of the Nigerian Marketplace” opens in Hanke Gallery on March 24

Onitsha Market Literature—named after a city east of the Niger River—emerged in the early 1950s. The popular pamphlet style soon spread to other centers throughout the then British colony of Nigeria. These ephemeral publications circulated widely throughout the busy marketplace, and writers intended them to be both educating and entertaining for the common people.

Yale Library has the largest collection of Onitsha pamphlets in North America and the second largest in the world after the British Library. John Moore D. Crossey, Yale University’s first and longest-serving Africana librarian and curator, acquired the first objects in the library’s Onitsha Market Literature Collection in the 1980s.

The pamphets on display in “‘Street Talk’: Pamphlets of the Nigerian Marketplace” contain the voices of an emerging nation as it welcomed independence from colonial rule. After years of civil war, Nigeria forged a new identity, inspired by pan-African nationalism. The topics of the pamphlets, which date from the 1950s to 1970s, are wide-ranging: indigenous Nigerian folktales, political commentaries, academic treatments, everyday advice, and new literary experiments.

“Street Talk” is on view from March 24 through Sept. 7 in Hanke Gallery in Sterling Memorial Library.

The opening reception is on Thurs., March 27, at 4:30 in the Hanke Gallery in Sterling Memorial Library. Curator Thobile Ndimande, PhD student in the Department of English will deliver a curator’s talk and tour. Read more about Ndimande and the collection.

—Deborah Cannarella

Images: Akinadewo, Samuel. Rag Day in Nigerian Universities. Ibadan, Nigeria: West African Research; Progressive Literature, [1966]. Onitsha Market Literature Collection, Beinecke Library; Aidoo, Ama Ata. The Dilemma of a Ghost. Accra, Ghana: Longmans, 1965. Sterling Memorial Library