TELEPHONE

CONVERSATION
Akinwade Oluwole Soyinka
1963

INTRODUCTION

Wole Soyinkas poetry has often been

described as a powerful and serious
agent to social change.
His themes are primarily concerned
with the promotion of human rights
and African politics.
Telephone Conversation is one of
his most well-known and most often
anthologized poems.

Telephone Conversation reveal a

lyrical understanding of the rhythm
and resonances of language
balance with humor and a deeply
felt compassion for the human
condition.
It is found in Perrines Literature:
Structure, Sound and Sense, edited
by Thomas Arp and Greg Johnson,
published by Thomson in 2006.

AUTHORS BIOGRAPHY

Akinwade Oluwole
Soyinka was born in
Abeokuts, Nigeria on
July 13, 1934

A member of Yoruba
tribe and his
grandfather was a
respected tribal edler

80 years old

His mother was a Christian and his

father was a headmaster at the local
British-model school.
Noble Prize in Literature in 1986
Academy of Achievement Golden
Plate Award in 2009

POEM SUMMARY

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. Madam, I warned
I hate a wasted journey I am African.
Silence. Silenced transmission of pressurized
good-breeding. Voice, when it came
Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled
Cigarette-holder piped. Caught I was, foully.
HOW DARK?I had not misheard.ARE YOU
LIGHT OR VERY DARK? Button B. Button A.
Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

LINES 1-10

TELEPHONE CONVERSATION is
exactly what its title promises: an
imagined conversation between an
African man and a presumably white
landlady with accommodations to
rent. Some of the idioms in the poem
mark the general geography of the
poem as England, most likely
London.

The city saw a substantial influx of

African immigrants throughout the
post-war decades, a period that also
saw a rise of racial tensions in the
country, so such conversations would
not have been unfamiliar. Te poem
opens with the African speaker
clarifying the essential information
about the location, the cost and the
similar business details.

The landlady is initially described as

being of good-breeding, a standing
that makes her questions about the
color of the speakers skin seem
suddenly and dramatically out of
place. Specifically, she wants to
know if he is light or very dark
skinned, a distinction that seems to
carry particular weight within the
racial atmosphere of the day.

Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red doubletiered

Omnibus squelching tar.
It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfoundment to beg
simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the
emphasis-

LINES 11-18

From this pointed and clearly prejudicial

question, the poem moves smoothly
between the thoughts of the speaker as he
considers the question as a political
statement and the landladys insistent
repetition of the same questions or
variations thereof. As the conversation
unfolds, it becomes a painful accumulation
of ironic miscommunication and blatant
racism.

The more the speaker tries to answer

the questions, the deeper the
exchange slips into irony as the
speaker answers the woman with cool
logic that clouds rather than clarifies
the situation. At first comparing
himself to chocolate, for instance, the
speaker settles on describing himself
as West African sepia, a term he
knows will further confuse his listener.

You mean-like plain milk or milk chocolate?

Her accent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted
I chose. West African sepia and as afterthought.
Down in my passport, silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness changed her accent
Hard on the mouthpiece WHATS THAT?
conceding DONT KNOW WHAT THAT IS. Like
brunette.
THATS DARK, ISNT IT?

Not altogether
Facially, I am brunette, but madam you
should see the rest of me. Palm of my
hand, soles on my feet.
Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, causedFoolishly madam- by sitting down, has
turned
My bottom raven black- One moment
madam! sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears- Madam. I pleaded,
wouldnt you rather

LINES 19-35

As the speakers ironic tone takes hold

of the conversation, he begins to
describe various body parts from his
hair to the soles of his feet, in an effort
to explain to her that he is, like all
people, several different colors. The
final lines of the poem carry a doubleedge message. The first is clear:
making a judgment about the
persons character based solely on the

The second layer of the closing lines

underscore the meeting absurdity with
additional absurdity, an approach
Soyinka often brings to his
explorations of such situations, as the
speaker invites the woman to see
for herself all of the varied colors of
the body parts he catalogues.

THEME OF THE POEM

RACIAL CONFLICT
Telephone Conversation is a dramatic
dialogue in which a person of color responds to
the racial prejudices of a woman with whom he
is trying to negotiate rental accommodations,
as the poem begins, the speakers welleducated and polished voice, as heard on the
telephone, makes him acceptable to the
landlady, but when he turns to the crucial
moment of self-confession, the truth of racial
conflict comes to the foreground.

The landlady clearly does not want a

tenant of color, yet at the same time is
trapped by the code of civil conduct that
will not allow her to acknowledge what
might be considered an uncivilized racial
prejudiced. The cluster of assumptions
articulated by the well-bred landlady
gathers into an almost textbook definition
of racism. She is xenophobic (exhibiting an
irrational fear of foreigners, such as the
African caller).

She engages a vocabulary of racial

stereotypes (making hasty
generalization based on skin color or
ethnic background), and her
unwillingness to rent to a man of color
reinforces a policy of racial
segregations or what has been called
ghettoization (the practice of restricting
members of racial or ethnic group to
certain neighborhoods or areas of a
city).

But even as she weaves her way

through a series of deeply questions,
ranging from HOW DARK? to THATS
DARK, ISNT IT? the woman reveals the
confused underside of racial attitudes.
At no point in the poem does the
speaker internalize the sense of
inferiority that is being projected upon
him, nor does he react in anger to her
narrow-mindedness.

Instead, he engages language in a

calm and highly sophisticated manner,
elevating the poem from diatribe or
attack to a much more effective end of
allowing readers to see the world
through the absurd lens of racial
prejudice.

THE POEM
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. Madam, I warned
I hate a wasted journey I am African.
Silence. Silenced transmission of pressurized
good-breeding. Voice, when it came
Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled
Cigarette-holder piped. Caught I was, foully.
HOW DARK?I had not misheard.ARE YOU
LIGHT OR VERY DARK? Button B. Button A.
Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered

Omnibus squelching tar.
It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfoundment to beg
simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasisARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT
Revelation came

You mean-like plain milk or milk

chocolate?
Her accent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length
adjusted
I chose. West African sepia and as
afterthought.
Down in my passport, silence for
spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness changed her
accent
Hard on the mouthpiece WHATS THAT?

Not altogether
Facially, I am brunette, but madam you should see
the rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles on my feet.
Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, causedFoolishly madam- by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black- One moment madam!
sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears- Madam. I pleaded, wouldnt you
rather
See for yourself?