Letters, Kinship, and Social Mobility in Nigeria

Some years ago, Olufemi Vaughan received from his aged father a trove of more than three thousand letters written by four generations of his family in southwestern Nigeria between 1926 and 1994. This rich volume presents and analyzes the letters, contextualizing them through additional archival research and oral interviews. The result is both a broad account of twentieth- century Yoruba social life and an intimate look at members of one educated, Christian family and their close friends in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria.