In a comparative perspective, literacy has been closely associated with techniques of the self and with the emergence of modern subjectivities. But what happens when literacy is developed without genres such as diary keeping being widespread? Scrutinizing grassroots practices, this article demonstrates that even people who are not confronted with established forms of self-writing engage with literacy in ways that bear an imprint of their lives and subjectivities. Drawing on an ethnographic study in one village in southern Mali, it sets a socio-historical background where writing practices arise primarily as responses to the pressure of rural management. Yet the local discourses on the value of writing are suffused with notions of privacy. The article focuses on the unstable but shared practice of keeping a notebook for farming as well personal notations. Through a detailed analysis of two notebooks, it advocates for a set of distinctions between the individual, the private and the self that helps disentangle the issue of writing and self. This leads to a contrasted view of the local engagements with literacy. The question of the crystallization of notebook keeping as a genre remains open.

S. W. D. K. Gandah was the son of an influential chief and witnessed first-hand the way the conflicts, pressures and transformations of colonial rule played out on the ground in northern Ghana. Belonging to the first generation of educated northerners, he put his literary and intellectual attainments to original use throughout his life. In addition to an autobiography (The Silent Rebel), he wrote a fascinating history of his father (Gandah-yir), extracts from which are published here. In this introduction I discuss the author's development as a writer and local historian. I analyse his ambivalent perspective on Chief Gandah's life, as loyal son, but also critic of many aspects of village life – a perspective typical of a first generation of indigenous intellectuals who embodied both a traditional upbringing and new values instilled through Western education. I look at Kumbonoh's reflections on the task that he has set himself for his Gandah-yir manuscript, namely reconciling oral tradition, local memories, and written history in an attempt to produce a historical account not only for his immediate family and the wider Dagara community, but for a broader readership.

J. G. Mullen was a Gold Coast clerk who published his memoirs, in instalments, in the Gold Coast Leader from 1916 to 1919. In this unusual narrative, he describes his adventures in Cameroon before and during the First World War. His account combines real-life geographical and social details with flamboyant tropes probably derived from imperial popular literature. Mullen's biography and even identity have so far been otherwise untraceable. His text offers glimpses, always enigmatic, of the experience and outlook of a member of the new clerkly class of colonial West Africa. This contribution presents an edited extract from Mullen's text together with a contextualizing and interpretative essay. The full Mullen text is available in the online version of this issue of Africa.

This essay presents Lanrewaju Adepọju, whose work and ideas have been very influential on contemporary Yoruba poetry, as a local intellectual. In estimating his contribution to modernising ewì, an open poetic form that inhabits the interface between the oral and the written, the essay draws on biographical information, an extensive personal interview and relevant textual illustration. It correlates Adepọju's vision of poetry with the development of his creative consciousness and draws attention to aspects of his poetics and politically implicated poetry that deserve closer engagement. The article also offers a translation of a sample poem by Adepọju, while the online version of the essay offers more of his poems as well as an interview.