Books
AMBASSADORS of several African countries and other culture enthusiasts are billed to witness the unveiling of Assaults on Beauty: The Colonization of African Psyche holding at the Banquet Hall, Lagos Airport Hotel, Ikeja, on Thursday, May 14, at 10AM
The book, written by leading Nigerian-American psychiatrist, Biyi Oyefule, represents the boldest interrogation of the age-long strangulation and unmitigated denigration of African aesthetics and cultures.
Drawing on more than three decades of clinical and scholarly experience, Dr. Oyefule argues that colonization was not merely a political and economic project — it was a deep psychological assault that systematically dismantled African peoples’ relationship with their own beauty, identity, and self-worth. The book traces how centuries of colonial conditioning installed a foreign aesthetic gaze within the African mind, one that continues to shape skin-bleaching practices, hair politics, naming conventions, and the widespread devaluation of indigenous art, language, and spiritual traditions*
*Central to the book’s framework is the concept of internalized aesthetic violence — the process by which colonized peoples unconsciously adopt the colonizer’s standards of beauty and civilization as their own, rendering their authentic cultural expressions invisible or shameful.*
* *Dr. Oyefule draws on psychodynamic theory, Fanonian postcolonial analysis, and Yoruba philosophical traditions, particularly the concepts of Ìwà (character as beauty) and Ọmọlúwàbí (the ethic of inner nobility), to construct a rigorous and culturally rooted counter-narrative.*
*Assaults on Beauty arrives at a pivotal moment in global conversations about representation, cultural restitution, and the decolonization of knowledge. With African nations increasingly asserting their cultural sovereignty — from the repatriation of looted artefacts to the resurgence of indigenous fashion, music, and philosophy on the world stage — Dr. Oyefule’s work provides the psychological vocabulary needed to understand why reclaiming beauty is, at its core, an act of liberation.*
*The launch event is expected to draw traditional rulers, mental health professionals, academics, authors, and pan-African community leaders from across Nigeria and the diaspora. It promises to be not merely a celebration of a book, but a broader cultural conversation about healing, identity, and the urgent restoration of African dignity in the twenty-first century.*
Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
A.I
May 13, 2026
Tags: Assaults on Beauty Biyi Oyefule The Colonization of African Psyche