The American government has revoked the visa of Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian author who won the 1986 Nobel Prize in literature, according to Al Jazeera. The writer received what he called a “rather curious love letter” from the American authorities, that he read from in Lagos on Tuesday.

“We request you bring your visa to the US Consulate General Lagos for physical cancellation. To schedule an appointment, please email—et cetera, et cetera,” he said, reading from the official letter. Soyinka previously renounced his permanent residence status during Trump’s first term, and the visa just nullified was issued last year under the Biden Administration.

This revocation is part of Trump and his hogmen’s reworking of America’s immigration and visa system. They are aggressively shrinking the length of visas and restricting access to them, especially for non-whites. In the past, Soyinka has fairly regularly traveled to the US for speaking and teaching engagements, which will be difficult now.

This move also seems clearly to be part of a wider, authoritarian attack on things the government considers un-American: people of color, literary culture, and those it considers critics. Soyinka hasn’t been shy in his denunciations of the administration, saying Trump is “behaving like a dictator” and called the President “Idi Amin in white face.”

Soyinka also renounced his US permanent residence in 2016, tearing up his green card to protest Trump’s election. He told The Atlantic in 2017 that he would prefer to wait in line for a normal visa while Trump is in power, and the he was “no longer part of the society, not even as a resident.” Soyinka joked on Tuesday that the card had “fallen between the fingers of a pair of scissors and it got cut into a couple of pieces,” according to the BBC.

So much to say, Soyinka is taking his national banning in stride. He said that “this is one of the most humorous sentences or requests I’ve had in all my life,” asking the audience, “Would any of you like to volunteer in my place? Take the passport for me? I’m a little bit busy and rushed.”

Soyinka is the first African to win the Nobel for literature. He’s known for his plays, short stories, and novels, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, The Interpreters, and Season of Anomy. And here on Lit Hub, I recommend this conversation between Soyinka and Ayşegül Sert about art and activism, and this clip of Soyinka talking with Chinua Achebe and Lewis Nkosi.

This travel ban on one of the world’s great writers is cruel and a loss for America. It’s also shamefully par for the course for this fascistic government. Thankfully, America is not the world, and Soyinka’s writing and work continue on.