Description

This study interrogates both long and short written prose by a distinguished sample of emergent and established writers from Kenya as a microcosm of East Africa. The sample includes both novels and short stories published in English. The region produces literature that is both written and oral. It also produces literature in vernacular language, the regional lingua franca, Kiswahili beside English. The term contemporary has been used here to denote generally the written tradition of English expression in the turn of the century (c. 1991-2011). The authors under study include: M. G. Vassanji, Binyavanga Wainaina and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. The study conducts a critical interrogation of new works by these writers. These are: The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003), No New Land (1991) by Vassanji; Discovering Home (2002) by Wainaina and ‘Weight of Whispers’ (2003) by Owuor. We are interested in examining how ethnicity and gender as two major indexes of identity in East Africa today are treated in exemplary works of short and long prose. Specifically, how do these two indices, in the hands of the selected writers of note, contribute to the aesthetic and formal thematization, as well as treatment, of identity issues? The study emanates from the need to contribute to critical studies that trace the recent contours of literary writing across Africa in light of the call for appreciations of diversity within African identity discourses especially in the context of expanding ethnic and gender conflicts. Creative imagination is one of the pathways by which a people or culture presents itself to the world. It represents their internal and external environments. To study the sociology of literature is to contribute in the creation of awareness around a society and its vocal agents. This is our guiding assumption and it is rooted to the core of postcolonial studies as a discipline. The tendency to use or apply sociological parameters in the study of East African literature is well established. Owing to the multiracial and multicultural nature of the societies of the nation-states that make up the region, this is an almost natural phenomenon. These countries include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi. The first three countries, from whence comes the majority of our sample are homes to indigenous African communities and immigrant communities from South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula as well as visible communities of European descent. It these three strands of cultural heritage that make the composite core of East African identity as a region. Naturally, a study of diverse writers and genres such as this one will rely on an eclectic but carefully selected set of theoretical practices/frameworks and methodological orientations. The study draws from gender studies, postcolonialism and aspects of narratology in a research-based attempt to provide across seven chapters a scholarly panorama of contemporary Anglophone East African literature, its formal as well as thematic idiosyncrasies. The first and last chapters offer the introduction and conclusion respectively. The remaining chapters i-between are analytical and form the body of the dissertation.

Project Details

Project Type

Dissertation

Subject Group

Humanities

Subject Classification

English Studies

End

2011

Organization

Faculty/Central Institute

Philosophy and Humanities

Institute/Seminar

Institute for English Language and Literature

Project Team

Director

Dr. Justus Kizitos Siboe Makokha

Keywords

East Africa sub-region; contemporary (1991-2011) literature in English; literary criticism

Publications

http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000009814/MAKOKHA_DISSERTATION.pdf

Researchers

• Dr. Justus Kizitos Siboe Makokha

  Former