This book volume engages the emergent ways and exercises of world-making in eastern African literatures and cultures. It also includes how the world comes to eastern Africa as well as how eastern Africa speaks to the world. Writers within the region have come up with novel commentaries on diverse social issues. Artists and other users have invented new forms of expression through digitalization. The structure and content of this literature and cultural conversations, in line with modernity, has exhibited a fluidity that calls for the critical appraisal carried out in this book.
Therefore, this book volume centralises the emergence of new patterns of engagement in the literatures and cultures of the region. Taking cue from the cultural transformations, technological advancements and political influences, the volume raises questions on politics, conflict and war, and the evolving genres and canon. The book crosses language barriers beyond English and includes critical attention to texts written in the Swahili and French languages. The chapters aim to give a broad overview of the writings and cultural expressions in the eastern African region, including novels, films, short stories, theatre, poetry, oral, and digital performances.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: An Overview of Trends in Eastern African Literatures and Cultures
Oduor Obura
Part One: The Evolving Literary Canon
Literary Disruptions of the Ugandan Canon in Selected Ugandan Short Stories
Edgar Nabutanyi
A Discipline under Siege: Interrogating the Place of Literature in English in the Secondary School Curriculum in Tanzania
Obala Musumba
Cartographies of Killing: Transnational Drones in Eye in the Sky
Jana Fedtke
Performing in the Cyber Space: The Online Mchongoano Battles
Kimingichi Wabende
Mobile Phones in the Public Space: Communication as Contextual Cultural Practice in Kenya
James Ogone
Part Two: Conflict, Politics, and War
Narrating Violence in Burundian Genocide and Civil War Literature: Pacifique Irankunda’s “Playing at Violence”
Jodi Mikalachki
Violence and the Multivocality of Silence in Roland Rugero’s Novels Giuseppe Sofo Conflicts in Memories, History and National Identity in Burundian Literature
Pierre Boizette
The Aporia in Eastern African War Narratives as Reflected in Uwem Akpan’s “My Parents’ Bedroom” and Misago Aloys’ La Descente aux enfers
Marie-Thérèse Toyi
Ethiopian Dissident Fiction: Countering Despotism in Hama Tuma’s Short Stories
George Otieno Odhiambo
Agony on Stage: The Intrigues of Building Houses in The Rubble Rouser, performed at the 58th Edition of the Kenya Schools and Colleges Drama Festival (KSCDF)
Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong
Part Three: Recent Interventions in Swahili Writing
UWARIDI Initiative: The Innovative Transformation of a Self-help Project by Tanzanian Novelists into a Powerful Literary Space
Uta Reuster-Jahn
Swahili Poetry in the New Millennium: Established and Emerging Trends
Flavia Aiello, Roberto Gaudioso and Emiliano Minerba
Linking the Centuries: The ‘Big Four’ of Kenyan Swahili Writing
Mikhail D. Gromov