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Ethnic Identities and Gender Themes in Contemporary East African Literature

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Ethnic Identities and Gender Themes in Contemporary East African Literature ETHNIC IDENTITIES AND GENDER THEMES IN CONTEMPORARY EAST AFRICAN LITERATURE Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde am Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften, Institut für Englische Philologie der Freien Universität Berlin vorgelegt von Justus Kizito Makokha M.A, B.Ed (Hons) Berlin, am Juni 23, 2011 1 Gutachter 1. Gutachter Prof. Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov 2. Gutachter Prof. Dr. Jennifer Wawrzinek Die Disputation im Fach Englische Philologie wurde am 22.07.2011 abgelegt und das Promotionsverfahren mit der Gesamtnote ‘magna cum laude’ bestanden. 2 Contents Gutachter Table of Contents Acknowledgements Abstract 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….…7 2. Chapter One: Narrating Asian African Masculinities with Special References to M. G. Vassanji’s Protagonists in The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003) & No New Land (1991)….…………………………….………………………………16 2.0. Introduction 2.1. Rethinking Postcolonial Masculinities in Africa 2.2. The Asian African Writer and Interstitiality as Index of Deficit Masculinity 2.3. Symbolism and Deficit Masculinity in The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003) 2.4. Individual versus Society: Nurdin Lalani’s Struggles in No New Land (1991) 2.5. Conclusion 3. Chapter Two: Identity, Theme and Narrative Aspects of Binyavanga Wainaina’s Discovering Home (2002)……………………………………………………………..59 3.0. Introduction 3.1. Background Setting & Exploration of Kenyan Identity 3.2. The Narrator as a Youth in a Changing Society 3.3. Aspects of the Narrative 3.4. Conclusion 4. Chapter Three: Identity, Theme and Style in Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s ‘Weight of Whispers’ (2003)……………………… …………...…………………...86 3.0. Introduction 3.1. Thematic Issues 3.2. The Protagonist Boniface Louis R. Kuseremane 3.3. The Female Figures 3.4. Imagery as Characteristic of Owuor’s Style 3.5. Conclusion 5. Conclusion…..…………………………………………………………………………...115 Bibliography……….………………………………………………………………………...122 Deutsche Zussamenfassung…...…………………………………………………………...136 3 Acknowledgements This research owes its completion to the important help and bureaucratic support offered by Prof. Dr. Jennifer Wawrzinek, Prof. Dr. Anja Schwarz and my supervisor– mentor, Prof. Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov. Their regularly progress reports ensured that the contact and contract between my sponsors DAAD and me was sustained and healthy. I am indebted to you. Specifically, I wish to offer my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to Professor West-Pavlov for his guidance, sustenance and patronage throughout my research and teaching tour in Germany (September 2007 – August 2011). My stay at the Institute for English Philology as a teacher was made easy and comfortable courtesy of the wonderful assistance and friendship provided by Herr Werner Riemer, Mrs Maria Bonifacio-Migas and other members of staff, both administrative and academic. I note with gratitude the generous moral and intellectual contribution, as well as commentary on a wide variety of topics covered in this work, by the following colleagues and friends: Ratidzai Magura, Temitope Olatubosun Omotayo, Sabine Conrad and Dr John Obiero Ogone; Dr: Ines Schramm and her husband Werner, Manka Munisi Siboe are noted. The same note of appreciation is extended to my former teacher Dr Garnette Oluoch-Olunya who also read sections of this work and offered their critical advice. For inspiration, a special note of thanks is extended to: Prof. Bernth Lindfors, Prof. Gail Fincham, Prof. Harry Garuba, Prof. James Ogude, Prof. Frank Schulze-Engler, Prof. Evan Mwangi, Prof. Emmanuel Mbogo, Prof. Meg Samuelson, Dr. Reuben Chirambo, Dr. John Mugubi, Mr and Mrs Vincent and Betty Kawoya, Dr. Lance P. Nadeau, Dr. Garnette Oluoch-Olunya, Prof. Dr. Christa Knellwolff, Messrs Jens Elze-Volland, Gautam Chakrabarty, Ferdinand Mbecha, Emmanuel Shikuku and all other postgraduate students I met during Prof. West- Pavlov’s graduate seminar on postcolonial studies. A work of this size and breadth naturally depends on extensive cooperation and aid from many individuals. I am indebted to Vincent F. Kawoya for helping me get access to the Moi Library at Kenyatta University during my research trip to Kenya in May 2009. On the same not I am grateful to Dr Susan Kiguli, Mzee Mwalimu Austin Bukenya and Prof. Sr. Dominica Dipio for enabling me to access critical material and research findings from their postgraduate students at the Makerere University library, Uganda. Dr. Hamza Njozi, currently of Muslim University, Morogoro, Tanzania, but then of University of Dar es Salaam, was helpful in the same manner. Thank you very much. A special note of thanks is accorded to various university administrative officers who are to many to reproduce here but helped me source for secondary materials in my field work in East Africa (May 2009 – July 2009). I am also grateful for the personal friendship of Dr Moyez Ghulamhussein Vassanji and Mzee Prof. Peter Nazareth, two leading writers from/of the Asian community in East Africa as well as Binyavanga Wainaina and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor: two emergent Kenyan writers of note whose work are studied in this dissertation. Herr Michael Baumgardt of DAAD is recognized for his tireless communication that enabled issues revolving around the scholarship to be addressed and challenges overcome during the three-year long stay in Germany. Finally, the DAAD, as an institution, receives special appreciation for granting me the opportunity and necessary funding to pursue my academic growth and postgraduate studies at the Free University of Berlin. The kind and helpful staff of the following libraries are also recognized for their various forms of assistance in accessing materials that helped shape the ideas in this book: Free University, Technical University of Berlin, Humbolt University (Zweigbibliothek – Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften), Makerere University, 4 University of Dar es Salaam, Kenyatta University and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, University of Leipzig Main Library, and the African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town. I am grateful for the timely grant from the Free University of Berlin’s Center for International Cooperation (CIC) enabled me to visit UCT and carry out examination of the rich collection of gender materials in April, 2009. Finally, I confirm that chapter one appears as shorter essay published in an edited book in the course of my PhD work at the Institute for English Philology, Free University of Berlin, Germany. I hold the copyrights to the essay. The essay is included in this dissertation in a revised and expanded form with special reference to Promotionsordung 2008, §7, 1(a) of the Institute for English Philology, Free University of Berlin. Here are its publication details: Makokha, J. K. S., (2011). “The Eternal Other: Authority of Deficit Masculinity in Asian African Literature.” in Men and Masculinities in African Fiction and Film. Ed. Lahoucine Ouzgane. London: James Currey. ISBN: 1-84701-521-2. pp. 139-52. 5 Abstract 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,
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