Category Archives: Ugandan Literature

by

Ugandan poet Harriet Anena showcases in Kampala

Harriet Anena

Femrite is one of the most organised female collectives in the publishing industry on the continent. It has been described as more than just a feminist publisher by some but in truth what they do is as feminist as it gets. In a good way.

This year, the organisation has been doing a series of events showcasing some of the best writers we have on the continent with a focus on the ladies. Last month, the author being featured was Kenyan Ciku Kimeria who wrote Of Goats and Poisoned Oranges and there was a pretty good turn out.

The author for February was Harriet Anena, a Ugandan born poet whose book A Nation In Labour was presented in conversation with Juliane Okot P’Bitek. The Special Projects Office with the African Centre for Media Excellence read some of here her poems and engaged with those who rocked up at the Femrite offices in Kampala.

For those who might want to know more about this books I recommend that you read the review from our from So Many Stories here —> A Nation In Labour | Three voices, one book by Richard Oduor, Grace Kenganzi and David Kangye.

You can also read more about Harriet at the following links;

:: Harriet Anena

:: The making of a budding poet

Here are some images of the event courtesy of the event organisers.

by

Beverley Nambozo anthology A Thousand Voices Rising now available in Nairobi

Beverley Nambozo

Beverley Nambozo is famous as the Ugandan who set up the BN Poetry Award. This prize which started in 2009 had humble ambitions; to celebrate and promote the poetry genre in Uganda. The prize is now continental and just recently announced a new board that included Sahro Ahmed Koshin, a Somali-Dutch poet and founder of the Puntland Women Writers Association. Also in the board are Remi Raji, Professor at Ibadan University and published author, Graham Mort, Professor of Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University and David Ishaya Osu a poet and social commentator from Nigeria.

A Thousand Voices Rising

Even as Nambozo steers the BN Poetry Prize, she is also the poet who compiled A Thousand Voices Rising featuring the works of winners of the Caine Prize, Sillerman Book Prize, the BN Poetry Award and those shortlisted for Poetry Foundation Ghana prize, the African Poetry Book Fund prize, Short Story Day Africa and more. The poems are about heartbreak, genocide, love, leadership, inspiration, next door neighbours, money, faith, landscape, personal journeys, family, children and education.

The book is now available in Nairobi, Kenya to lovers of poetry. At a new year’s discount of Kshs500, those who want to read some of the best poetry out now you can call 0722 790 479. Based on what I have seen Kshs500 is a bargain. Hurry hurry while stocks last.

by

Times up for Miles Morland 2013 scholars: What’s next?

All eyes on Percy Zvomuya

All eyes are now Miles Morland 2013 scholars on Percy Zvomuya, Doreen Baingana and Tony Mochama. After enjoying the prestige of being the first scholars and the attendant goodies that goes with it like, well, the money, and the rest of it the real work begins.

In case you have forgotten, Doreen Baingana from Uganda had proposed to write a fictional account of the life of Alice Lakwena, the leader of the Holy Spirit Movement in Uganda in the 1980s. Tony Mochama from Kenya had proposed to write a book set in Nairobi in 2063, a hundred years after independence, as seen through the eyes of an 88 year old man. The last scholar, Zimbabwean Percy Zvomuya, intended to write a biography of Robert Mugabe.

I’m hearing that the work that the three scholars is very good but the people from the foundation can’t guarantee publishing contracts after the books are done which is only fair. What they are offering is mentorship and access to various networks – literary agents, guidance from experienced authors and mainstream publishers – which the Foundation is tied into.

For now we await for the work for the first books from the Mile Morland Fellowship. I hope y’all are as excited as I am.

by

A partnership between Kampala and Bremen writers

Nyana Kakoma

Kenyans will be familiar with a partnership in the last few years called BLNRB. This project involved artists, of the musical kind, from between Kenya city Nairobi and German city Berlin. The project involved the two sets of artists collaborating and fashioning an album and touring in the two countries.

The Germans have struck again only with literature. This time the city doing something is Bremen and the African city doing something is Ugandan capital city Kampala. This is in a new project where six writers from the two cities use one platform to churn out some transcultural writing. Excitos! The Ugandan writers include our favourite blogger of Ugandan literature and founder of Soooo (I’m never sure about the number of O’s in this word) Many Stories Nyana Kakoma who also writes fiction under the pen name Hellen Nyana. Also on the African side is Deborah Asiimwe and Ssekandi Ronald Ssegujja. You can read more about the authors (there are Germans too hey?) here.

Looks like something with serious legs that project. You can read more about it at kampalawritesbremen.

by

Beatrice Lamwaka in Johannesburg, Oduor Jagero in Kampala

Beatrice Lamwaka

For those in Kampala and Johannesburg there are some very cool literary events for you today. In Jozi, Caine Prize nominee 2011 Beatrice Lamwaka will be joining South Africans Mandla Langa, Makhosazana Xaba and Masande Ntshanga to read extracts from their latest novels and poetry collections. They will be discussing their work with Michele Magwood who is the contributing Books Editor for the Sunday Times and the host of TMLive Book Show. This will be at the Orbit Jazz Club, 81 De Korte Street from 7.30pm –8.30pm.

Beatrice for those not in the know was shortlisted for the 2011 Caine Prize for her story “Butterfly Dreams” and has had her stories in many anthologies including Butterfly Dreams and Other Stories from Uganda, New Writing from Africa 2009 and Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction.

Oduor Jagero

For those in East Africa they can head to Kampala, of course Kampala is up the road from Nairobi eh, and meet up with Oduor Jagero whose claim to prose is his self published book True Citizen. His event will be happening at Plot 52 Bukoto Street, Kamwokya.

Now all we need is a South African doing a book event in Nairobi and the triangle is complete.

by

2007 Caine Prize winner Monica Arac de Nyeko feted by university

Monica Arac de Nyeko. Photo/C.Asare Photography

Uganda’s only Caine Prize winner Monica Arac de Nyeko was yesterday selected by the University of Groningen as its Alumnus of the Year 2014.
This is a singular honour as the university has over 110,000 alumni all round the world to select from and they picked our East African writer. The writer and UNICEF humanitarian specialist will be receiving a specially designed image of the Groninger artist Jan Steen during the december diner in the academy building of the RUG on December 15th.

Its been a great year for Monica who was selected for Africa39, a list of the 39 most promising writers under the age of 40 from Sub-Saharan Africa.

by

Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire interviews African authors on This is Africa

Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire

Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire will be familiar to readers of this blog as one of the driving forces behind the Writivism initiative. The Writivism initiative aims at mentoring the next generation of writers in conjunction with the current writers on the continent.

Bwesigye will be hosting a series of interviews of nine African authors that will be running over at African friendly website This Is Africa. The authors who will be interviewed include;

1. Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (The Whispering Trees)

2. Chika Unigwe (Night Dancer)

3. Dilman Dila (A Killing in the Sun)

4. Emmanuel Sigauke (Mukoma’s Marriage and other stories)

5. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Kintu)

6. Melissa Kiguwa (Reveries of Longing)

7. Novuyo Rosa Tshuma (Shadows)

8. Yewande Omotoso (Bom Boy)

9. Zukiswa Wanner (London Cape Town Joburg)

For more information on the interviews you want to visit This Is Africa.

by

A review of Doreen Baingana’s Tropical Fish

Book: Tropical Fish

Author: Doreen Baingana

Publisher: Oshun

Year of publication: 2005

Number of pages: 147

Genre: Short story anthology

A few months ago I mentioned that the Miles Moreland Scholars for 2013 Doreen Baingana, Percy Zvomuya and Tony Mochama were in the process of giving us new work in English. With a new call out for scholars for 2014 already out it is only fair to see the work that one of the previous scholars have done and today I focus on my favourite writer of the lot; Doreen Baingana.

Tropical Fish is the first (and to my knowledge only) book that Ugandan writer Doreen Baingana has out in the market today. The little book is a short story collection revolving around the lives of a family based in Entebbe Uganda. It follows Christine, Patti and Rosa the daughters of a relatively well off family whose father, a senior government official, becomes an alcoholic and loses everything starting with his job. This is followed by going the route that every drunk goes down before eventually dying. Through it all the mother has to support her family on her own.

The biggest character in this story is Christine the youngest daughter. She starts our collection as a child as she is looking at the jewellery that her father has bought her mother and imagining that she is a princess with the story Green Stones. As she narrates her tale we start hearing a more sinister tale as her father goes deeper into alcoholism. In stories as she matures like Tropical Fish she is a campus student that procures an abortion after having a relationship with a white man who sold fish abroad. She leaves the country and has adventures in the US with Lost in Los Angeles before returning home and having to cope with the process of reintegrating back into Ugandan society with the story Questions of Home.

We meet Patti her older sister in a boarding school suffering the pain that teenagers who have no one to visit them at school go through in with the story Hunger. She has to have the school food which by the description is horrible but the hunger that she is suffering through forces her to eat the food to assuage it. She finds religion and moves eventually back to live her mum.

Rosa is the oldest of the lot and she gets the shit end of the short story stick as she gets infected infect with the HIV virus eventually succumbing to the AIDS syndrome with the story A Thank-You Note. This is sad but makes sense because she was involved in unprotected sex with many partners with no fear of the consequences.

This is one of the better short story anthologies out there. Let’s start with what I did not like. That cover… Ugh! I have seen bad covers in my time (I am Kenyan after all) but this is one cover that doesn’t inspire you to want to open it. The only thing going for it is that it doesn’t suffer the savannah effect that so many African books suffer. Actually I would have taken a mugumo tree or even marabou stork on that tree much better that that cover that made me not read that book for so many moons.

Once you get over the cover what you find in there is one if the best writing coming out of the continent in the last decade. Baingana deals with issues that many of us are very invested and familiar with. Hunger for boarding students is a commonly discussed topic for many who went away from home as heroes will be familiar to many East Africans. She handles the Diaspora experience for an African in a way that makes it easy to understand for those who left and stayed. And that reintegration hit home for me as the experiences that Christine was suffering when she went home were the same ones that I went through after a few years out of my city. Baingana wrote that experience like she was in my head talking about my drama.

I am most impressed with how she handle’s the HIV issue that our Rosa had to go through. She didn’t go that whole NGO route of scaring folks and doing facts and figures that patronises her reader. It was more a Shuga route as she gives the lifestyle that was being lived when people didn’t realize that you could die from sex.

Baingana also succeeds in being a one woman brand ambassador for Entebbe with the characters living their lives in the little town with the international airport near Kampala. For folks like me, my vision of Entebbe has to be of that period in the 1970s when the airport in the city was raided by Israeli commandoes to rescue a plane that had been hijacked by Palestine terrorists. The Palestine guys were being supported by president at the time Idi Amin. This vision was of course enforced when watching The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin and to a lesser extent The Last King of Scotland. The writer shows the other side of Entebbe and I am grateful for this new vision of the city.

Would I recommend that you read this book? Hell yeah! I don’t understand why this book is not in our selected readings for high school in Kenya seeing as Kenya and Uganda are such buds. If this book is any indication of the book that Doreen will be unleashing for us in the next few months then we are in for a treat. I can’t wait!

by

Noviolet Bulawayo, Karen Jennings and Yewande Omotoso for Nairobi

Noviolet Bulawayo

Noviolet Bulawayo, Karen Jennings and Yewande Omotoso who were shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize for African literature will be in Kenya next week. They will be here as part of their three city promotion tour that was one of their prizes that they went home with when they were shortlisted .

For those who want to interact with these writers the best bet at the moment is the Sunday Salon that will be happening on Sunday 29 June. For the uninitiated, Sunday Salon is an initiative that the Kwani Trust dust off whenever there is a really cool novelist coming in town and they need to do a reading and meet the fans. The last time the readings happened was last year when the Young Granta Novelists were in town.

As a bonus for those of you who are at the event you will also get to listen to a reading from the winner of Kwani Trust’s Manuscript Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Jennifer Makumbi from the novel she released The Kintu Saga. You can also buy it.
Finally you can also cull the favour of the two Kenyan writers shortlisted for The Caine Prize for African Writing 2014; Billy Kahora and Okwiri Oduor before they head out to learn their fate Oxford in July. If either of the two wins the best grovellers are might just be in for some goodies. You never know!

See you there folks (this one I won’t miss).

by

Jennifer Makumbi wins Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 (Woosah!)

Jennifer Makumbi

The overall winner for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is Ugandan writer Jennifer Makumbi. The East African was awarded her prize at a glittering ceremony on Friday evening in Kampala, Uganda by novelist and short story writer Romesh Gunesekera.

The winning story is about a grieving widow who arrives at Entebbe Airport from Manchester with her husband’s coffin, but events take such a dramatic turn that she must relinquish her widowhood and fight.

The author took her time to speak to Ellah Allfrey on the morning after the win and she gave her views on many things. They included her struggle to get her work out there – her first book The Kintu Saga has taken over a decade to see the light of day. She also gives her thoughts on a topic I most hate where literature from this part of the world is concerned, “Uganda as a literary desert” prompted by Ms Allfrey.

This is a question that all people doing interviews on literature from East Africa should be banned from asking. Taban Lo Liyong made the case for a “literary desert” where the literature from this part of the world. Do you know when this statement was made? 1969. 19 flipping 69!!!

Since then the East African region has written a storm. From Meja Mwangi in the 1970s to Doreen Baingana in the 2000s the quality and quantity of the prose coming from this part of the world can shock you. Especially if you hear some random person who should know better referring to this part of the world as ever have been referred to as a literary desert. Its only these people who perpetuate this lie. Here is the correct answer to such lazy questions in future my people;

Interviewer: Kenya and Uganda has been described as a literary desert. Do you think your book shows that this is coming to an end?

Novelist: I spit upon your question you sound bite seeking interviewer. *spits”

Woosahhh!

P.s. Note to self. Find the paper where this “literary desert” nonsense was born and debunk it. Nimechoka.