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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Hybridity in Emergent East African Poetry: A Reading of Susan N. Kiguli and Her Contemporaries
Author:Mwangi, EvanISNI
Year:2007
Periodical:Africa Today
Volume:53
Issue:3
Pages:41-62
Language:English
Geographic terms:Uganda
East Africa
Subjects:poetry
English language
Women's Issues
Literature, Mass Media and the Press
literature
About person:Susan N. KiguliISNI
External link:https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_today/v053/53.3mwangi.pdf
Abstract:East African poetry in English has from the beginning been hybrid, especially in its use of oral forms, local diction and images, and local speech rhythms in a Western language. Newer poets have used the concept more poignantly to criticize precolonial African traditions and embrace any liberating practices from non-African cultures. This article examines the use of hybridity in East African poetry published in the 1990s, with a focus on the writing of Ugandan poet Susan N. Kiguli. The author argues that hybridity has become more accentuated in contemporary poetry, whereby poets self-reflexively discuss in their poems the writing and interpretation of poetry in a process that makes the poetic experience a liminal space between artistic creation and literary theorizing. Kiguli exemplifies a critical deployment of the concept in a strategy that redefines it from its usage in metropolitan postcolonial theory. Kiguli and her contemporaries treat cultural contacts not necessarily as alienation or conflict, but as sites of social renewal. They develop the hybridity employed by earlier poets, departing from the tradition without accepting assimilation to the West. The author argues that their rejection of rigid scripts and techniques, in favour of protean hybrid forms and themes, should be read not as a capitulation to foreignness, but as an articulation of the desire for freedom and democracy. Bibliogr., sum. [Journal abstract]
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