“Words That Reshape a Country” and Literary Canons?

Abstract

To recall the setup of the Anglophone literary landscapes in Kenya and Uganda at this point of the book may seem repetitive, but it will be helpful to contextualize the discussion of agency and narrative at African literary NGOs (LINGOs) that I examine in this chapter. From between the late 1940s until the late 1990s, the literary worlds in Kenya and Uganda consisted of at least six large frameworks within and from which Anglophone writers were acting, writing, speaking, and drawing their overall authority in terms of literary standards and literary production: (1) university literature departments (at Makerere and Nairobi University), (2) the indigenous and multinational publishing industry (i.e., producing textbooks as well as books that were considered “popular” literature), (3) exiled authors, (4) journalism (i.e., newspaper columns like “Whispers”), (5) the theater (i.e., campus theater, open air theater [Kamĩrĩĩthũ] or pub theater [Iziga Productions]), and (6) LINGOs (Transition, Mbari, Chemchemi, FEMRITE, Kwani Trust).