This Week in Essays
A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
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Posts Tagged: Kenya
Circuitous Journeys: Talking with Sejal Shah
Sejal Shah discusses her debut essay collection, THIS IS ONE WAY TO DANCE.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #81: On Cultural Preservation
The Lost Boys had their moment in the media, but these people, these survivors, not boys at all and not lost now either, are still here, living lives, growing and changing and thinking and reflecting.
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Interrogating the English Language with Safiya Sinclair
To be forced to speak in the language of the colonist, the language of the oppressor, while also carrying within us the storm of Jamaican patois, we live under a constant hurricane of our doubleness.
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Caroline Chege Is the Politician the World Needs
Against all odds, Caroline Chege is fighting for female representation in Kenya.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Rhino Girl
But these were not men, she realized. They were a cackle of spotted hyena, bright-toothed in the dark, and they were laughing at her.
...moreAcclaimed African Author Comes Out as Gay
Supporters of African LGBT rights were so relieved about Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni’s veto of an anti-gay bill that they were nearly blindsided when Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan’s signed a similar bill into law. The law prompted Binyavanga Wainaina, a prominent Kenyan author who also spends a lot of time in Lagos, Nigeria’s capital, to […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Ming Holden
Writer and development worker Ming Holden discusses her book The Survival Girls, a nonfiction novella that looks at the lives of a group of refugee women from Nairobi who use art and personal performance to combat systematic abuse.
...moreThe Passage of Ideas
Every day, we collectively produce millions of books’ worth of writing. Globally we send 154.6 billion emails, more than 400 million tweets, and over 1 million blog posts and around 2 million blog comments on WordPress. On Facebook, we post about 16 billion words. Altogether, we compose some 3.6 trillion words every day on email […]
...moreThe ICC Witness Project
As Kenya’s president-elect, Uhuru Kenyatta, stands trial for crimes against humanity, Kenyan poets have come together to write poems from the perspective of some of the mysteriously missing witnesses. The results are as captivating as they are heartrending. You can read more about the project—and many of the poems themselves—at The New Inquiry. Here, as […]
...moreThe View from a “Cramped Little Cottage” in Nairobi
“I love the tingling pullover of night sounds and forest sounds and the bite of cold breeze and distant cars and stereos. Sometimes I close my eyes and sway my arms into patterns to move with the sensations of the strong bitpieces banging about in my temples.” At The Paris Review, Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Christopher Goffard
Wherever he went, the man of God carried his shotgun… Christopher Goffard’s You Will See Fire is a tense and harrowing look at the life and mysterious death – of a brave, at times, recklessly so – American priest living and working in Kenya.
...moreCrows and Taxis: Writing to the South Sudan
Crows circle, straight out of a novel by Kenya’s Nobel-nominee Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Only, the crows are circling the hotel pool, not the bush.
...moreSomalian Refugee Writers Show the Way
Dadaab is not an oasis. There is no water. In July, food rations are expected to be cut back to 1000 calories a day. The camps are short 38,000 latrines. Every year only twenty students from the entire camp escape to university, the only legitimate way out.
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