Godwin Siundu
Biographic Data
| ID | 642209 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Godwin Siundu |
| GIVEN NAMES | Godwin |
| FAMILY NAME | Siundu |
| SIGNATURE | SIUNDU G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nairobi |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2081-4338 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
History and Violence in Contemporary Kenyan Fiction
Strategic Submission as Resistance? Nabongo Mumia in the Struggle for Post-Colonial Kenya’s Histories
This article pursues the debate on the role that various regional leaders in late pre- to colonial Kenya played in their people’s responses to colonialism and its agents, and the contests for moral historical spaces that have continued to be played out in intellectual and public discourse. Focusing on Nabongo Mumia, the political and cultural figure of the Wanga people in western Kenya, the article examines the fluidity between collaboration and …
Introduction
History and Violence in Contemporary Kenyan Fiction
Professor Ken Waliaula Walibora
“Mau Mau Author in Detention: The Subversive ‘We’ in a Colonial Era Detention Diary” — which follows this tribute — is Ken Walibora’s last academic work that he submitted for publication before his
The print media in the construction of contemporary South Asian identities in Kenya
This article reads The Asian Weekly and AwaaZ, two cultural magazines that are widely associated with Kenyans of South Asian ancestry, as emblems of cultural/ political reconfigurations of contemporary racial identifications in the context of national(ist) contestations in Kenya. Following a tradition similar pan-Africanist magazines of the late colonial to post-colonial Africa, the magazines aspire to create pan-Asian identities in specific geog…
Vassanji's disquiet with history in A Place Within
Moyez Vassanji’s A Place Within: Rediscovering India (Anchor, 2009) came quite late in Vassanji’s career, when his standing in minority literatures was already secure. Yet, it marked his reconnection with India, a place that overshadows most of his creative writing. As he encounters his deeply layered personal and communal history, he realizes it has withheld some information in some instances, and misled him in others, calling for his scrutiny o…
Journeying into Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies
Honour and Shame in the Construction of Difference in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Novels
In Abdulrazak Gurnah's writings, characters invoke idea(l)s of honour/reputation/ dignity as contrasts of obverse attributes like shame/shamelessness to demarcate social, economic, religious and racial boundaries. Whether pronounced or simply performed, these characters’ claims to honour are summoned to claim more honourable positions for themselves and project dishonourable identities onto others. Reading the various manifestations of honour and…
Locating Cultural Ambivalence and Afropolitanism
European football worlds and youth identifications in Kenya
This article examines the various ways in which the phenomenon of English football, beamed across the world via satellite television, provides a canvas upon which many Kenyan youth can confront their lived experiences and desired aspirations. Drawing on theoretical tools fashioned by discourses on identities – pan-Africanist and global – together with dynamics of youth and popular cultural productions, I demonstrate how football as a leisure acti…
Imagining Manhoods
This essay aims to interrogate the various ways in which the dynamics of gender, sex and sexuality, singularly and cumulatively, impinge on wider discourses of racial identities and identifications within the trajectory of the post-colonial East African polity. Through a reading of two novels each by celebrated East African writers of Asian extraction, Yusuf Dawood’s Water Under the Bridge and Return to Paradise and Moyez Vassanji’s The Gunny Sac…
The unhomeliness of home
This essay reads Moyez Vassanji's novels to examine the ways in which he imagines East African Asians in the region and beyond in their attempts to configure and experience homes against regional politics of state-formation. I argue, among other things, that the tendency by some East African Asians to emigrate to Europe, North America and the United States, coupled with their history as immigrants, projects the group as a transient one, almost wa…
Transcending racial/cultural spaces
This paper interrogates Yusuf Dawood's portrayal of women characters in two of his novels – The Price of Living (1983) and Water Under the Bridge (1991) against the background of the post‐independence multiracial Kenya. Positing that Dawood's portrayal of women differs substantially from that of other authors, the paper engages with notions of group identity and the role of women as disturbing and subverting traditional notions of femininity, cul…
European football worlds and youth identifications in Kenya
This article examines the various ways in which the phenomenon of English football, beamed across the world via satellite television, provides a canvas upon which many Kenyan youth can confront their lived experiences and desired aspirations. Drawing on theoretical tools fashioned by discourses on identities – pan-Africanist and global – together with dynamics of youth and popular cultural productions, I demonstrate how football as a leisure acti…
Vassanji's disquiet with history in A Place Within
Moyez Vassanji’s A Place Within: Rediscovering India (Anchor, 2009) came quite late in Vassanji’s career, when his standing in minority literatures was already secure. Yet, it marked his reconnection with India, a place that overshadows most of his creative writing. As he encounters his deeply layered personal and communal history, he realizes it has withheld some information in some instances, and misled him in others, calling for his scrutiny o…
Transcending racial/cultural spaces
This paper interrogates Yusuf Dawood's portrayal of women characters in two of his novels – The Price of Living (1983) and Water Under the Bridge (1991) against the background of the post‐independence multiracial Kenya. Positing that Dawood's portrayal of women differs substantially from that of other authors, the paper engages with notions of group identity and the role of women as disturbing and subverting traditional notions of femininity, cul…
Transcending racial/cultural spaces
This paper interrogates Yusuf Dawood's portrayal of women characters in two of his novels – The Price of Living (1983) and Water Under the Bridge (1991) against the background of the post‐independence multiracial Kenya. Positing that Dawood's portrayal of women differs substantially from that of other authors, the paper engages with notions of group identity and the role of women as disturbing and subverting traditional notions of femininity, cul…
The unhomeliness of home
This essay reads Moyez Vassanji's novels to examine the ways in which he imagines East African Asians in the region and beyond in their attempts to configure and experience homes against regional politics of state-formation. I argue, among other things, that the tendency by some East African Asians to emigrate to Europe, North America and the United States, coupled with their history as immigrants, projects the group as a transient one, almost wa…
Imagining Manhoods
This essay aims to interrogate the various ways in which the dynamics of gender, sex and sexuality, singularly and cumulatively, impinge on wider discourses of racial identities and identifications within the trajectory of the post-colonial East African polity. Through a reading of two novels each by celebrated East African writers of Asian extraction, Yusuf Dawood’s Water Under the Bridge and Return to Paradise and Moyez Vassanji’s The Gunny Sac…
Locating Cultural Ambivalence and Afropolitanism
European football worlds and youth identifications in Kenya
This article examines the various ways in which the phenomenon of English football, beamed across the world via satellite television, provides a canvas upon which many Kenyan youth can confront their lived experiences and desired aspirations. Drawing on theoretical tools fashioned by discourses on identities – pan-Africanist and global – together with dynamics of youth and popular cultural productions, I demonstrate how football as a leisure acti…
Honour and Shame in the Construction of Difference in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Novels
In Abdulrazak Gurnah's writings, characters invoke idea(l)s of honour/reputation/ dignity as contrasts of obverse attributes like shame/shamelessness to demarcate social, economic, religious and racial boundaries. Whether pronounced or simply performed, these characters’ claims to honour are summoned to claim more honourable positions for themselves and project dishonourable identities onto others. Reading the various manifestations of honour and…
Journeying into Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies
The print media in the construction of contemporary South Asian identities in Kenya
This article reads The Asian Weekly and AwaaZ, two cultural magazines that are widely associated with Kenyans of South Asian ancestry, as emblems of cultural/ political reconfigurations of contemporary racial identifications in the context of national(ist) contestations in Kenya. Following a tradition similar pan-Africanist magazines of the late colonial to post-colonial Africa, the magazines aspire to create pan-Asian identities in specific geog…
Vassanji's disquiet with history in A Place Within
Moyez Vassanji’s A Place Within: Rediscovering India (Anchor, 2009) came quite late in Vassanji’s career, when his standing in minority literatures was already secure. Yet, it marked his reconnection with India, a place that overshadows most of his creative writing. As he encounters his deeply layered personal and communal history, he realizes it has withheld some information in some instances, and misled him in others, calling for his scrutiny o…
Professor Ken Waliaula Walibora
“Mau Mau Author in Detention: The Subversive ‘We’ in a Colonial Era Detention Diary” — which follows this tribute — is Ken Walibora’s last academic work that he submitted for publication before his
History and Violence in Contemporary Kenyan Fiction
Strategic Submission as Resistance? Nabongo Mumia in the Struggle for Post-Colonial Kenya’s Histories
This article pursues the debate on the role that various regional leaders in late pre- to colonial Kenya played in their people’s responses to colonialism and its agents, and the contests for moral historical spaces that have continued to be played out in intellectual and public discourse. Focusing on Nabongo Mumia, the political and cultural figure of the Wanga people in western Kenya, the article examines the fluidity between collaboration and …
Introduction
History and Violence in Contemporary Kenyan Fiction
Sociology (10 works) · African history and culture studies (9 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (6 works) · Art (5 works) · History (5 works) · Politics (5 works)