"A Narrative on "Shame
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5011801 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Okello Oculi (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 70 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1277-1296 |
| Publication date | 2003-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-783X • E-ISSN: 1944-768X |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/sor.2003.0040 |
| OpenAlex | W569184756 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
In a poem entitled Return the Bridewealth, Okot p'Bitek, an Oxford-trained anthropologist turned poet and novelist, offers a treatment of by focusing on three earthen mounds in a rural Acholi setting in northern Uganda (Okot p'Bitek, 1971). The mounds are graves that contain the remains of three dead grandchildren who lie buried in the compound as a permanent rebuke to an old man and an old woman the two grandparents. The mounds have not been attended to by the love of a caring mother because she has eloped with her lover, a soldier. Consequently, some labikha weeds and obiya grasses are growing on the mounds. When a man, apparently the father of the children, asks his own old wrinkled father a question he considers urgent, the old man, now supported by creaky and brittle old bones that keep him from carrying out a wish to bend down to pluck the weeds himself, does not respond with words but with a sign of profound anguish: only two large clotting tears crawl down his wrinkled cheeks (124-129). In a much pruned and policed rage, the old man uses his walking stick, which is oily with age and smooth like the long teeth of an old elephant to hit each mound in a violent act of counting, an arithmetical mourning: And with the bony-dry staff he strikes the mound: One! Two! Three! The nameless (Karenga, 1989) narrator in the song (nameless presumably because shame has eaten away his name) i had asked the old man a flippant question, one loaded with a selfish and childish preoccupation with erotic aspirations: I say to him, / Father, gather the bridewealth so that I may marry the girl of my bosom! Like a child he assumes that bridewealth
Anguish · Art · Grandparent · Literature · Narrative · Poetry · Rage (emotion) · Shame · Sociology · Tribe · Wish · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropology · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · History · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |