Peter Kimani. Dance of the Jakaranda
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7399306 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sana Aiyar (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 124 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1006-1009 |
| Publication date | 2019-02-25 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ahr/rhz283 |
| OpenAlex | W2948862235 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
In July 2017, Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta approved the constitutional inclusion of Kenya's South Asian citizens as the nation's forty-fourth tribe. This came on the eve of a tightly fought general election between Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, both of whom lay a familial claim to the nation. Raila Odinga's father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, briefly served as vice president to Uhuru Kenyatta's father, Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first president, before becoming his most ardent and vocal critic. As "fathers of the nation," Oginga Odinga and Jomo Kenyatta were bitterly divided over the shape their nation would take. Kenyatta deflected his vice president's leftist opposition with a racializing populist politics that positioned Kenya's Indian middle class as a colonial hangover that did not belong in the nation. Using new immigration and trade licensing bills that were tabled in Kenya's National Assembly in 1967, Kenyatta deported large numbers of Indians and legislated Indian shopkeepers out of the country. Fifty years later, in stark contrast to his father's disavowal, Uhuru Kenyatta's presidential proclamation acknowledged "the Kenyan Asians' contribution to Kenya" that had "roots at the dawn of our Nation" (quoted in David Mwere, "Kenyans of Indian Descent Become 44th Tribe," Daily Nation, July 22, 2017). Just five months before this announcement, Peter Kimani published Dance of the Jakaranda, in which he not only revisits this contested period of history but positions its central character, a Punjabi Muslim migrant named Babu Salim, as the father of the Kenyan nation. Kimani is the first African novelist to use historical fiction to claim Indian diasporic history and political belonging as one that is unquestionably Kenyan. In making this assertion, Kimani takes up three historiographical concerns in the novel: state building and resistance; narratives and archives; and intimacy and identity
Ancient history · Art · Colonialism · Dance · Economic history · Immigration · Kenya · Literature · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Tribe · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses · Law
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2024 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |