Transformations in Kenyan Children’s Prose Fiction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18533/journal.v3i4.397Keywords:
Kenya, Children’s Literature, TransformationsAbstract
My article aims at accessing how children’s literature in Kenya helps in understanding the changes that have taken place in the Kenyan society since independence. The article samples a few texts since the early years of independence and accesses the thematic concerns. A reading of these texts reveals a concern with issues ranging from traditional forms of education, colonisation, modernity and its accompanying issues like establishment of cities, crime, disease, tribal clashes, and other concerns often associated with third world countries. The analysis done in this paper is crucial as it exposes the trajectory of Kenya’s children’s literature to both local and international audiences. Children’s literature in Kenya is therefore seen to have been adjusting to, and embracing the transformations in the Kenyan nation. The paperconcludes that children’s literature is an important channel through which the activities, dreams, fears, failures and successes of people in specific nations can be understood.
References
Children’s books
Dahal, C. (1995).The Orange Thieves (3rded.). Nairobi: Phoenix.
Isoka, A. (1995) The Girl who became Chief. Nairobi: Phoenix Publishers.
Kamundi, H. (2008). My Mother’s Voice. Nairobi: Longhorn.
Maillu, D. (1993). The Orphan and his Goat Friend. Nairobi: JomoKenyatta Foundation.
Makotsi, J. (1996). The Boys in Kakamega. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers (EAEP).
Makotsi, M. (2003).Monkey Bought a Bus (3rded.). Nairobi: EAEP.
Makotsi, R. (2003). Shida the Street Boy.Nairobi: EAEP.
NgugiwaThiong’o. (1986a). Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus. Nairobi: EAEP.
________________. (1986b). Njamba Nene’s Pistol. Nairobi: EAEP.
Makumi, J. (2004). The Children of the Forest (12thed.). Nairobi: Phoenix.
Wegesa, B. (2002) Captured by Raiders (11thed.). Nairobi: Phoenix.
Secondary Sources
Beckett, S. L. (1997). Reflections of Change: Children’s Literature Since 1945. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Butts, D. (1992).Introduction.In D. Butts (Ed.), Stories and Society: Children’s Literature in Context (pp. x – xvi). London: Macmillan.
Chakava, H. (1996). Publishing in Africa: One Man’s Perspective. Boston: Bellagio Publishing Network.
______________. (1998): A Publisher’s perspective on children’s books. African Publishing Review 7 (6), 4-5.
Dipio, D. (2011). Fictional rendition of Uganda history in GorettiKyomuhendo’swaiting (2007) and Julius Ocwinyo’sFootprints of the Outsider (2002). In J.K.S. Makokha, E. Kabaji& D. Dipio (Eds.), East African Literature: Essays on Written and Oral Traditions (pp. 41-67). Berlin: Logos Verlag.
Kimani, N. (1995) Decolonising the child.In C. Cantalupo (Ed).The World of NgugiwaThiong’o (pp. 129-140). Trenton: Africa World Press.
Kurtz, J. R. (1998). Urban Obsessions Urban Fears: The Postcolonial Kenyan Novel. Oxford: James Currey.
Lehman, L. D. (2011). The naïve youthful narrator in the literature of South Africa apartheid.Sankofa: A Journal of African Children’s and Young Adult Literature. (10), 33-39.
Lehr, Susan. Wise women and warriors. In S. Lehr (Ed) Battling Dragons: Issues and Controversy in Children’s Literature. (pp. 194-211). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
McClue, A. (1995). Censorship in childrens’ books.In Ed. S. Lehr (Ed). Battling Dragons: Issues of Controversy in Children’s Literature. (pp. 3-30). Portsmouth, NH: Heinmann.
Mhlophe, G. (2003) “The “story” is the mother of creativity: my journey as a children’s writer.Sankofa: A Journal of African Children’s and Young Adult Literature.(2), 6-12.
NgugiwaThiong’o. (1972). Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics. Westport: L. Hill.
_______________. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya.
Odaga, A. B. (1985). Literature for Children and Young People in Kenya. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau.
Quayson, A. (1997). Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing: Orality and Literacy in the Work of Rev. Samuel Johnson, Amos TutuolaWole Soyinka and Ben Okri. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Schimidt, N, J. (1981). Children’s Fiction about Africa in English. New York: Conch Magazine Ltd.
Wittmann, G. (2011). When love shows itself as cruelty: the role of the fairy tale stepmother in the development of the under-aged reader.Mousaion, 29 (3), 1-11.
Internet Source
Crime Scene Investigation, Nairobi. Quantitative research findings on Rape in Kenya between Dec. 30th to June 30th 2008.
http://www.dnakenya.com/web/Docs/Rape%20Statistics%20in%20Kenya.pdf (Accessed on 30th March 2013).
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
