This book investigates the representations of Atrocity in Kenyan Literature, Film, music and other digitally mediated cultural art forms. With essays from some of the top minds in the field, this book provides refreshing insight into the study of the unspeakable within the litreray and visual imaginary of the postcolonial nation.

Charles Kebaya holds a PhD in Television Drama Criticism from Kenyatta University and currently teaches Literature at Machakos University, Kenya.

Colomba Kaburi Muriungi is an associate professor of African Literature in the Department of Humanities and also the Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Chuka University, Kenya.

JKS Makokha is a Kenyan poet, critic, translator and academic. He is based in the Department of Literature, Kenyatta University.

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction: Conceptualizing Representations of Atrocity in Art

PART ONE: Representations of Atrocity in the Contemporary Kenyan Novel

1. Narrating Trauma in Yvonne Owuor's Dust


2. An Eco-critical Reading of Voice of the People and Different Colours


3. Locating Bodies, Embodying Resistance: A Foucauldian Reading of Wahome Mutahi's Jail Bugs and Three Days on the Cross


4. Derision, Delirium and Denied Justice in Benjamin Garth Bundeh's Birds of Kamiti


5. Socio-Economic Atrocities in Meja Mwangi's Going Down River Road and Kinyanjui Kombani's The Last Villains of Molo


6. Symbolism of Human Relations in Narratives of Ethnic Violence in Kenya


7. Sycophants in a Cannibal State: Finding Kenya in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow


8. Negotiating the Vicious Cycle of Political Atrocities in Ngugi wa Thiongo's Wizard of the Crow


9. Gender-Based Atrocity in Kenyan Urban Women's Novel after 2000


10. Reading the Politics of Violence and Impunity in Pango and Kufa Kuzikana


11. Political Atrocity in Kenyan Swahili Novel after 2000




PART TWO: Narrating Mau Mau Violence and Trauma in the Kenyan Novel



12. Textual Subversion in the Representation of Mau Mau Atrocities in Settler Writing in Kenya


13. Grotesque Images of Colonial and Mau Mau Violence in Ngugi wa Thiongo's Weep Not Child and A Grain of Wheat


14. Emergency Trauma in Ng¿g¿ wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat




PART THREE: Representations of Atrocity in Popular Arts



15. Between fait accompli and eruptions of violence: Kenyan identity in Kwani's twin edition 2008


16. Confronting National Pain and Suffering through Judy Kibinge's Feature Film, Something Necessary


17. Screening Violence: the Production and Circulation of Films about the Kenyan Post-election Violence of 2007/2008


18. Bestial Zoosemic labeling in Kenyan Political Songs: A Conceptual Metaphor Perspective


19. Reading Kalenjin Popular Music as a Germ of Ethnic Violence




PART FOUR: Representations of Atrocity in Kenyan Poetry



20. Repression in the Poetry of Jared Angira


21. Poetry and Atrocity: An Analysis of Three Kiswahili Poets

Index