First English literary translation of Abdilatif Abadalla's influential Voice of Agony

"The extraordinary Swahili poetry collection Sauti ya Dhiki, in English Voice of Agony, is a collection of prison poems composed by Abdilatif Abdalla between 1969 and 1972. He originally wrote the poems on toilet paper while incarcerated by the government of Jomo Kenyatta for sedition as a result of his political activism. Imaginative Vision is the first complete literary translation into English—translated by the late Kenyan novelist and scholar Ken Walibora Waliaula and edited by Annmarie Drury—of one of the most esteemed and influential collections of Swahili poetry of the twentieth century. Yet 'Imaginative Vision' is also something more. Even as it centers in a literary translation of a singularly beautiful and influential book of poetry, it tells English-language readers the story of that book. Supporting materials illuminate the circumstances of its inception when Abdilatif, aged 22, was arrested and tried. They explore what the volume meant to its first readers and its affiliations with subsequent extraordinary works of prison literature by Alamin Mazrui and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. They trace its links to literary art of the past, including of the nineteenth-century poet Muyaka bin Haji, and to writing that followed. And they explain social and historical aspects of the Swahili coastal world that nurtured Abdilatif’s political engagement and stunning verbal art. Under the editorship of scholar, translator, and poet Annmarie Drury, contributors bring insights from their diverse backgrounds to present contextualizing material that illuminates the poems at the heart of this book.

This book features writing by 17 authors from Germany and from African and Latin American countries on highly diverse aesthetic phenomena as seen from their own different points of view. The texts in this volume all deal with the imperative of ‘decolonization’: they try to highlight aesthetic strategies for the (re)discovery of unthematized, misappropriated, transcultural and even transcontinental histories and memories and aesthetic practices that are absent from or too little perceived within national consciousnesses. Novels, poems and musical performances from the East African region are analysed as intertwined histories of the Indian Ocean and its different languages. Artworks of the Black Atlantic and perceptions of Africa are discussed from, for example, Brazilian perspectives. Within the German context, decolonisation strategies in exhibition practices in ethnological or art museums developed by Nigerian artists are evaluated; new terms such as ‘dividuation’ are proposed to describe these contemporary composite-cultural entanglements, and so on. A stimulating, wide-ranging and heterogeneous portrait of contemporary interwoven world cultures!

Protest Arts, Gender, and Social Change: Fiction, Popular Songs, and the Media in Hausa Society across Borders by Ousseina Alidou examines how a new generation of novelists, popular songwriters, and musical performers in contemporary Hausa society are using their creative works to effect social change. This book empathizes with the reality of the forms of oppression, social isolation, and marginalization that vulnerable and underprivileged communities in contemporary Hausa society in Northern Nigeria and the Niger Republic have been experiencing from the mid-1980s to the present. It also highlights the ways in which song performances produce an intertextual dialogue between their lyrics and visual dramatic narratives to raise awareness against social ills, including gender-based violence and social inequalities exposed by biomedical health pandemics such as HIV and COVID-19. In these creative Hausa narratives, the oppressed and marginalized have agency in articulating their own experiences. While there is an abundance of social science studies giving voice to the dominant actors of hegemonic violence in Hausa society, there is a dearth of works that center the voices of the afflicted, unprivileged, and marginalized class, among whom are women and youth. One aim of this book is to examine the ways popular songs and fiction fill up the humanistic urgency to capture the dignity of the life of those dehumanized by local, national, and international hegemonic religious and secular forces. The book focuses on the resistance narratives of one female novelist and six song composers and performers that generate alternative counterhegemonic responses to dominant patriarchal discourses produced by cultural, religious, and political elites, thus reaching out to marginalized local and national communities and global audiences. Alidou interweaves the social, political, and biomedical epidemics with the concept of “Hausa interiority” to create a unique perspective on contemporary Hausa culture and politics through the lens of artistic productions.

The present volume is a pioneering collection of poetry by the outstanding Kenyan poet, intellectual and imam Ustadh Mahmmoud Mau (born 1952) from Lamu island, once an Indian Ocean hub, now on the edge of the nation state. By means of poetry in Arabic script, the poet raises his voice against social ills and injustices troubling his community on Lamu. The book situates Mahmoud Mau’s oeuvre within transoceanic exchanges of thoughts so characteristic of the Swahili coast. It shows how Swahili Indian Ocean intellectual history inhabits an individual biography and writings. Moreover, it also portrays a unique African Muslim thinker and his poetry in the local language, which has so often been neglected as major site for critical discourse in Islamic Africa. The selected poetry is clustered around the following themes: jamii: societal topical issues, ilimu: the importance of education, huruma: social roles and responsabilities, matukio: biographical events and maombi: supplications. Prefaced by Rayya Timamy (Nairobi University), the volume includes contributions by Jasmin Mahazi, Kai Kresse and Kadara Swaleh, Annachiara Raia and Clarissa Vierke. The authors’ approaches highlight the relevance of local epistemologies as archives for understanding the relationship between reform Islam and local communities in contemporary Africa.

"A masterful study of the intersection between Indigenous literature and social movements in the Americas"--Provided by publisher.