Swahili Literature Research Articles

Exploring the Impact of Swahili Literature Reading on Cognitive and Emotional Abilities Among Kenyan Students: Implications for Academic Performance in K-12

Swahili literature in Kenya represents a vibrant canvas of cultural expression deeply rooted in Arabic poetry and indigenous folklore. This essay explores the evolution and contemporary relevance of Swahili literature, tracing its journey from early oral traditions to modern literary forms. The discussion highlights the surge in Swahili literary publications over the past decade, underscoring its growing importance in both national and educational contexts. Specifically, the integration of Swahili literature into Kenyan K-12 education is examined, focusing on influential works like Ken Walibora’s "Siku Njema" and Dr. Assumpta K. Matei’s "Chozi la Heri," which tackles diverse themes such as social justice and human rights. Later, the cognitive effects of reading Swahili literature among Kenyan K-12 students are explored, drawing on studies that demonstrate enhanced cognitive skills and language proficiency resulting from literary engagement. These studies, including research by nurse Mwangi and educator at the Ministry of Home Affairs in Tanzania, M.K, highlight improvements in memory, attention, and problem-solving abilities, particularly beneficial for students from marginalised backgrounds. Neuroscientific evidence from a researcher at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology Ochieng and Mwanyumba further illuminates how Swahili fiction stimulates brain regions associated with language processing and emotional regulation, contributing to academic readiness. Furthermore, the emotional impact of Swahili literature on students is explored through studies by author of children literature Pamela M Ngugi and Flavia Aiello Traore, which emphasise heightened emotional intelligence, empathy, and cultural understanding among readers. These emotional responses not only enrich students' personal development but also

The Influence of Christianity in Swahili Literature: The Case of Bongo Flavor Poetry Prophesies

The influence of religion in Swahili literature has been a centre of Swahili literary scholarship discussions from the 1960s to 1980s. During the time, there were two schools of thought. The first argued that Swahili literature originates from God and that He is the first artist who transmits creative skills to Swahili artists. The second school of thought viewed Swahili literature as a product of socio-economic human activities, and that God has no place in it. By the late 1980s, the discussion on the place of God in Swahili literature appeared to be concluded by a good number of scholars supporting the second school of thought. Consequently, today scholars seem to be in agreement that God has no place in Swahili literature. This article, however, views this agreement as a serious oversight. Since the Swahili society believes in various kinds of gods and religions, there is no way their literature will be free from the influence of gods and religions. Therefore, this article presents the influence of Christianity in Swahili literature, citing examples from prophesies of bongo flavor poetry.

From VVU/UKIMWI (HIV/AIDS) to UVIKO-19 (COVID-19): An epistemological analysis of pandemics in Tanzania through Swahili literature

From VVU/UKIMWI (HIV/AIDS) to UVIKO-19 (COVID-19): An epistemological analysis of pandemics in Tanzania through Swahili literature

Verbal art beyond categorization: inductive and aesthetic approaches to Remmy Ongala’s songs

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the textual aesthetics of the Congolese-born (later Tanzanian naturalized) Swahili singer-songwriter Remmy Ongala. In the first part, I argue that a textual approach is also important for songs. The theoretical discussion is mainly based on the studies by Karin Barber (“Popular Arts in Africa.” African Studies Review 30, no. 3 (1987): 1–78, “African-Language Literature and Postcolonial Criticism.” Research in African Literatures 26, no. 4 (1995): 3–30, “Quotation in the Constitution of Yorùbá Oral Texts.” Research in African Literatures 30, no. 2 (1999): 17–41, The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), which offer a fundamental perspective on these issues. On this basis, I propose a more literary perspective, related to the ideas of the father of aesthetics Baumgarten (1714–1762), the American writer Susan Sontag (1933–2004) and the Swahili writer Euphrase Kezilahabi (1944–2020). Since Ongala belongs to different textual traditions, Congolese and Tanzanian, I use texts from these traditions for a comparative analysis of style and thought. On the Congolese side the comparison is based on elements of oral literature, like folk tale and song, both in relation to the proverb Kipendacho roho hula nyama bichi (A soul in love eats raw meat), while on the Tanzanian side the comparison is based on Swahili literature of that time.

World Visions in Swahili Literature

Abstract Probably because of its relationship with a coastal culture, Swahili literature seems very aware of its position in the world. Through a reading of Swahili poems and novels across a range of genres, this paper explores the ways in which Swahili writers have engaged in a dialogue with the whole world, from the colonial period to the contemporary era. The evolution of well-identified literary forms such as epic poetry, ethnographic novel or crime novel will also pave the way for identifying the specificities of a Swahili cosmopolitanism anxious to cultivate an art of living in the age of a kind of globalization whose effects are often harshly felt at the local level. Because it has long developed an awareness of the world, Swahili literature has often pioneered the invention of literary forms that are able to translate locally the movements of the world.

Modern Swahili: an integration of Arabic culture into Swahili literature

Due to her geographical position, the African continent has for many centuries hosted visitors from other continents such as Asia and Europe. Such visitors came to Africa as explorers, missionaries, traders and colonialists. Over the years, the continent has played host to the Chinese, Portuguese, Persians, Indians, Arabs and Europeans. Arabs have had a particularly long history of interaction with East African people, and have therefore made a significant contribution to the development of the Swahili language. Swahili is an African native language of Bantu origin which had been in existence before the arrival of Arabs in East Africa. The long period of interaction between Arabs and the locals led to linguistic borrowing mainly from Arabic to Swahili. The presence of loanwords in Swahili is evidence of cultural interaction between the Swahili and Arabic people. The Arabic words are borrowed from diverse registers of the language. Hence, Swahili literature is loaded with Arabic cultural aspects through Arabic loanwords. Many literary works are examples of Swahili literature that contains such words. As a result, there is evidence of Swahili integrating Arabic culture in its literature, an aspect that this paper seeks to highlight.

“Discord Melted Away”: Metaphors of Emotions in Swahili Literary Texts

Metaphors are pervasive in both our everyday speech and literary language. They are particularly effective for codifying complex emotional experiences. In a literary context, the question arises of what makes literary metaphorical expressions different from the ones used in everyday speech. In Swahili literature, which is extremely rich in images of emotions, we can distinguish between conventionalized metaphors (e.g., “kujua kwa moyo” ‘to know by heart’) and less conventionalized/literary metaphors (e.g., “kuwasha moto moyoni” ‘to light a fire in the heart’). This paper analyzes the description of emotions, with a particular focus on metaphors of love and anger, in extracts from the novels Kiu [ Thirst ], by the Zanzibarian author Mohamed Suleiman (1972), and Dar es Salaam Usiku [ Dar es Salaam by Night ] by the Tanzanian author Ben Mtobwa (1989). Additional examples from a Swahili literary corpus established at University of Naples “L’Orientale” ( NaSwaLi ), mainly composed of contemporary prose, will also be taken into account.

La memoria coloniale nella narrativa swahili contemporanea

The memory of the colonial experience is a recurrent topic in the Swahili prose produced after the independencies. The present article investigates how East African writers creating in the Swahili language reconstructed and preserved the local reminiscences of the colonial trauma, sometimes in reaction to the solicitations of the political leaders. The textual analysis is contextualised by taking into account the historical, cultural and linguistic specificities of the two countries where post-independence Swahili literature developed, namely Kenya and Tanzania.

The Role of Translations in the Development of Swahili Language and Literature

The Role of Translations in the Development of Swahili Language and Literature

Dialogic Swahili Literature: Key to Harmonization in Diversity

Dialogic Swahili Literature: Key to Harmonization in Diversity

Swahili Children’s Literature in Contemporary Tanzania

This article will explore the relationship between literature and education, between the oral and written genres, between nationalism, pluralism and internationalisation in Swahili children’s literature produced in Tanzania since the 1990’s. During the years of African Socialism (Ujamaa), Swahili literature was meant to promote the language and to disseminate socialist and nationalist ideas in Tanzanian society; however, the literature was fundamentally aimed at adults or young skilled readers. Since the end of Ujamaa, writers have explored the potential of literature in the field of education, producing original works in which they experiment with manipulation and contamination of modes, styles, narrative genres. These implicitly redefined national identity both in terms of cultural pluralism and of enhanced international relations.

L’intangible et la nécessité

Arabic, vector of the Quranic revelation, imposed itself as the canonic language of Islam in Eastern Africa. For centuries, Arabic remained the attribute of the members of the Arabic-speaking elite, acting as traders in the Oceanic networks and as political leaders in the counter-cities. While Kiswahili emerged as an indigenous language, functioning as a trade and social lingua-franca before reaching the margins of Islam, Arabic remained for long the marker of the upper social classes. And it took a long time before the appearance of a Swahili literature. But the upheavals of the late 19th c. – colonial division, establishment of Christian Missions, and the intervention of the South Asian Muslims – led to the contestation of the predominance of Arabic, including at the religious level. In a reformist perspective, the use of Kiswahili tended to become a necessity, without challenging the sacredness of Arabic. The paper ends with a glance at how new media and recent political evolutions have an impact on sociolinguistic dynamics.

Swahili beyond the boundaries: literature, language, and identity

Africa is a marriage of cultures: African and Asian, Islamic and Euro-Christian. Nowhere is this fusion more evident than in the formation of Swahili, Eastern Africa's lingua franca, and its cultures. Swahili Beyond the Boundaries: Literature, Language, and Identity addresses the moving frontiers of Swahili literature under the impetus of new waves of globalization in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These momentous changes have generated much theoretical debate on several literary fronts, as Swahili literature continues to undergo transformation in the mill of human creativity. Swahili literature is a hybrid that is being reconfigured by a conjuncture of global and local forces. As the interweaving of elements of the colonizer and the colonized, this hybrid formation provides a representation of cultural difference that is said to constitute a “third space,” blurring existing boundaries and calling into question established identitarian categorizations. This cultural dialectic is clearly evident in the Swahili literary experience as it has evolved in the crucible of the politics of African cultural production. However, Swahili Beyond the Boundaries demonstrates that, from the point of view of Swahili literature, while hybridity evokes endless openness on questions of home and identity, it can simultaneously put closure on specific forms of subjectivity. In the process of this contestation, a new synthesis may be emerging that is poised to subject Swahili literature to new kinds of challenges in the politics of identity, compounded by the dynamics and counterdynamics of post-Cold War globalization.

Mwongozo—the Study Guide to Swahili Literary Works: Its Role as a Component in Education in Kenya

Designed to play a pedagogic role, mwongozo,1 the study guide to Swahili literature, had by the 1970s already penetrated2 Kenya educational practice, causing the relationship between Swahili literature and Swahili literary study to appear more visible, in spite of the opposition inherent in them: literature being an art, and literary study, if not precisely a science, a species of knowledge (Wellek and Warren 15). Such an opposition however, raises a number of theoreti cal issues that are beyond the limit of this essay. Suffice it to stress that it especially offers two alternatives: one stressing the conception that literature can only be read, enjoyed, and appreciated, but not studied; and the other, maintaining that for academic and intellectual reasons, literature should thus be taught as well as appreciated and enjoyed. The word teach, however, carries many connotations and can therefore be interpreted in various ways. With reference to literature, its meaning goes beyond the need to digest the substance of a given work of literature, to that of grasping the work in its totality, translating it into intellectual experiences that affect the reader's mental attitude. The word also has the sense of providing students with the analytical tools necessary to cope with rules and conventions that structure texts; of sharpening their intellectual skills. Reading a literary work means read ing it on its own terms, but also in relation to other works by the same author or others. Though the above objectives are essential to the teaching of literature in general, they by no means give a complete picture of why study guides to Swahili literary works, mwongozo, were introduced in Kenya's educational practice. It was, it could be argued, the quantitative and qualitative growth of Swahili literature

Why Does a Swahili Writer Write? Euphoria, Pain, and Popular Aspirations in Swahili Literature

The paper surveys issues explored in some Swahili works written mainly in the colonial, independence, and postindependence periods. Central to the issues is the writers' perception of their position as citizens, and their relationship to those who govern them. The nationalist agenda, commencing in the nineteenth century, manifests itself in different ways in the three periods. Authors express opposite attitudes during the colonial period: of gratitude for being freed (as slaves), and yet of wanting greater freedom through the practice of law. Independence brings euphoria, and with it, a looking back in history, which sees unity transcending ethnic differences. Finally, the paper assesses the response given by authors to problems that arise in the postindependence period; in particular, it surveys Nyerere's vision of ujamaa as a policy for the betterment of Tanzania. The paper also mentions the effects of globalization, with a clique within the multinationals virtually dominating the economy of developing countries.

Why Does a Swahili Writer Write? Euphoria, Pain, and Popular Aspirations in Swahili Literature

Why Does a Swahili Writer Write? Euphoria, Pain, and Popular Aspirations in Swahili Literature

Encyclopaedia of African Literature

Simon Gikandi. Encyclopaedia of African Literature. New York: Routledge, 2003. xv + 629 pp. Index. $150.00. Cloth. Early scholars of African literature still remember how welcome Hans Zell's Readers' Guide to African Literature (1972) was in this new field of criticism. Since then, African literature has become an established discipline, and need for reliable reference works on all levels is even greater. Simon Gikandi's Encyclopaedia of African Literature now provides a comprehensive source of information on literature of entire continent, ranging geographically from Mediterranean to Cape of Good Hope and linguistically from Europhone literatures to those in African languages. It is a welcome supplement to existing reference works, most of which are restricted to literature in one language or one country. With its wide scope and comprehensiveness, Gikandi's Enyclopaedia will be a useful tool for students and scholars, although African language literatures are not really covered adequately in this work. Swahili literature, for example, which boasts of continent's oldest written history, receives an entry of only three and a half columns plus occasional references in entry on East African literature. Most of Encyclopaedia consists of entries on individual authors, but there are also articles on particular themes such as oral literature, media, feminist criticism, and gender and sexuality (unfortunately without bibliography). The editor presents surveys of literary developments on a regional basis, obviously to counter general (and problematic) practice of writing literary histories of Nigeria, Ghana, and so on. In case of South African literature, however, national literature paradigm is maintained in two consecutive articles, one on literature in African languages and other on literature in English, while Afrikaans literature is listed seperately. The specific political history of South certainly justifies a treatment in terms. The separation into English, Afrikaans, and African language literatures nevertheless repeats old model of segregated critical discourse which Michael Chapman has declared obsolete and inappropriate for rainbow nation (Southern African Literature, 1995). In regard to East African literature, Gikandi treats Kenyan, Ugandan, and Tanzanian literature as one entity, but justification proposed-that three countries were joined under British rule as East African Protectorate-is misleading. Tanzania has a double German-British colonial heritage, Kenya was a settler colony where peasants in highlands were expropriated, while in Ugandan Protectorate established kingdoms of Buganda, Toro, and Bunyoro continued to play an important role under indirect rule. all these factors make for very different postindependence histories. Beyond political differences, language policies in all three countries have varied drastically: In Tanzania Swahili was adopted as national language, whereas in Uganda Luganda speakers rejected Swahili, considering it language of military and of oppression. I would also strongly disagree with editor's assertion that the significance of Amin's era in Uganda lies in creative impulses it engendered among Ungandans and non-Ugandans alike, leading to an almost unprecedented flowering of literature in East Africa (159). It is true that Amin's reign of terror provided subject matter for a number of novels, plays, and films. But it is also true that Amin not only killed intellectuals and writers but also destroyed whole cultural infrastructure, driving writers, artists, and intellectuals into exile. At end of Amin-Obote terror, flourishing literature, publishing, and theater scene of Golden Age had completely vanished, and only thing left was shallow commercial theater of domestic farce. …

Swahili Literature and History in the Post-Structuralist Era

Swahili Literature and History in the Post-Structuralist Era

Outline of Swahili Literature: Prose Fiction and Drama

Outline of Swahili Literature is a major study and reference guide of modern prose and drama in Swahili - one of the largest languages of sub-Saharan Africa. This second edition of the eponymous study first published in 1989, is extensively revised and enlarged. It contains new and updated information, mapping trends and writers. In addition, the book contains a resourceful bio-bibliographical index of modern Swahili writers and an annotated bibliography of all known works in Swahili modern prose and drama published from the late 1950s up to 2008.

Outline of Swahili Literature

Outline of Swahili Literature