Charity Waciuma

Charity Wanjiku Waciuma (* 1936 ) is a Kenyan author. She wrote several books for young people and an autobiography , which appeared in 1969 under the title Daughter of Mumbi (literally "Daughter of Mumbi"). The legends and stories of the Kikuyu people form the basis of their work . Her works have not been translated into German.

biography

Charity Wanjiku Waciuma grew up in Kenya before independence, which was marked by the violent clashes between the Mau-Mau and the British colonial power. Following the Kikuyu tradition, she was given the name of her father's youngest daughter Wanjiku ("the gossip"), her surname Waciuma ("the pearl") was derived from the nickname of her great-grandfather, who was so wealthy that he "had as many geese as Pearls on a necklace ”.

In 1966 she was one of the first children's book authors in Kenya with the publication of her book Mweru the Ostrich Girl ("Mweru, the Ostrich Girl"), followed by titles for young adults The Golden Feather ("The Golden Feather"), Merry-Making (" Exuberant mood ”) and Who's Calling? ("Who is on the phone?").

Her autobiographical work Daughter of Mumbi , published in 1969, tells of the conflicts of an adolescent who is torn between being attached to a traditional identity ( Mumbi was the mythical ancestor of the Kikuyo) and a father who supports British colonial rule considers his duty on the way to modernity. Waciuma dedicated the book to her father, who was killed during the Mau Mau War. She reported on conflicts between traditional faith and Christianity, which was spread through European missionaries, which she also experienced in her own extended family and which touched many areas of life. So she wrote about polygamy , as her grandfather still lived, for example, but distanced herself from it.

Contrary to the Kiyuku tradition, Waciuma was not circumcised . She was one of the first African authors to address this socially sensitive issue at a time when no one in Kenya was discussing women's rights and there was nothing at all about the traumatic physical and psychological effects of these practices on the women concerned in the public consciousness.

reception

Together with Grace Ogot , Waciuma was the first Kenyan author to be published in English. She was included in the anthology Daughters of Africa , which Margaret Busby published in 1992 in London and New York .

Fonts

• Mweru, the Ostrich Girl. East African Publishing House, Nairobi 1966, LCCN 76251178.
• The Golden Feather. East African Publishing House, Nairobi 1966, OCLC 157825 .
• Daughter of Mumbi. East African Publishing House, Nairobi 1969, LCCN 72286351.
• Merry-making. East African Publishing House, Nairobi 1972, DNB 1003038034 .
• Who's calling. East African Publishing House, Nairobi 1973, DNB 1003038220 .

literature

• Merete Falck Borch, Eva Rask Knudsen: Bodies and Voices: The Force-field of Representation and Discourse in Colonial and Postkolonial Studies. Editions Rodopi BV, Amsterdam / New York 2008, ISBN 978-90-420-2334-5 .
• Jennifer Muchiri: The Intersection of the Self and History in Kenyan Autobiographies. In: Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies. Vol. 1, No. 1 & 2, 2014, pp. 83-93.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Book Review: Daughter of Mumbi by Charity Wanjiku Waciuma. The Woyingi Blog, September 8, 2010.
2. ^ Daughter of Mumbi . S. 8 .
3. ↑ Jennifer Nyambura Muchiri: The Female Autobiographical Voice in Independent Kenya (thesis). (PDF) University of Nairobi, accessed October 8, 2018 . 
4. ↑ Jacqueline Bardolph: Waciuma, Charity. In: Lorna Sage (Ed.): The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
5. ^ CE Neubauer: Tradition and change in charity Waciuma's autobiography daughter of Mumbi. Taylor & Francis, July 18, 2008, pp. 211-221 , accessed October 30, 2016 . 
6. ↑ Charlotte Baker: Rising Anthills: African and African American Writing on Female Genital Excision 1960-2000 (review) . In: Project MUSE (Ed.): Research in African Literatures . tape 42 , no. 1 , 2011, ISSN  0034-5210 , p. 191 ( jhu.edu [accessed November 8, 2016]).
7. ↑ Elisabeth Bekers: Rising Anthills: African and African American Writing on Female Genital Excision 1960-2000 . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2010, ISBN 978-0-299-23494-2 .
8. ↑ 12 Pioneering Kenyan Women ( Memento of the original from October 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Africa.com.