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WORK TITLE: Kintu
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://jennifermakumbi.net/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Ugandan
https://jennifermakumbi.net/?page_id=6 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Nansubuga_Makumbi
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nb2016007649
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/nb2016007649
HEADING: Makumbi, Jennifer Nansubuga
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035 __ |a (Uk)009598775
040 __ |a Uk |b eng |e rda |c Uk
046 __ |s 20
100 1_ |a Makumbi, Jennifer Nansubuga
370 __ |c Uganda |e Lancaster (England) |c England |2 naf
372 __ |a Creative writing (Higher education) |2 lcsh
373 __ |a University of Lancaster |2 naf
375 __ |a female
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Kintu, [2014]: |b t.p. (Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi) inside back cover (born in Uganda and moved to England in 2001 to study; she teaches creative writing at Lancaster University)
PERSONAL
Born in Kampala, Uganda; daughter of Anthony Kizito Makumbi and Evelyn Nnakalembe; married; husband’s name Damian; children: Jordan.
EDUCATION:Islamic University, Uganda, B.A.; Manchester Metropolitan University, M.A.; Lancaster University, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Playwright, novelist, and short-story writer. Taught at Nakasero High School and Hillside High School, both Kampala, Uganda; taught at various universities in the United Kingdom; head of the African reading group ARG!, Manchester, England.
AWARDS:Commonwealth Short Story Prize, 2014.
WRITINGS
Author of the play Sitaani Teyebase. Contributor of fiction and poetry to anthologies, including Moss Side Stories, Crocus Books, 2012, and Sweet Tongues, Crocus Books, 2013. Contributor to periodicals, including Granta.
SIDELIGHTS
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi was born and raised in Uganda. She began writing at the age of fifteen when she wrote a play for a school competition. She also directed the play. Over the next several years, Makumbi continued to write plays and then started to keep a journal of unpublished poetry. She began writing prose while teaching school in Kampala, Uganda. Makumbi draws from the Ugandan oral tradition of tellings stories, especially Ugandan sayings, myths, folktales, and legends.
Makumbi received her doctorate in fiction writing from Lancaster University. Her doctoral novel won the Kawani? Manuscript Project, a literary network established in 2003. The novel was eventually published under the title Kintu by the Kwani Trust in Uganda and then in the United States. The novel revolves around the Kintu clan in Uganda and covers several generations of the seemingly cursed clan.
The novel is divided in six sections and begins with a violent death in 2004 before swiftly going back to 1750. Kintu Kidda is the one who brings the curse on the family while traveling to his country’s capital to show his allegiance to the Buganda Kingdom’s new leader. Although he has numerous families, Kintu adopts Kalema, who is the son of Ntwire, a Tutsi shepherd living near Kintu’s village. On the trip, Kalema breaks custom, and Kintu hits and accidentally kills him. Although Kintu’s men keep the secret of how Kalema was killed, Ntwire suspects the truth and places a curse on Kintu. The curse will prove to be a strong one over successive generations. “In what follows, Kintu’s story is replayed, in some form or another, in the life of each of four contemporary characters, whose connections to one another only become apparent in the novel’s final book,” wrote the Literary Review website contributor Amanda Sarasien.
The novel follows the various stories of the Kintu clan and the nation as whole as both move from a traditional life into the modern, Western world. “Makumbi’s debut novel is a sprawling family chronicle that explores Uganda’s national identity through a brilliant interlacing of history, politics, and myth,” noted a Publishers Weekly contributor. Among the Kintu clan members featured is Kanani Kintu, who has converted to Christianity with his wife and believes his place in heaven will be secured with Ugandan independence. Makumbi has said that she wrote the novel primarily for Ugandans and told Los Angeles Review of Books website contributor Alexia Underwood: “I wanted Ugandans to start looking at the history of Uganda before colonization—how Uganda was organized before Christianity and before Europe arrived—and to compare that with what we have at the moment.” Makumbi went on to note: “I also wanted to talk about homosexuality, because Uganda is perceived as the most homophobic country in the world, because of the bill [the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014] that was passed.”
Makumbi addresses the homosexuality issues with the story about Isaac Newton Kintu, who faces an uncertain future until he finds out the result of his HIV test. Other stories feature a clan member looking for the father who abandoned her and another member of the family who is a doctor trained in the west but faces negative stereotypes. The book’s final chapter finds the Kintu clan gathering together at their ancestral home for a reunion. More important, they are seeking a way to end the curse on the family. Commenting on the “the thrust of the novel,” Sarasien remarked: “Individual identity is only claimed by taking one’s rightful place within the family.” In a review for Library Journal, Ashanti White wrote: “What is most impressive is the interwoven history and language of Uganda within the fictional narrative.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Library Journal, March 1, 2017, Ashanti White, review of Kintu, p. 78.
Publishers Weekly, March 13, 2017, review of Kintu, p. 54.
ONLINE
Jennifer Makumbi Website, https://jennifermakumbi.net (November 7, 2017).
Literary Review, http://www.theliteraryreview.org (November 7, 2017), Amanda Sarasien, review of Kintu.
Los Angeles Review of Books, https://lareviewofbooks.org/ (August 31, 2017), Alexia Underwood, “So Many Ways of Knowing: An Interview with Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Author of Kintu.”
OneWorld Publications Website, https://oneworld-publications.com/ (November 7, 2017), brief author profile.
Yale University African Studies Website, https://african.macmillan.yale.edu/ (November 7, 2017), Clara Molot, “Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi: Additions to a New African narrative,” author interview.
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Author
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Jennifer was born and grew up in Kampala Uganda. She is the eldest child of her father Anthony Kizito Makumbi and the 3rd of her mother, Evelyn Nnakalembe. Her parents separated when she was two years old and for two years she lived with her grandfather Elieza Makumbi. During Amin’s regime, her father a banker was arrested and brutalised. While he was saved from being killed, Jennifer’s father lost his mind for the rest of his life. Jennifer was taken over by her Aunt Catherine Makumbi-Kulubya who brought her up. She lived with her family first at Nakasero then later at Kololo.
For secondary school, she went to Trinity College Nabbingo and to Kings College Buddo for her A levels. While in Senior 3 she wrote her first play for an inter-house competition which came third. She wrote her second play for again for an inter-house competition at A level, once again the play came third. Both these plays were written in English.
She did a B.A degree with Education majoring in teaching English and Literature in English at the Islamic University in Uganda where she edited the university magazine The IUIU Mirror. Jennifer first taught at Nakasero High an A level school then for eight years taught at Hillside High School, an international school in Uganda. At that time she wrote another play Sitaani Teyebase in Luganda for an inter-zone competition. This play won the competition and toured many of the SDA churches within Kampala.
In September 2001 she joined Manchester Metropolitan University to do an MA in Creative Writing. She completed a PhD in Creative writing at Lancaster University. Jennifer has taught at various universities in the U.K teaching both English and Creative Writing as an Associate Lecturer. Jennifer’s writing relies heavily on Ganda oral traditions, especially myths, Legends, folktales and sayings.
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Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Born Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Kampala Uganda
Occupation Writer
Nationality Ugandan
Alma mater Lancaster University
Genre Fiction
Website
jennifermakumbi.net
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan novelist and short story writer.[1] Her doctoral novel, The Kintu Saga, was shortlisted[2] and won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013.[3] It was published by Kwani Trust in 2014 under the title Kintu.[4][5][6] She was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story "Let's Tell This Story Properly",[7] and emerged Regional Winner, Africa region.[8] She was the Overall Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.[9][10] She was longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature.[11] She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.[12] She lives in Manchester with her husband, Damian, and son, Jordan.[13]
Contents [hide]
1 Early life and education
2 Writing
3 Published works
3.1 Novels
3.2 Short stories
4 Awards and honours
5 References
6 External links
Early life and education[edit]
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi was born and grew up in Kampala, Uganda. She is the eldest child of Anthony Kizito Makumbi and the third of Evelyn Nnakalembe. Her parents separated when she was two years old and for two years she lived with her grandfather Elieza Makumbi. During Idi Amin's regime, her father, a banker, was arrested and brutalised. While he was saved from being killed, he suffered from mental health issues for rest of his life. Makumbi was brought up by her aunt, Catherine Makumbi-Kulubya. She lived with her family first at Nakasero, then later at Kololo.
She went to Trinity College Nabbingo for O-levels and to King's College Budo for A-levels. She did a B.A. degree in Education, majoring in teaching English and Literature in English at the Islamic University in Uganda, where she edited the university magazine, The IUIU Mirror. Makumbi first taught at Nakasero High, an A-level school, then for eight years taught at Hillside High School, an international school in Uganda.
At that time she wrote another play, Sitaani Teyebase, in Luganda for an inter-zone competition. This play won the competition and toured many of the SDA churches within Kampala.
In September 2001 she joined Manchester Metropolitan University to do an MA in Creative Writing. She completed a PhD in Creative writing at Lancaster University.[14] Makumbi has taught at various universities in the UK teaching both English and Creative Writing as an Associate Lecturer.
Her writing relies heavily on Ganda oral traditions, especially myths, legends, folktales and sayings.[15][16]
Writing[edit]
Makumbi started writing at 15 when she wrote, directed and produced a play for a school competition. It came in third. She wrote another play when she was 18 and it too came third. While in Senior 3 she wrote her first play for an inter-house competition, which came third. She wrote her second play again for an inter-house competition at A-level, and once again the play came third. Both of these plays were written in English.[14] In 1994, she started writing a diary in poetry form to expunge her feelings as she was going through a rough patch in her life. She wrote more than 50 poems but never bothered to share them with the public. She started writing prose in 1998 while she was teaching in Kampala.[17]
Makumbi's writing is largely based on oral traditions. She realised that oral traditions were so broad and would be able to frame all her writing regardless of subject, form or genre. She has said she "noticed that using oral forms which were normally perceived as trite and 'tired' brought, ironically, a certain depth to a piece that I could not explain."[18] It is important to note that her intentions in using oral traditions in fiction are not conservationist as is often presumed in African writing. She draws on oral forms because they anchor her writing in Ganda culture. At the same time, because these oral forms are rooted in her first language, she is confident using them.[19][20]
Her work has been published by African Writing Online and Commonword. She also runs the African reading group ARG! in Manchester, which focuses on obscure African writers.[13] In 2012, her short story "The Accidental Seaman" was published in Moss Side Stories by Crocus Books. In 2013, her poems "Free Range" and "Father cried in the kitchen" were published in Sweet Tongues.[7]
Her doctoral novel, The Kintu Saga, won the Kwani? Manuscript Project, a new literary prize for unpublished fiction by African writers,[21][22][23][24] and was published under the title Kintu in 2014,[25] being longlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature.[11] She was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize alongside two other African contenders (Adelehin Ijasan from Nigeria and Michelle Sacks from South Africa),[26][27][28][29] going on to become the overall winner with her entry "Let's Tell This Story Properly".[30][31][32]
Published works[edit]
Novels[edit]
Kintu. Kwani Trust, Nairobi. 2014. ISBN 978-9966-1598-9-2. Transit Books, Oakland. 2017. ISBN 9781945492013.
Short stories[edit]
"Let’s Tell This Story Properly", in Granta, 2014
"The Joys of Fatherhood", in African Writing Online
"The accidental sea man", in Moss Side Stories, 2012
Awards and honours[edit]
Longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature[33][34]
Overall Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize[35]
Winner of the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013[3]
Shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize[7]
Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 regional winner, Africa[8][35]
References[edit]
Jump up ^ Daniel Musitwa, "Ugandan Author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi wins 2013 Kwani? Manuscript Prize", africabookclub.org, 4 July 2013. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
Jump up ^ "Interview with Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, shortlisted for her novel The Kintu Saga", kwani.org. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
^ Jump up to: a b "Winner: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, The Kintu Saga", kwani.org. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Jump up ^ "Kwani Trust launch award-winning writer Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's debut novel Kintu", kwani.org, 16 June 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
Jump up ^ Beatrice Lamwaka, "Jennifer Makumbi narrates the Ugandan story in Kintu", Daily Monitor (Uganda), 28 June 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
Jump up ^ Ali Mazrui, "Of Kintu, the witty, sensual and provocative page turner", Daily Nation, 27 June 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
^ Jump up to: a b c "Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 Shortlist" commonwealthwriters.org. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
^ Jump up to: a b "Commonwealth short story prize 2014 regional winners", commonwealthwriters.org. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
Jump up ^ Jennifer Makumbi, Overall Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, commonwealthwriters.org. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
Jump up ^ Alison Flood, "Commonwealth short story prize goes to 'risk-taking' Ugandan", The Guardian, 13 June 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
^ Jump up to: a b "South Africans Dominate the Longlist for 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature", BooksLive. 6 November 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
Jump up ^ "Jennifer Makumbi", antonyharwood.com. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
^ Jump up to: a b "New chapter for African writer after top award", Lancaster University, 26 July 2013. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
^ Jump up to: a b "Jennifer Makumbi", lancaster.ac.uk. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Jump up ^ About, jennifermakumbi.net. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Jump up ^ "Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi | Author". jennifermakumbi.net. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
Jump up ^ Jennifer Makumbi: Winner of Kwani?'s Manuscript Project, the-star.co.ke Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Jump up ^ Bamuturaki Musinguzi, "Oral tradition pays off for Jennifer Makumbi", The East African, 20 June 2014.
Jump up ^ "On how I started to write from African oral traditions" jennifermakumbi.net. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Jump up ^ "Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi". Granta Magazine. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
Jump up ^ "Jennifer Makumbi wins award for The Kintu Saga", Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research, 18 July 2013. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Jump up ^ Japhet Alakam, "Jennifer Makumbi wins Kwani Manuscript Prize", Vanguard (Nigeria), 18 October 2013. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Jump up ^ "Uganda's Jennifer Makumbi Wins Kwani? Literary Prize", The Star, 3 July 2013; via AllAfrica.
Jump up ^ "AWT’s Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi wins the Kwani? Manuscript Project".
Jump up ^ Aaron Bady, "In Kintu, a look at what it means to be Ugandan now", Literary Hub, 15 May 2017.
Jump up ^ Flora Aduk, "Uganda’s Makumbi shortlisted for Commonwealth story prize", monitor.co.ug, 2 May 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Jump up ^ Daniel Musitwa, "Commonwealth Short Story Prize Shortlist Announced", africabookclub.com, 3 May 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Jump up ^ African authors shortlisted for 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, thenigerianvoice.com, 30 April 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Jump up ^ "Three Caribbean Writers Shortlisted for Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014".
Jump up ^ "Uganda’s Jennifer Makumbi Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize", Stream Africa, 14 June 2014.
Jump up ^ "Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Wins the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize"
Jump up ^ "Jennifer Makumbi wins Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 (Woosah!)", James Murua Blog, 16 June 2014.
Jump up ^ 2014 "Etisalat Prize for Literature announces longlist", news24.com.ng. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
Jump up ^ "Congrats to the Authors Longlisted for The Etisalat Prize for Literature", Brittle Paper, 7 November 2014.
^ Jump up to: a b "Ugandan writer wins Commonwealth short story prize". BBC News. 13 June 2014. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
External links[edit]
Mbugua Wa Mungai, "Confessions of manuscript judge", The East Africa, 1 August 2013.
"I combined oral tradition with dad’s trauma from Idi Amin to write my novel—Jennifer Makumbi"
"Jennifer Makumbi"
Nyana Kakoma, "Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi: Folklore tells us so much about our history and explains so much of what remains of our culture" (interview), Sooo Many Stories.
Diane Ninsiima, "Interview with 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Winner Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi", Africa Book Club, 1 January 2015.
Kingwa Kamencu, "Ugandan writer who turns established script on its head", Daily Nation, 4 July 2014.
Enock Mayanja Kiyaga, "Makumbi launches book in UK", Daily Monitor (Uganda), 15 July 2014.
"Novelist would mortify anti-negritude crusaders"
Aaron Bady, "Post-coloniality Sells", The New Inquiry, 8 October 2014.
Alexia Underwood, "So Many Ways of Knowing: An Interview with Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Author of 'Kintu'", Los Angeles Review of Books, 31 August 2017.
Namwali Serpell, "The Great Africanstein Novel" (on Kintu), The New York Review of Books, 12 September 2017.
Categories: Living peoplePeople from Kampala District21st-century Ugandan poetsUgandan novelistsUgandan women writersWomen novelistsUgandan academicsUgandan women poets21st-century short story writers21st-century women writersUgandan women short story writers21st-century novelists
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So Many Ways of Knowing: An Interview with Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Author of “Kintu”
Alexia Underwood interviews Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
324 0 1
AUGUST 31, 2017
JENNIFER NANSUBUGA MAKUMBI’S novel Kintu, about a cursed family confronting the vicissitudes of a changing Uganda, is a highly engrossing read. To some, apparently, this may come as a surprise. Kintu (pronounced “Chintu”) was published in Kenya in 2014; Makumbi won the Kwani? Manuscript Project award, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and she was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature. But her substantial 443-page novel was roundly rejected by British publishers for being “too African” — full of too many characters with difficult-to-pronounce names, not focused on the colonial experience, and generally inaccessible to Western readers. Suffice it to say that this is a ridiculous assertion. Makumbi’s clear and compelling prose combines oral history and East African oral storytelling techniques (Kintu is the name of the legendary first man, a reference to the creation myth of the Baganda) while keeping one eye fixed on the reality of modern day Uganda, a place where the seemingly solid ground of clan and family divisions can quickly give way to shifting sand. Makumbi, who grew up in Kampala, spoke with me by Skype from her current home in Manchester.
¤
ALEXIA UNDERWOOD: You’ve said in the past that you wrote this book for Ugandans. What did you want them to take away from it?
JENNIFER NANSUBUGA MAKUMBI: I wanted Ugandans to start looking at the history of Uganda before colonization — how Uganda was organized before Christianity and before Europe arrived — and to compare that with what we have at the moment. We need to start having those conversations. I also wanted to talk about homosexuality, because Uganda is perceived as the most homophobic country in the world, because of the bill [the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014] that was passed. There is an idea that homosexuality came with colonization, and that before that, Africans never engaged with homosexuality. I thought, let’s go back to the past and see. It wasn’t homosexuality that Europe brought, it was homophobia. In addition, I wanted to talk about family, the beginning of the nation, how we transitioned in the Buganda Kingdom to Uganda, as a country. I wanted to talk about the painful years after independence, and how the British made some ethnic groups more important than others, and the implications of that. Basically, how we relate to each other within Uganda. I thought that to write directly about that would come across as preaching, so I used the idea of mental illness that runs in families, and the idea of a curse that appears both in traditional myths about the first man and the first woman, Kintu and Nambi, and in Christianity via Adam and Eve. This [creation myth] is not just about the beginning of society, but also the beginning of a society’s creativity. It’s the kingdom of Buganda’s beginning, in terms of storytelling. I know that when the British look back on creation and creativity, they look back on Shakespeare. I didn’t have a figure like that, so I looked back to Kintu and Nambi and thought I should start there.
In regard to the reaction to the book in Uganda, do you feel like you achieved what you hoped to achieve?
Yes, more than I had dreamed of, actually. I remember that when I took the book back home, there was a 14-year-old girl who picked it up and read it in two days. When she finished, she came to me and gave me back the book, and said, “When is the next one?” It wasn’t like, “Oh, I loved it,” or anything like that, she just asked, “When is the next one?” just in case I thought I’d written a fantastic book. I thought back on the British publishers telling me that the British would not understand the book because it’s too difficult, and I looked at this 14-year-old, and thought, god, how patronizing can they be.
The book included supernatural elements, like having a son come back from the dead to speak to his father. It struck me that this wasn’t treated as a surprising event in any way — it was seamlessly folded into the narrative. Talk a little about that.
Well, in a way, this isn’t surprising, in traditional Uganda — this idea that the dead are not with us but are still with us. But that’s the kind of question that Ugandans would not ask me, here’s what I mean. For them, it just makes sense. It was important to be aware that Ugandans would read it this way, but I was writing it in Britain, and I know that books travel, and that there would be Western readers who would struggle to understand that. I thought that the character of Miisi played that role — he had issues with understanding that kind of knowledge — but for me, like other Ugandan readers, that’s the way things happen. We are aware of another world that exists. Perhaps we’ve tried to show the rest of the world that we have gotten rid of this way of thinking, because it’s seen as unintelligent, but I felt that this is part of my world, and I’m going to write it. I think that I am in a better position to write about it than a Western scholar, and I also hope that Africans will start to open up more, and talk about it.
Continuing along that vein, fate also played a very strong role.
Yeah, true. New nations being born and failing is also fate. They are trapped in this childhood of nationhood that is going to last a while until we learn to live in a body that is both white and African — that was the major driving force behind the whole idea of fate. Also, Ugandans consider themselves a Christian nation, and fate to a certain extent guides them. You grow up with this idea that when your time comes, you’re going to die whether you like it or not, and most of the things that happened to us are ordained to happen. Remember that in Uganda, mental illness has always been looked at as a curse, because it runs in families. Again, it was important for me to have the character of Miisi there, who kept saying, hang on a minute, no, there’s also the possibility of coincidence.
When I read Kintu, I didn’t see it as a political novel. Is it a political novel?
I would not say that, but I didn’t consider it a feminist novel and people say it’s a feminist novel as well. In a way I’ve just let go, because what I say most of the time does not make a difference. People will believe what they will believe, and in a way that’s a very good thing; the book is doing its own thing, independent of what I intended it to do.
But in a way, yes, because the book does recall the political history of Uganda, so it is political in that respect. I didn’t go out of my way to discuss politics, I just intervened with a few things that I thought would be important. For example, Idi Amin. I was a child during his regime and I saw the effects of his regime. My dad was arrested by his men. He was almost killed, and we were lucky we got him back, but he lost his mind after that, and in a way, the mental health element came from that — from handling my dad’s mental illness. Idi Amin is referred to as a monster. When we talk about our monster in Uganda, that’s fine with me, but when I came out to the West and the West was talking about Idi Amin in ways that were uncomplicated, unproblematized, I stepped back — hang on a minute. For example, I was aware that when Amin came into power, Muslims were far behind Christians in terms of education, wealth. They were not allowed to come to school. If they wanted to join schools they had to be baptized, and Muslims didn’t have their own schools. In the ’70s they were only allowed to do a few jobs, like be butchers or drivers. Then Amin came along and said we’re going to start schools for Muslims. He also allowed an Islamic university in Uganda, and I went to that Islamic university, though I’m a Christian, and this is how I discovered the Islamic history in Uganda. And even though I have this history with Idi Amin in terms of my dad, and my book is not going to be impartial, I wanted to talk about something that had not been talked about. So that was a political intervention. But no, I wouldn’t say that my novel was political.
What about the claim you mentioned earlier, that some thought it was feminist. You don’t agree?
It was the Kenyans, really. The response in Kenya was, you killed all the men, and the women survived, and you’ve got this woman who’s got a gun, et cetera. But I felt that I wrote this novel from a very male point of view. First of all, there were six main characters but only one was a woman. I am a feminist, and I would not do that under any circumstances if I’m writing a feminist novel. I knew that I was dealing with a myth that is very, very patriarchal and very masculinist, and oral traditions, which are, in a way, very masculinist. But the major thing for me was that feminism, for a very long time, has talked about the oppression of women by men, and then the repression of women by the patriarchy. While I read these African novels and agree with them, everything that [Chimamanda Ngozi] Adichie is saying, there’s still this gap there. We have failed to see that the patriarchy also oppresses men, that there is oppression sometimes in privilege. I thought that I can’t start my feminist writing before I address this problem. So this is why I looked at Kintu, the patriarch, as oppressed in a way, especially in the arena of marriage. He’s forced to marry a twin sister that he didn’t want at all. And then, every other day someone is bringing him a virgin or someone is pushing a woman on him and saying, you’re a chief, you should have lots of women because it makes you look like a big man. But he doesn’t want them. And unfortunately, his wife has bought into the whole patriarchal concept and is a very good wife, and she allocates all the women into different regions, of the districts, and he would visit each one of them and spend a week with them and even when he can’t, when he says he’s physically exhausted, she will find him potions. People did not see this as oppression because men perform it, but actually, it’s repression. Another character is Kanani, who has been eating bad food for 40 years because in Buganda, men don’t go in the kitchen. He cannot talk about it because he will undermine his wife. I thought that these things would start a conversation. I mean, feminism in Uganda is still a very middle-class thing — working-class women are not buying into it. Why? I don’t think feminism is complete if it’s not looking at how men could be repressed or oppressed by the patriarchy as well.
In writing Kintu, who do you consider to be your influences?
The major influences were oral African traditions, because the book was modeled on them — the creation myth of Kintu and Nambi. I also pulled upon oral traditional history. As far as literary influences, of course there’s [Chinua Achebe’s] Things Fall Apart. I think I was influenced by God’s Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène, in terms of the structuring of the book. I was not aware of it until I went back and read it, and thought, god, I thought I was doing something new. But that text was once my favorite novel. Also, I had read many feminist novels and I was aware of what they hadn’t done, so I was also influenced by feminist writers. And I read a lot of Toni Morrison novels just to remind myself not to take language for granted.
What other Ugandan writers should we be reading, and who should we be reading that we’re not right now in the United States?
Most Ugandan writers are not published in the West, unfortunately. Goretti Kyomuhendo’s Waiting would be interesting, in terms of what happens in different regions of Uganda that were waiting to be liberated from Idi Amin. I think Chinelo Okparanta is doing interesting things. At the moment, I’m reading this book, Born on a Tuesday by Elnathan John. It took me by surprise, because it’s kind of writing Boko Haram — how such a phenomenon comes to happen in an African nation. I think he’s done a great job. So I would recommend that, though if you found Kintu hard to read, in terms of the pain of childhood … grit your teeth and read it. I recommend it.
I also think Bessie Head’s Maru is the most beautiful African novel. And I think The Famished Road by Ben Okri is the greatest African novel that people are forgetting. And if you want to understand the East African middle class, Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place is very useful. For, while it’s Kenyan, I was surprised to find that he was writing about my childhood. And of course I loved NoViolet [Bulawayo’s] We Need New Names. It also described a childhood that I recognized.
What are you working on right now?
I’ve finished a second novel, but I’m working on a collection of short stories at the moment. They’re all about Ugandan experiences in Manchester. I know we would usually say migrant stories, but I’m moving away from that and using the term expat experiences, because I’ve noticed that when the British are talking about their immigrants in Europe who are now being affected by Brexit, they don’t talk about them as immigrants, they call them expats. The book is mostly about those experiences. It’s like a letter to Ugandans — a letter that I wish someone had written to me before I immigrated to Britain.
Circling back to the book, the last lines of Kintu deal with different types of knowledge — scientific, rational, and more traditional knowledge that is passed down. Were you making the point that these things need to coexist?
There are so many ways of knowing. The West has imposed a cerebral way of knowing onto the world and will not accept other ways of knowing, things like intuition, premonition, dreams, that kind of thing has been bundled up and thrown away as old wives’ tales. But I think, wait. Do not dare throw away this way of knowing, because it has not been interrogated. The West has thrown it away, but we don’t have to.
¤
Alexia Underwood is a journalist, writer, and translator based in Oakland, California. She’s currently a senior producer with AJ+.
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home > news > jennifer nansubuga makumbi: additions to a new african narrative
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi: Additions to a new African narrative
Clara Molot
Clara Molot
Clara Molot, who will be attending Yale in the fall, wrote the following essay after attending the African Literature Association’s 2017 Annual Conference hosted by Yale University June 14-17.
The first real conversation I had with Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi was about Adichie. She asked me over lunch which of Chimamanda’s works was my favorite. Proudly, I responded Americanah. Makumbi was unimpressed.
“That’s my least favorite,” she replied.
Makumbi explained that her disenchantment with Americanah was, in large part, due to what she described as Adichie’s brilliance as a writer, but lack of strength as a blogger. To Makumbi, Adichie was unable to effectively harness and work through the anger of the blog posts which fill the novel.
Quickly, Makumbi offered me other novels to read—Noviolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names was the first on her list of texts I needed to read.
I had not truly understood the extent to which this initial conversation with Makumbi mattered until I attended a session the following day on Chimmamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was still curious as to where I went wrong in responding Americanah. It only took five minutes of that session to see the ignorance in my answer—it was the classic American student’s response. Although remaining a pivotal text, Americanah feels more acceptable to Western audiences, taking place largely in the United States and possibly over-simplifying American race relations. Adichie’s novels Purple Hibiscus and Half a Yellow Sun on the other hand, often feel farther away to American readers, being set fully in Nigeria in the 1990’s and then during the Biafran war.
One woman on the panel explained that, if a student reads Americanah, she then will offer him or her another African text, as it demonstrates a readiness to explore African literature. I had personally read more African authors than just Adichie, yet besides some of greats such as Achebe and Soyinka, most of the works I had read were diasporic—essentially, I was behind and Makumbi could see it.
The conversation during this particular panel often revolved around the Adichie’s idea about the “single story” of African literature in her famous TedTalk on the “Danger of a Single Story.” Within this discussion, most agreed that her work had been pivotal in insuring that Western audiences have the opportunity to explore African texts. Yet, it is essential that Adichie, and Americanah in particular, do not remain the only story of African literature. As the delegates discussed whose voices must be added to the tale, the conversation turned to Jennifer Makumbi—her debut novel Kintu was the greatest African work of the moment according to many at the table.
Kintu is an incredible piece of literature and one that fortifies Makumbi’s voice within the expanding story of African literature. The novel follows Uganda’s Kintu clan and the family’s curse, commencing in 1750 and moving to the present. Ugandans recognize that the name “Kintu” references Uganda’s creation story, as Kintu was the first man.
Over my time with Makumbi—both one-on-one and as she spoke to an audience—I came to appreciate the true weight of Kintu. It is a work that both celebrates and critiques Uganda, yet its power reaches past the borders of the East African country. Makumbi seems to break rules as she writes, yet, as she spoke, it became clear to what extent those decisions were purposeful.
There were two central themes to Makumbi’s rebellion: the book’s role as an “African” text and the book’s stance on gender.
The novel was first published in Kenya in 2014, but did not come to the United States until May of this year, and in many ways this is the result of Makumbi’s rejection of Western influences within her novel.
Most often, African literature revolves around its “post-colonial identity.” Yet, as Makumbi explained, “When you limit African Literature to post-coloniality, there’s nothing else.” It is limiting to write a “post-colonial” work, and a feat that revolves around Europe within Africa. And, so, Makumbi purposefully wrote a novel that skips over colonization and even Idi Amin’s rule—the two most common aspects of most Ugandan literature. Telling a story that begins far before European presence within Uganda and then one that describes a rich and multifaceted present day Uganda that functions entirely separately from European influence, Makumbi redefines her country’s narrative in her own terms.
“If you are reading my novel looking for Europeans, you won’t find any” she laughed in a panel. Down to the style of writing, Makumbi crafted a novel in which the West will not see itself.
She wanted an authentic, Ugandan voice to tell the tale. She had been taught to write as a British academic, yet Makumbi explained to me that, in her view, the strict voice of an academic so often lacks depth and readership. Her novel would not have reached as many people if it had been written in such a way. So, Makumbi was obsessed with creating her “fingerprint”—a style of writing uniquely her own. Her fingerprint is one in touch with other Ugandans.
Makumbi tells the story of having her young niece get a hold of a copy of her book. After having locked herself in her room for hours, her niece emerged having finished the novel. “What did you think?” Makumbi asked.
“When is the next one coming out, Auntie?” was all that her niece replied. She had understood it. So, while Kintu explores topics that may be inappropriate for young readers, such as sex, HIV, and violence, its language—Makumbi’s fingerprint—is accessible to a fourteen-year-old girl in Uganda.
Makumbi similarly made the decision not to change any names in the novel to satisfy a Western, or even just non-Ugandan, audience. She explained her logic, saying that as a young girl, she had to struggle through Western names as she read Shakespeare and Dickens, so why couldn’t a Western student do the same?
Why is it the burden of an African author to make her Western readership feel comfortable?
As a Western reader, part of the experience of reading Kintu is an experience of relearning. The novel’s title “Kintu” is pronounced “chintu,” but without having read the introduction or having spent time with the author herself, I would not have known that. And, so I find myself from the first moments of being in contact with her work, needing to constantly check what I know and what I think I know.
As Makumbi confronts the subject of gender, this same relearning is necessary. The most common disagreement about her work was one on whether Kintu was a feminist text. Makumbi argues no. In fact, she believes her work is “masculinist.” While many at the conference disagreed with the author, citing strong female characters within the narrative and Makumbi’s own self-proclaimed role as a feminist as reasons for Kintu’s being a feminist work, Makumbi worked to explain herself to her dogged readership.
“That’s not my version of feminism,” Makumbi said, rebutting readers who believed that Kintu is feminist because women step in when men no longer can do their work. Indeed, she maintained that, “If I wanted to write a feminist text, I would have had all but one of my central figures be women, not the opposite.”
To her, Kintu explores the ways in which the African patriarchy hurts men. So often, she explained, people discuss the negative ramifications of sexism and such a patriarchy on women, but what about the men? Cornered by their masculine roles, many of Makumbi’s central characters are toppled by the patriarchy. As Makumbi said, “There is a lot of oppression in the patriarchy to African men, a lot of performance of masculinity.”
Even in this masculinist text, Makumbi’s feminist voice shines through. She adjusted the traditional telling of the “Kintu” creation story to remove the female guilt. Makumbi explained that, as is typical in creation tales worldwide, it is the first woman who is accompanied by sin, and in this case, the curse of death and suffering. Yet, in Makumbi’s retelling of events, it is a man who brings with him such a curse, not a woman. Thus, she plays with and questions the roles that gender provides within the patriarchy.
Kintu is undoubtedly essential to expanding the narrative of African literature for both Western and non-Western audiences. After closely following Makumbi during my time at the African Literature Associations conference at Yale, however, I realized that most significantly, Kintu is essential to Ugandans.
Makumbi’s Ugandan fans see the author as a hero, flocking to her with accolades and thanks. Kintu tells a uniquely Ugandan tale, largely devoid of Western interruption. While such a telling may feel uncomfortable for Western readers, it was not written for such a population.
As one Ugandan explained, reading Kintu was a deeply personal and visceral experience. Manically reading, she could not put the novel down until she had finished one of its six sections.
It is easy to underestimate the importance of seeing oneself within literature. The West wants to see itself within the postcolonial and diasporic works that have dominated what it means to be an African text. So, while Kintu may feel uncomfortable or “too African,” I come back to Makumbi’s earlier claim—why is it the job of an African writer to make the West feel at ease? Kintu was an homage to Ugandans. However, in the process of working through discomfort, questioning, and relearning, anyone, anywhere can take away an immense amount from Makumbi’s novel.
Makumbi explained to me that diasporic African literature is currently in vogue and she had been urged to write such a novel by publishers because it would sell. But, Makumbi wrote Kintu anyway. Trends pass and date books, she explained. There is a permanence to Kintu that solidifies its standing as the “great Ugandan novel” that it is.
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JENNIFER NANSUBUGA MAKUMBI
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Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, a Ugandan novelist and short story writer, has a PhD from Lancaster University. Her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013 and was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2014. Her story ‘Let's Tell This Story Properly' won the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Makumbi lives in Manchester with her husband, Damian, and her son, Jordan.
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Makumbi, Jennifer Nansubuga. Kintu
Ashanti White
Library Journal.
142.4 (Mar. 1, 2017): p78.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Makumbi, Jennifer Nansubuga. Kintu. Transit. May 2017.443p. ISBN 9781945492013. pap. $16.95. F
This ambitious multigenerational tale of the cursed bloodline of Uganda's Kintu clan begins in 1750 with the
treacherous journey of Kintu Kidda, who travels with his men through the o Lwera desert to prove his loyalty to the
Bagandan kingdom, though his lineage differs. He has a number of families across the kingdom, but in an act of
kindness, he adopts Kalema, son of Ntwire, a worker who tends his land. During one trek, Kintu hits Kalema for
breaking custom, inadvertently killing him. He and his men refuse to share the details of the death with the village,
but Ntwire senses that something is amiss and curses Kintu before leaving to search for his son. The narrative then
chronicles the history of various clan members until 2004, when the author began writing this epic tale. Published in
Kenya in 2014, this book won the Kwani Manuscript Prize and was long-listed for the Etisalat Prize for African
Fiction. What is most impressive is the interwoven history and language of Uganda within the fictional narrative.
VERDICT Reminiscent of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, this work will appeal to lovers of African literature.--
Ashanti White, Fayetteville, NC
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
White, Ashanti. "Makumbi, Jennifer Nansubuga. Kintu." Library Journal, 1 Mar. 2017, p. 78+. General OneFile,
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p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA483702096&it=r&asid=119af275dff5648c2559960fb753e4f9.
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Kintu
Publishers Weekly.
264.11 (Mar. 13, 2017): p54.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Kintu
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. Transit (Consortium, dist.), $16.95 trade paper (443p)
ISBN 978-1-945492-01-3
Makumbi's debut novel is a sprawling family chronicle that explores Uganda's national identity through a brilliant
interlacing of history, politics, and myth. In 2004, a man named Kamu Kintu is branded a thief and killed by a vicious
crowd. While his body lies unclaimed in the mortuary, we follow Kintu's lineage back to 1750, when the ambitious
Kintu Kidda journeys with his tribe to pay tribute to the new regent of the Kingdom of Buganda, with whom he hopes
to gain favor. Instead, he inadvertently causes the death of his own son and awakens a curse that will plague his
offspring for generations. There's Suubi Nnakintu, who takes a taxi bound for the village of her youth, hoping to find
the biological father who abandoned her; the Christian convert Kanani Kintu who, with his wife, stakes his place in
heaven on Ugandan Independence; precocious Isaac Newton Kintu, whose future depends on the results of an HIV
test; and the slain Kamu's father, Miisi Kintu, a western-educated doctor struggling against both negative stereotypes
of Africans abroad and prejudice among his countrymen at home. All of the members of the Kintu bloodline must
come together and reckon with the past and their place in their country if they are ever to be free of the curse that
claimed Kamu. A masterpiece of cultural memory, Kintu is elegantly poised on the crossroads of tradition and
modernity. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Kintu." Publishers Weekly, 13 Mar. 2017, p. 54. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485971603&it=r&asid=ee65cacbae89c815fb78e1166fe92595.
Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485971603
THE LITERARY REVIEW
A Review of Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Amanda Sarasien
(Oakland, CA: Transit Books, 2017)
It may be that Kintu, the debut novel from Ugandan novelist Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, will stand as Uganda’s national narrative, in much the same way Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart has for Nigeria. Literary history will tell. Indeed, its epic scope and Makumbi’s stated objective of following in Achebe’s footsteps to impart to Ugandans their own often-overlooked history (as Aaron Bady points out in his excellent introduction), make such comparisons unavoidable. But much as the book may endeavor to establish a national identity, it does so within the context of a twenty-first-century world, where globalization is the background against which the notion of a Ugandan self is sketched. The lines, then, are rough, tentative, subject to being redrawn at any moment. And that is what gives the novel its own two feet to stand on. Kintu may serve to tell the story of a nation, but it does so not with didactic certainty but like a pioneer peering into the unknown. And within this inquisitive gaze is the more compelling story, that of a constellation of individuals discovering their connections amid a complex and confusing world.
The novel, which flits back and forth across months, years, even centuries, opens with a violent death, which takes place in the book’s anchoring present, the year 2004. Then, as the reader is catching her breath, she is catapulted back to the eighteenth century. Here the narrative settles into the legend around which the rest of the plot pivots.
Set in the ancient kingdom of Buganda, among the Ganda people, it concerns a Ppookino named Kintu Kidda. (Ppookino being the approximate equivalent of a provincial governor, though, like many of the Luganda vocabulary scattered throughout the novel, the term is not glossed but is comfortably ascertained through context; this alone is evidence that Makumbi had Ugandans in mind as her intended audience, but non-Ugandans are not precluded from listening in. Perhaps that slight remove makes the narrative all the more tantalizing.) Outwardly, Kintu is undertaking a journey, with a small entourage, to Kyabaggu to pay his respects to the new kabaka (a kind of king) and put in an appearance at court. Inwardly, however, Kintu is wrestling with all the familial dramas of his homestead – his twin wives Nnakato and Babirye, his nine children (eight of which are sets of twins) which implies the question of his succession, and his adopted son, Kalema, whose father is a Tutsi shepherd living on the fringes of Kintu’s village with whom Kintu cannot speak because they do not share a common language. As the journey progresses, events set in motion will ripple through this tangled web of tribe and family to set the stage for a curse that will, itself, ripple through the generations. In what follows, Kintu’s story is replayed, in some form or another, in the life of each of four contemporary characters, whose connections to one another only become apparent in the novel’s final book. Here Kintu’s descendants converge on their ancestral territory for a reunion that is, more potently, an attempt to reckon with and break the curse brought down upon their progenitor so many centuries ago.
To be sure, Kintu is an ambitious novel, perhaps overly ambitious. Each of its six books would have made an engrossing read on its own, and at times it can feel as if the author is hurrying through a character’s personal CV or scrambling to tie up loose ends before moving on to the next character. But given the equally ambitious themes Makumbi addresses – identity, both individual and collective; family ties; materialism; fate; tradition versus modernism; sex and masculinity; colonialism; ethnicity; war; religion and societal taboos – one may respond that the structure is entirely appropriate, recalling such narratives as One Hundred Years of Solitude but with a realist bent, in the vein of Zola’s Rougan-Macquart series. At any rate, it makes for a page-turner, because just as the reader sinks into the story of one character, her assumptions are upended with the introduction of the next perspective. She then willingly surrenders her desire to remain with the previous story if only to discover how the author manages to knit this world together across the nebulous and often fluid familial ties.
And this would seem to be the thrust of the novel: Individual identity is only claimed by taking one’s rightful place within the family. Many of the narratives begin with a character on the cusp of adulthood, that is to say, of starting his or her own family, arguably the most definitive rite of passage in Ugandan society. But in a culture where village and tribal associations determine the individual’s marriage prospects, a step that seems relatively straightforward and independent to non-African readers, becomes freighted with the responsibility to discover where that individual comes from. All the characters begin isolated, sunk in some form of denial about their own history, but, for various reasons, stumble into their own pasts. Thus, despite the fact that the characters range in age from twenty-somethings to grandparents, the novel could be read as a bildungsroman, so important is this climb through the family tree in search of self-understanding.
Where Makumbi excels as a storyteller is her ability to shroud these family ties in mystery, keeping the reader guessing until the final book, aptly titled “Homecoming.” As Bady highlights for us in his introduction, Ugandan families are intricately constructed, and even Ugandans themselves struggle with the ambiguities of this text, in large part because childrearing is communal, and many relatives can and do lay claim to non-biological children. Thus Kintu makes use of the polysemy implied by words like “aunt” and “cousin” to build tension. Further, one individual may take on and become known by multiple names, a cultural convention to be sure, but also utilized quite deftly by the author to bring to the fore different aspects of the character’s multifaceted self. The final book, then, while a bringing together of the various narrative threads, ultimately leaves many questions unanswered, thereby implying that the search for self-understanding is a lifelong process, but one that is crystallized only from within the community.
This, then, is how the novel manages to enfold Ugandan identity into its wider significance. Not through its superb retelling of the national legend that is the backstory of Kintu Kidda (arguably less interesting for the reader than the modern-day stories), nor even through the weaving in of historical detail that gives non-Ugandan readers a crash course in post-colonial events. It is, rather, as a knitting together of isolated points of view, showing how the self is intricately connected with others, so much so that the individual has no meaning alone. And here, Makumbi surpasses her own objectives, for we might say the same for all of humanity, especially in this increasingly globalized world. Especially at this contentious moment in history, when the loudest voices would try to convince us that individuals, and by extension nations, are self-sufficient. For this reason, Kintu is a book not just for Ugandans, but for all of us.
| | |
Amanda Sarasien is a writer and literary translator whose work has appeared in FLAPPERHOUSE, The MacGuffin, MAYDAY Magazine and The Puritan, among other publications. She also reviews at Reading in Translation.
© 2017 The Literary Review
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