One overriding thought has been plaguing me this week, I’m resentful and I know exactly who to lay the blame on, the proponents of beauty Olympics. From birth one thing is made absolutely clear, the top currency anyone can have is beauty. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman, no achievement can…
Author: Bwandungi
I'm an author. I love telling African stories. I love speculative fiction. A combination of the two is ... let's just say I gasp in ecstasy. :-)
African Literature: News, Reviews, Author Interviews
For a while now I’ve been searching for one place online where I could go to to find news and reviews on African literature. It is slim pickings out there folks, but not because African people are not writing (never let such blasphemous words escape your lips!!!). One consolidated place where you can reach out…
For whom?
I’ve been thinking about women like myself. Women of African descent. A number of things have occurred to me about our “plight” and I think I have narrowed it down to a few statements. 1- Whatever and wherever we are depicted, we must be the lusty cunning seductress, compelled to reveal our plump breasts for…
Weighing in at 10,000 pounds in 66.67 easy payments. (How western prizes rule African Literature)
Much has been said over the past few weeks about Binyavanga’s rant over the Caine Prize. It is difficult to unpack. 1. Most of the World did not know Binyavanga till he won the Caine Prize. 2. That is the material point. The question is not why the prize should still stand, of course it…
Micro082914: Use Dodo
He sensed an opportunity here. The long plastic contraband had been burning a hole in his mind, worried his mother might find it when she cleaned out their room. “Bend!” He commanded.
Micro080214: Saved
Once upon a time, a thirteen-year-old girl imagined herself in love. In the secret places of her mind, she allowed images to overwhelm her, carbon copies of the heaving bosoms and ravishing kisses overflowing from romance novels concealed under her bed. She gloried in the power she held over her fifteen-year-old boyfriend, feeling his body…
Micro080114: The Prize of Silence
Once upon a time, a young man proclaimed to his family that he was going to marry. The young woman he had chosen, bore the ropy scars of abuse that leave no visible trace. Those who knew, complicit by their silence in her abuse, donned pearly smiles at the celebration of the young couple’s union,…
Micro072814: Just Joking
Once upon a time, a woman longed to have a baby girl to fill her home with flowers and pretty things, to provide the softness she did not see in her four sons. She prayed in the way she had been taught, followed the rules her scriptures dictated, till her god looked upon her, pitied…
Micro072514: Pictures
Once upon a time, a man took a picture. The colors were vibrant, bouncing off dark brown skin that shone with sunlight’s kisses and wrinkled upon itself with age. The deep set brown eyes leapt off the photograph, saying something profound, but the photographer did not hear it. The photograph made rounds throughout the World,…
Confidence
Karibu Reader! Have you ever experienced doubt? You get that question coming up through all the other noise bugging you and asking if you really are what you say you are, if you’re really doing what you think you’re meant to be doing. When the little doubt I still possess creeps up on me, I…
Bwandungi Writes 