Peter Nazareth | |
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| Born | 27 April 1940 Uganda |
| Education | Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda University of London University of Leeds |
| Occupation | Literary critic and writer |
| Spouse(s) | Mary Nazareth |
| Children | 2 daughters |
Peter Nazareth (born 27 April 1940) is a Ugandan-born literary critic and writer of fiction and drama. [1]
Peter Nazareth was born in Uganda of Indian Goan ancestry, and his mother's family was earlier based in Malaya-Malaysia-Singapore. He was educated at Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda), where he received his BA in English Literature in 1962, [2] and at the universities of London and Leeds in England.
While residing in Africa, he simultaneously served as senior finance officer in Idi Amin's finance ministry until 1973, when he accepted a fellowship at Yale University and emigrated to the United States from Uganda. [3]
He is a professor of English and African-American World Studies at the University of Iowa, where he is also a consultant to the International Writing Program. [4] Nazareth taught that university's course "Elvis as Anthology", which explores the deep mythological roots of Elvis Presley's roles in popular culture. [4] This class on Elvis led to Nazareth being interviewed by a range of publications — The Wall Street Journal , UPI, AP, World News Tonight With Peter Jennings, NBC's The Today Show , ABC Chicago, MTV, Voice of America, National Public Radio, the BBC, and the Cedar Rapids Gazette, among others, according to his cv. [5]
He teaches and has written about African, Caribbean, African-American, Goan, and other literatures. His publications include In the Trickster Tradition: The Novels of Andrew Salkey, Francis Ebejer, and Ishmael Reed (1994); Edwin Thumboo: Creating a Nation Through Poetry (2008); and the long essay "Elvis as Anthology" in Vernon Chadwick (ed.), In Search of Elvis: Music, Race, Art, Religion. Nazareth edited Critical Essays on Ngugi wa Thiong'o (2000) and Pivoting on the Point of Return: Modern Goan Literature (2010). His first novel, In a Brown Mantle (1972), has been taught at the University of Pretoria and by Ngugi wa Thiong’o at U.C. Irvine. [6]
His literary criticisms have often involved observations of the fate of diverse global economic and academic migrants, spanning the Asian, African and black American cultural histories. [4] This includes the Goan diaspora [4] settled in Western countries, the post-Idi Amin Asian emigration from Eastern Africa, and the cultural superstitions of the pre-Obama presidency of American politics. [7] Nazareth has edited a special issue of the journal Callaloo on Goan literature, and an anthology of its literature, and has championed the work of Mozambique-born Goan writer Violet Dias Lannoy. [8]
He has been married to Mary Nazareth for more than 50 years. They have two daughters. [4]
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a Kenyan writer and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu and who formerly wrote in English. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short story The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright, is translated into 100 languages from around the world.
Goan literature is the literature pertaining to the state of Goa in India.
Taban Lo Liyong is a poet, and writer of fiction and literary criticism from South Sudan. His political views, as well as his outspoken disapproval of the post-colonial system of education in East Africa, have inspired both further criticism as well as controversy since the late 1960s.
Makerere University, Kampala (; Makerere University is Uganda's largest and oldest institution of higher learning, first established as a technical school in 1922. It became an independent national university in 1970. Today, Makerere University is composed of nine colleges and one school offering programmes for about 36,000 undergraduates and 4,000 postgraduates. The main administrative block was gutted by fire in September 2020 and the cause of the fire is yet to be established.
In June 1962 a conference of African literature in the English language, the first African Writers Conference, was held at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda. Officially called a "Conference of African Writers of English Expression", it was sponsored by the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Mbari Club in association with the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of Makerere, whose director was Gerald Moore. The conference was attended by many prominent African writers, including: from West Africa Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, John Pepper Clark, Obi Wali, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, Bernard Fonlon, Frances Ademola, Cameron Duodu, Kofi Awoonor; from South Africa: Ezekiel Mphahlele, Bloke Modisane, Lewis Nkosi, Dennis Brutus, Arthur Maimane; from East Africa Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Robert Serumaga, Rajat Neogy, Okot p'Bitek, Pio Zirimu, Grace Ogot, Rebecca Njau, David Rubadiri, Jonathan Kariara; and from the African diaspora Langston Hughes. The conference was "not only the very first major international gathering of writers and critics of African literature on the African continent; it was also held at the very cusp of political independence for most African countries."
Rajat Neogy a Ugandan of Indian Bengali ancestry, was a writer, poet and publisher. In Kampala in 1961, at the age of 22 he founded Transition Magazine, which went on to become widely influential on the whole African continent. In the words of Ngugi wa Thiong'o, "he (Neogy) believed in the multi-cultural and multifaceted character of ideas, and he wanted to provide a space where different ideas could meet, clash, and mutually illuminate. Transition became the intellectual forum of the New East Africa, and indeed Africa, the first publisher of some of the leading intellectuals in the continent, including Wole Soyinka, Ali Mazrui and Peter Nazareth."
Edwin Nadason Thumboo B.B.M. is a Singaporean poet and academic who is regarded as one of the pioneers of English literature in Singapore.
The General Is Up is a "novel set in modern Africa" by Peter Nazareth. Its story is based on the expulsion of Asians from Idi Amin's Uganda in the 1970s. It is set, in large part, among the expatriate community of Goans, which has had a large number of out-migrants scattered across the globe, including in Uganda, East Africa. It was published by the Calcutta (Kolkata)-based Writer's Workshop in 1984 and re-published by TSAR Publications, Toronto in 1991.
Francis Ebejer was a Maltese dramatist and novelist.
Simon E. Gikandi is a Kenyan Literature Professor and Postcolonial scholar. He is the Robert Schirmer Professor of English at Princeton University. He is perhaps best known for his co-editorship of The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature. He has also done important work on the modern African novel, and two distinguished African novelists: Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. In 2019 he became the president of the Modern Language Association.
The International Writing Program (IWP) is a writing residency for international artists in Iowa City, Iowa. Since 2014, the program offers online courses to many writers and poets around the world. Since its inception in 1967, the IWP has hosted over 1,500 emerging and established poets, novelists, dramatists, essayists, and journalists from more than 150 countries. Its primary goal is to introduce talented writers to the writing community at the University of Iowa, and to provide for the writers a period of optimal conditions for their creative work. Since 2000, the IWP has been directed by poet and journalist Christopher Merrill.
Micere Githae Mugo is a playwright, author, activist, instructor and poet from Kenya. She is a literary critic and professor of literature in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. She was forced into exile in 1982 from Kenya during the Daniel Arap Moi dictatorship for activism and moved to teach in Zimbabwe, and later the United States. Mwalimu Mugo teaches Orature, Literature, and Creative Writing. Her publications include six books, a play co-authored with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and three monographs. She has also edited journals and the Zimbabwean school curriculum. The East African Standard listed her among the 100 most influential people in Kenya in 2002.
David Cook was a British academic, literary critic and anthologist. As a Professor of Literature at the Universities of Makerere and Ilorin, he played an important role in encouraging literature in East Africa.
Goa Today is a monthly magazine published from Panjim (Panaji), the state-capital of Goa, India, since 1966, featuring news, literature and local issues. Goa Today is considered the "grand-daddy" of all monthly magazines in Goa. It was founded by Francisco Damasceno do Rosario Dantas and former joint-editor of Navhind Times, Lambert Mascarenhas, who was awarded the Gomant Vibhushan Award, the highest civilian award of Goa in 2014.
Pio Zirimu was a Ugandan linguist, scholar and literary theorist. He is credited with coining the word "orature" as an alternative to the self-contradictory term, "oral literature" used to refer to the non-written expressive African traditions. Zirimu was also central in reforming the literature syllabus at Makerere University to focus on African literature and culture instead of the English canon.
Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature, by the Kenyan novelist and post-colonial theorist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, is a collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity. The book, which advocates linguistic decolonization, is one of Ngũgĩ's best-known and most-cited non-fiction publications, helping to cement him as a preeminent voice theorizing the "language debate" in post-colonial studies.
Goa is currently India's smallest state on the west coast, and its writers have written in many diverse languages. Poetry is a small and scattered field in the region, and this page makes an attempt to acknowledge those who have contributed to the field. It includes those listed below who have contributed to poetry in and from Goa, as well as those writing poetry in Goa. Poetry related to Goa is known to have been written in Konkani, in Portuguese, English and Marathi, apart from other regional, national and international languages to a lesser extent.
Manuel C. Rodrigues (1908–1991) was an early Goan poet and writer, who expressed himself in the English language. He was also an artist, as well as a trained singer and conductor. He is also known as Manoel C. Rodrigues.
Violet Dias Lannoy (1925–1973) was a teacher and writer. Born in Mozambique to parents from Goa, India, she taught in schools and advised on educational policy all around the world. Lannoy, called "the lost Goan/Indian/African novelist" by critic and writer Peter Nazareth, wrote Pears from the Willow Tree, a posthumously published novel, besides short stories.
Wanjikũ wa Ngũgĩ is a Kenyan writer, who has lived and worked in Eritrea, Zimbabwe and Finland. She is the founder and former director of the Helsinki African Film Festival (HAFF). Also a political analyst, she is a member of the editorial board of Matatu: Journal for African Literature and Culture and Society, and has been a columnist for the Finnish development magazine Maailman Kuvalehti. Among journals and newspapers in which her work has appeared are The Herald (Zimbabwe), The Daily Nation & Business Daily, Pambazuka News and Chimurenga. She is the author of a novel published in 2014 and a contributor to anthologies including New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent, Nairobi Noir.
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