Negotiating escape: De-muted voices of female narrators in the Rwandan and Sudanese conflicts

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Published: May 11, 2021
Keywords:
escape, female voice, postcolonial discourse, violence

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Obala Musumba
Department of Language and Literature Education, Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Kenya

Abstract

Eastern Africa has experienced its fair share of violence since independence whether one thinks of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia or South Sudan among others. These wars have come to define the postcolonial discourse not only in Eastern Africa but also in the whole continent of Africa. This paper discusses the female voice in negotiation of escape in the testimonial writings revolving around the conflicts as represented in Slave: My True Story by Mende Nazer and Left to Tell: One Woman’s Story of Surviving Rwandan Genocide by Immaculée Ilibagiza. The two non-fictional works are echoes of happenings in the wars that took place in the nineties in Rwanda and South Sudan respectively. They mark a significant paradigmatic shift from the predominant discourse of the boy soldiers who narrate their military experiences that depict the ambivalence of victim and culprit. From the female narrators’ point of weakness, the voice is a testimony of the space of the victim in the whole disposition of the violence.

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How to Cite
Musumba , O. (2021). Negotiating escape: De-muted voices of female narrators in the Rwandan and Sudanese conflicts. Research Journal in Modern Languages and Literatures, 2(1). https://royalliteglobal.com/languages-and-literatures/article/view/613
Issue
Vol. 2 No. 1 (2021)
Section
Articles
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Author Biography

Obala Musumba , Department of Language and Literature Education, Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Kenya

Obala F. Musumba is a PhD holder from the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin. He is currently a part time lecturer in the Department of Language and Literature Education, Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology. Together with others, he recently edited a critical book entitled: Emerging Trends in Eastern African Literature and Cultures among many other publications. His current research interest is in the area of representation of people with albinism in Kiswahili literature and films.

How to Cite

Musumba , O. (2021). Negotiating escape: De-muted voices of female narrators in the Rwandan and Sudanese conflicts. Research Journal in Modern Languages and Literatures, 2(1). https://royalliteglobal.com/languages-and-literatures/article/view/613

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