Gukira

• On Skipping the First Day of Class:

  Posted: August 30, 2010, 3:42 pm by keguro

  Don’t. On Skipping the First Week of Class: Really, Don’t.

• Education in Crisis!

  Posted: August 29, 2010, 4:49 pm by keguro

  It is lamentable, that many of our children go to school, from four until they are eight or ten, and sometimes fifteen years of age, and leave school knowing but a little more about the grammar of their language than a horse does about handling a musket–and not a few of them are really so [...]

• Sessions (2 of 10)

  Posted: August 29, 2010, 6:25 am by keguro

  The devil visited me. He lives in my sister’s closet and he was taking his dog for a walk. Shhh. My aunt didn’t see him. She was asleep. His dog is red. People say he has horns, but it’s his dog who has the horns. How silly to confuse the devil with his dog. And [...]

• William Ruto & Ken Mehlman

  Posted: August 27, 2010, 10:03 am by keguro

  In a recent editorial, Minister for Education, Honorable William Ruto, argues, “What is unjust to one citizen is atrocious to the entire country.” The sentiment would be far nobler were it not uttered by a man who tried to secure votes by spreading homophobic panic. As he campaigned against the new Draft Constitution, Ruto claimed [...]

• Academic Checklist

  Posted: August 25, 2010, 1:47 pm by keguro

  Books Ordered: Done Syllabi Completed: 97% Done Assignments Designed: 90% Done Nightmares: Naked First Day: Done Wrong First Day, Empty School: Done Open Zipper: Ongoing Teeth Fall Out of Mouth While Lecturing: Still Waiting Wake Up 19 Again: Unresolved

• Uncommon Respect

  Posted: August 22, 2010, 8:12 pm by keguro

  Karen Hughes has written an article asking those who want to construct the mosque to demonstrate “uncommon respect” and locate it elsewhere. Following her logic, I would like to posit the following as examples of “uncommon respect.” 1. Dear gay people, please show uncommon respect and stop displaying yourselves all over. Don’t force your gayness [...]

• Erykah Badu: The Pornography of National Life

  Posted: August 20, 2010, 5:58 am by keguro

  What characterizes pornography is not its erotic content but its masturbatory privacy.— Michael Bell, 2000 At a moment when we are debating what counts as “hallowed ground,” it might be useful to relocate the scene of the discussion, and Erykah Badu’s recent $500 fine is a great point of departure. Badu was fined for stripping [...]

• A Scheme

  Posted: August 20, 2010, 3:21 am by keguro

  I am here today my friends to tell you That the time is coming When all people, regardless of colour or class, will have           at least one Barry Manilow record. Benjamin Zephaniah, “I Have a Scheme,” (Propa Propaganda, 1996)

• Jamia Mosque

  Posted: August 19, 2010, 3:03 pm by keguro

  Sits in the heart of Nairobi. I grew up around and in the shadow of its architecture. Every day and increasingly, I miss its comforting presence. I miss knowing that Islam sits at the center of my home city. I miss a home city whose architecture reflects its religious diversity. I miss the deep sense [...]

• Un-Writing Fanon

  Posted: August 17, 2010, 9:40 am by keguro

  In “Critical Fanonism,” Henry Louis Gates, Jr. argues that Frantz Fanon is a Rorschach blot. Available for any and (almost) all appropriations.  I suspect that interpretation has hit a wall. The Journal of Pan African Studies recently issued a call for papers (cfp) on Fanon. I considered submitting something. Whether it be from the manuscript [...]

• E.W. Blyden and Afro-Modernity

  Posted: August 16, 2010, 2:36 am by keguro

  In the later nineteenth century, Edward Wilmot Blyden (love the name Wilmot!) theorized two routes to Afro-modernity: one through Christianity and the other through Islam. He captured what others later in the century and early in the twentieth would describe as the great struggle for African souls. At that point, it was not clear whether [...]

• It’s Raining Clones

  Posted: August 14, 2010, 6:05 am by keguro

  Following a recent visit to one of DC’s amazing museums—free, and so good, and so good for you—my best friend commented that we must have sounded terribly homophobic. We had set ourselves up in a prime little spot to have a snack (museum prices) and had started tracking the gay couples. All three thousand of [...]

• Take that, Duchamp!

  Posted: August 13, 2010, 7:20 pm by keguro

  The tent, which I carried with the Expedition, has been left at Falaba at the urgent request of the King. When it was erected in his town persons came from all quarters to see it, and the King concluded that it ought to be left in his town as a specimen of British art. – [...]

• What Happened This Summer: An Homage

  Posted: August 12, 2010, 8:07 am by keguro

  I did not visit Cucu. She died last year. And also that other Cucu died. And you know, the other one, me I don’t like her. And I did not climb any trees to pick fruit. Though I spent the summer with fruits and fruit-lovers. I did not fall out of the tree that I [...]

• Premature Reflections on Teaching

  Posted: August 11, 2010, 1:17 pm by keguro

  This fall I teach the Harlem Renaissance and Caribbean Literature, the one ostensibly a nation-based class the other necessarily transnational. To maintain some semblance of sanity, I have restricted the Caribbean class to 20th C. writing and have selected a limited number of authors (Louise Bennett, Nicolas Guillén, Claude McKay, Mayotte Capecia, C.L.R. James, Samuel [...]

• Ngwatilo Mawiyoo, “At Stake”

  Posted: August 2, 2010, 5:21 pm by keguro

  there is no peace that we fight to create. with arms of flesh we must be bound, one to another; no fire, no blade, no tongue nor hate to harm. do not fallen comrades and enemies, newborns desperate, crying the first of arid tears, and that enduring promise of hell (Our creation/ God given/ Devil [...]

• Ngwatilo Mawiyoo, “Two Clocks”

  Posted: August 2, 2010, 4:16 pm by keguro

  Ngwatilo Mawiyoo, “Two Clocks”

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes