New special section of English Studies in Africa
African Street Literatures Blog
by nicklashallen
1y ago
Nicklas Hållén (Karlstad University, Sweden) and Charles Kebaya (Machakos Univeristy, Kenya) have co-edited a section of the next issue of English Studies in Africa. The section is about “the street as archive” in contemporary popular culture and literature from Nairobi. It consists of the following articles: The Boda Boda (R)age: Economies of Affection in the Motorbike Taxis of Kenya – Joyce Nyairo Nairobi Street-Aesthetics: Distance and Proximity in the Aesthetics of Everyday Life in the Green City – Nicklas Hållén (open access) Journeying through Nairobi: Mapping the City through ..read more
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Sound Pressure Levels
African Street Literatures Blog
by nicklashallen
2y ago
Sound of Nairobi write that: We want to tell you about our new project Sound Pressure Levels. It is a field recording project documenting the current political atmosphere in Kenya. The coming presidential elections in August 2022 in Kenya are already raising political and social temperatures. In Kenya‘s political past, ethnicity has been narrated by mainstream national and international media as a defining factor for winning an election, one which would be instrumentalised by politicians in their campaigns. Now a new narrative is on the rise: „Hustlers vs. Dynasties“, suggesting ..read more
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Comics from the Lockdown is out!
African Street Literatures Blog
by nicklashallen
3y ago
Our collection Comics from the Lockdown is finally out. This collection was made possible by our collaboration with Comic Republic and was put together by Mike Frangos, Nicklas Hållén and Jasmine Mattey. You can read/download the collection below. comics-from-the-lockdown-25-compDownload ..read more
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Jasmine Mattey in conversation with Mike Maphoto, author of Diary of a Zulu Girl.
African Street Literatures Blog
by africanstreetliterature
3y ago
Can you please share a little bit about your background as a writer? Writing has always been a passion of mine. I was first influenced by the Harry Potter series as I was a fan of fantasy fiction. The first books I ever wrote were part of a three-book series of  fantasy fiction titled Lucinda after the main character. This was 2004, I went as far as getting a British critic for it and actually got really good reviews. Being from Africa unfortunately meant I struggled to get it published as it was a book where the storyline was based in England. African publishing houses prefer a more lite ..read more
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Interview with comic book artist Bill Masuku, by Jasmine Mattey.
African Street Literatures Blog
by nicklashallen
3y ago
Can you tell us a little bit about your background as an artist and writer for readers who haven’t yet read your work?    Sure! I am not formally or traditionally trained in any art form or even writing for that matter. I’m a self-taught artist, which means that a majority of my learning comes from a combination of trial and error, searching for YouTube artists giving out tips, taking screenshots of art that I like to use as reference, doing quick sketches of people at the airport, and watching behind the scenes of animation and film.  As a writer I used to h ..read more
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Interview with Sophia from Sound of Nairobi.
African Street Literatures Blog
by nicklashallen
3y ago
Sound of Nairobi is an open-access archive containing recordings from around Nairobi. By clicking different points on an interactive map, you can listen to the sonic environment in different neighbourhoods in the city. I talked to Sophia, who is one of the people behind the project. Can you tell us a little bit about how this project started? Who initiated it and how did the idea come up?  As so often it started with conversations and shared interests. For a few years Raphael Kariuki and I, we have been exchanging stories, marveling and listening to the sounds of Nairobi. Noticing that ..read more
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Comics from the lockdown
African Street Literatures Blog
by nicklashallen
3y ago
Check this out! My friend Mike Classon Frangos and I have launched a comics contest in collaboration with Comics Republic in Lagos ..read more
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Notes from the Lockdown has been printed in Nairobi
African Street Literatures Blog
by nicklashallen
3y ago
I just got news from my friend Ray Mwihaki that she has finished printing and putting together 300 paper copies of Notes from the Lockdown. They will be available from some street book vendors in the Nairobi CBD, bookshops and other stores around Umoja and from the World’s Loudest Library in the Alchemist, Parklands Rd shortly. Give it a few days and they should be available for purchase. I will not collect any money from sales – the profits go to people who have been involved in putting together the collection and distributing it ..read more
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Drawings from the lockdown
African Street Literatures Blog
by nicklashallen
4y ago
Attention artists, illustrators and cartoonists in Africa! After the incredible response to Notes from the lockdown, we decided to ask around one more time, this time for comics, drawings, illustrations or any other graphic material you might have been working on during or after the lockdowns. Doodling and drawing are excellent ways to pass time during quarantine. And as the comic book artist Kriota Willberg recently wrote on her blog, “practically any comics that you make these days could qualify as graphic medicine.” Nowadays, it’s not just the coronavirus that takes up our attention, but al ..read more
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Notes from the lockdown
African Street Literatures Blog
by nicklashallen
4y ago
Writers in Africa, sikiliza tafadhali. Boredom is the mother of invention. I hear from people that they suffer from writer’s block at the moment, as people are stuck at home or upcountry, as the Kenyans say, so I thought I would ask around if people have anything they’d written in quarantine that I could publish on this blog: Facebook updates about writers’ current situation, poetry, scribbled down thoughts, flash/micro fiction pieces, whatever they’d have lying around. Now however, the project has become a little more ambitious. Now I am thinking: a kind of Pan-African collection of texts fro ..read more
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