Papers by Sarala Krishnamurthy
Feminist encounters, Aug 31, 2023
HAKAHANA ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY BY HUGH ELLIS Windhoek: Wordweaver Publishing House. 2012 A superb p... more HAKAHANA ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY BY HUGH ELLIS Windhoek: Wordweaver Publishing House. 2012 A superb publication, with a thoughtful juxtaposition of brilliant photo-graphs and refreshing lines of poetry, the slim anthology Hakahana by Hugh Ellis is one that you will feel like dipping into often because the images and words reverberate with music and feeling. This collection of poetry is the ruminations of a young white Namibian, who comes to settle down in his motherland after growing up in the UK. As such, his poetry spans a period of nearly 15 years and speaks of issues and concerns which are intensely personal to the poet. All the poems express Hugh's engagement with his surroundings. "Hakahana" is an Otjiherero word meaning, "hurry up", and that is what the poet is urging all Namibians to do in his poems. In Hakahana, the poems depict various moods; they are lyrical, inspiring and melodious at the same time. Reading the poems one catches a glimpse of a sensitive spirit, of a soul in transition, fleeting, delicate, but with a strong presence. In Namibia, the father of Namibian poetry, Mvula ya Nangolo is writing his poetry even today. Ya Nangolo's poetry can be described as the first stage in the development of creative writing in Namibia. The themes that he explores are mainly those of struggle and independence, and a desire to return to his motherland from exile. Twenty years down the line, poets are comfortable with their new found freedom, but the issues that concern them are those of poverty, corruption and discrimination. Hugh Ellis belongs to the new generation of Namibian poets who ponder upon things that are happening around them. To transform everyday reality into something poetic is a rare talent and Ellis is suffused with an ability to transmogrify a quotidian occurrence into words that sing and echo a sentiment that an ordinary lay person can identify with. But that is what poetry does. Poetry helps you to see the world better and in a new way. Formalists called this technique, "defamiliarisation". If I could identify an overarching theme for this collection, I would most definitely say that it is Loneliness. This loneliness arises because the poet suffers an identity crisis being a white Namibian in post independent, post apartheid Namibia. He writes as an insider, but at the same time, he feels alienated from his surroundings and the people, therefore his feelings towards his motherland are ambivalent. Riding on the cusp of this ambivalence he says: "I used to want to be black, But now it is ok to be red You see, my great, great grandfathers were workers They struggled as much as anyone else ... That is how independence came My father wrote books about repression and liberation But that's all his story, not mine." His anguish in not being able to fit into an all black society and culture leads him into exploring indigenous language and culture: "I tried to learn all the languages and culture But I almost forgot my own." The poet has a desire to overcome the loneliness that tears his inner being, therefore he seeks solace in discovering nooks and crannies in his country, which will fill the emptiness within. But he is not a creature of nature; rather, he is an urban animal. The poems evoke his surroundings in a unique way. He does not describe the landscape as poets usually do. Rather, in his perorations, he explores the urban jungle which quickens his response to life itself. He states: "I wish at times my vehicle had wings So that I could rise above this mess And see things in a bigger frame Like presidents in their executive jets. …
BRILL eBooks, Jul 15, 2022
... Psy Ela Fear of showing emotion P20 He treated Ikemefuna as he treated everybody else with a ... more ... Psy Ela Fear of showing emotion P20 He treated Ikemefuna as he treated everybody else with a heavy hand DD Psy Enh Strict/fair Rep P21 And that was the year Okonkwo broke the peace and was punished DD Phy Ela Anger Impulsive P22 Okonkwo tried to explain to him ...
... In the colonial situation Mugo, the subaltern voice, finds expression and Ngugi secures his s... more ... In the colonial situation Mugo, the subaltern voice, finds expression and Ngugi secures his salvation in Christian terms through confession of his guilt and its expiation. ... Eds. Williams, Patrick and Laura Chrisman. Columbia, GA: Columbia University Press, 1994. ...
ABSTRACT There is an ongoing debate on learners’ poor performance in English at the Polytechnic o... more ABSTRACT There is an ongoing debate on learners’ poor performance in English at the Polytechnic of Namibia. The main challenge that the institution faces to train faculty is addressed by the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) which has an Academic Support Unit in charge of organizing teacher training workshops, special lectures and several other activities. While some members of staff believe that it is impossible to mark a test without taking cognizance of the language in which it is written, others distinguish between form and content and choose to ignore the language component of a test. This discrepancy of thought has led to skewed results with students scoring brilliantly in their content subjects like Mathematics, Business Management courses, etc, and failing in English. The current state of affairs begs the question: what do we focus upon in our teacher training programs: is it on language or on content?
Matatu, Feb 13, 2020
The Herero Nama Genocide is a painful period in Namibian history and yet it is the period about w... more The Herero Nama Genocide is a painful period in Namibian history and yet it is the period about which several novels have been written in the past ten years. This article examines one of the novels of this period, The Lie of the Land by Jasper Utley, with a view to exploring the ambivalence in its writing. Using witness bearing and the concept of the ‘Other’ in postcolonialism, I investigate the narrator’s language and lay bare the ambiguities in the novel. I trace the path of the eponymous hero from being a witness to the Nama Genocide to an active involvement in the rescue of a Nama woman whom he falls in love with.
Language and Literature, Feb 1, 2010
... She uses ideas from psychoanalysis, feminism, deconstruction, and Marxism, putting the concep... more ... She uses ideas from psychoanalysis, feminism, deconstruction, and Marxism, putting the concepts to good use in her critique. However, it must be added here that reading Bal is not easy considering the fact that she leaps from one concept to another with amazing rapidity and ...
Basler Afrika Bibliographien eBooks, Jun 2, 2022
Midnight's Children has been variously described as a Postmodern novel, Post colonial novel, and ... more Midnight's Children has been variously described as a Postmodern novel, Post colonial novel, and a novel which uses techniques of magic realism, metafiction and historiography. Having won the Booker Prize, the novel has attracted the attention of many critics for its remarkable use of language and the blending of history and story, fact and fiction and, reality and sur-reality. While the novel has been acclaimed as one of the most ingenious and fascinating piece of writing in the modern age and Rushdie has been described as a "juggler of words"(Narasimhaiah:1995), not many critics have focused on the use of lexical items in the novel. It is my argument that an examination of the lexis of Midnight's Children within the ambit of Stylistics, will yield a rich dividend, and an analysis and a study of this kind will add new insights not just to the novel but also to the field of lexicology. Lexicologists are mainly concerned with word-formation and multi word expressions in natural language processing. While the analysis and application of lexicology studies tend to revolve around teaching and transfer of culture, an analysis of the kind suggested above would not only extend the field of Stylistics, but also lexicology as well. Salman Rushdie"s use of the expression "chutnification" epitomizes his use of language in the novel. "Chutney" is an Indian dish, which is a side dish and tangy, adding flavour to the main course of any meal. "Chutney" is a noun form and is understood as such in English. By adding "-fication", Rushdie changes an Indian word into an English one to stand for transformation. Therefore "Chutnification" in the novel means transformation of English having an additional connotation of making the language used in the novel tangy and more flavoursome and exciting. An examination of the lexis of Midnight's Children will, therefore, be a useful exercise in comprehending Rushdie"s inimitable style, as well as understanding the ways by which a language grows. The study, in other words, will contribute to, in particular, a critique of Midnight's Children, and also to the fields of lexicology and morphology.
Set against the back drop of the Belgian Congo made famous by Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad,... more Set against the back drop of the Belgian Congo made famous by Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible depicts the trial and tribulation of a missionary's family and the inner lives of its five women protagonists who travel to Belgian Congo in the wake of the family patriarch, Mr. Price. By presenting the story through the narrative voices of Orleanna Price, the wife of the missionary and her four daughters, Kingsolver explores issues of "double colonisation" of women through colonial and postcolonial times. Western women traveling to Africa during colonization find themselves in a problematic position insofar as they consider themselves superior to the natives or colonized and yet are disempowered within Western patriarchy. In order to cope with the contradictory position in which they find themselves they employ different strategies for survival. The intersection of colonial and feminist discourses in the novel creates ambivalence which is the subject of this paper. Through my analysis of mind style, I hope to reveal the ambivalence in The Poisonwood Bible. I examine the language of the 5 narrators because each one of them has a unique and distinctive voice, thereby creating inner landscapes for each which are as divergent as they are varied. Through this analysis I would like to argue that a woman's position in the colonial and postcolonial world can only be ambivalent and since The Poisonwood Bible depicts this uncertainty, Barbara Kingsolver succeeds as a novelist.
Basler Afrika Bibliographien eBooks, Jun 2, 2022
Springer international handbooks of education, 2018
Basler Afrika Bibliographien eBooks, Jun 2, 2022
Uploads
Papers by Sarala Krishnamurthy