Who are the ba kabaka? They are italicised-the reading voice has signalled that we are dealing with another language. ‘The ba kabaka did not give away their thrones like that,’ Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi writes on page four of the Oneworld edition of her critically acclaimed debut novel, Kintu. How do we read texts that are written to be listened to, to be heard? What reading practice does Aidoo’s writing philosophy demand from us? How do we read with our ears? … my stories are written to be heard, primarily’. In an interview from October 1967, Ama Ata Aidoo declares that, to her, oral literature is an end in itself: ‘I believe that when a writer writes … it should be possible for the writer to sit before an audience and tell them the story … We don’t always have to write for readers, we can write for listeners. What voice do you hear when you read a written text silently? Does this voice change depending on the text you are reading? Is the language in which you hear what you read always the same as the one presented to you on the page? Do you sometimes hear the text in a different language? Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire reviews Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu, which was recently awarded a prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction.
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