Publications

2021

Ong’ang’a, MA, Indangasi H, Kitata M.  2021.  Manipulation of Narrative Paradigm in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Wrestling with the Devil. Hybrid Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies. . 3(1)
Kitata, M.  2021.  Re-narrating the Eastern Africa Coast through music on YouTube: Vitali Maembe’s Little Town Bagamoyo. African Identities. :1-16. Abstract

The Eastern Africa coast has been a complex contact theatre between overseas peoples and the local population. These interconnections have over time produced mixed identities and cultural adaptation processes, expression, and transmission which are foundations of present-day Eastern Africa histories. The musician – historian’s account reflects the coastal identities as not simply painful and isolated historical creations upon a place, but also a part of global processes of cultural productions and affirmation. Through YouTube video, the coastal musician retells the coast’s history thereby preserving memory and lessons leant. The creative artist unveils the history – in an effort to gain inspiration from a cultural and commercial identity formation process. This paper, through Vitali Maembe’s YouTube music video, Little Town Bagamoyo, seeks to highlight the narrative that music exposes in retelling East African coast

2020

Kitata, M.  2020.  The Problematics of Naming in Kenyan Creative Narratives. Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies. 6(1):1-15. Abstract

There is a tendency in Kenyan literature, which can be defined as ahistorical ethnopolitanism. In this approach the writer chooses to use names of characters and places that indicate an attempt to see the Kenyan community from a distance. The result is that, in the push for inclusivity in works of literature, the very idea an authentic record of history and self-knowledge is lost: Real actors are alienated from the story of the history of the country; the background loses its referential significance; fantasy contexts are created to overlay and erase the real; and an atmosphere of namelessness is prioritised. This paper is a preliminary critique of these traits in contemporary Kenyan creative narrative. It seeks to highlight how such an approach – whose aim is to create a text that sidesteps ethnic politics – paradoxically undermines the writers’ efforts.
Kitata, M.  2020.  Sexualising the performance, objectifying the performer: The twerk dance in Kenya. Agenda. 34(3):11-21. Abstract

Shifting arenas of dance performance and youths’ counterculture have brought the twerk to the internet, thus exposing it to the discourse of cultural imperialism, appropriation, and cultural resistance. This has changed the symbolism of the art form: from a performance meant for celebration, to a dance of sexual rage. The media associates the dance with bottom provocation, prostitution or celebrity achievement stories − rarely celebrating the intellect, aesthetics or the expression of freedom in it. From a western point of view, twerking is overly sexualised and the performers participants in a cultural notoriety – thus, objectifying it. However, in its original context it is primarily a dance for festive celebrations. As a form of artistic expression resisting cultural destruction in Kenya, twerk is a way of re-politicising the African female body, and decolonising it from the male, western influenced gaze. Sexual expression in it is …

2014

Kitata, M.  2014.  Rhetorical Strategies in the Novels of Chinua Achebe. , Nairobi: University of Nairobi

2000

  2000.  Narrative Techniques in Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters. , Nairobi: University of Nairobi

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