Reading Okot p’Bitek through eyes taught to look away

In 1931, Okot p’Bitek was born in Gulu, northern Uganda. It is perhaps fitting that a man who would spend much of his life questioning what Africans had been taught to admire was himself born at a rather interesting intersection of worlds. His father, Jebedayo Opi, was a school teacher shaped by the colonial education system. His mother, Cerina Lacwaa, was an Acholi singer, dancer and storyteller, deeply rooted in the oral traditions of her people. In Song of Lawino, first written in Acholi and later translated into English, p’Bitek gave us Lawino, a woman bewildered by a husband who […] The post Reading Okot p’Bitek through eyes taught to look away appeared first on African Arguments.