ALA Lecture: April 25 ‒ Lynda Gichanda Spencer

On the ALA YouTube Channel

In 2002, one of Uganda’s most prolific authors Goretti Kyomuhendo published a novella titled Whispers from Vera. On the 20th anniversary of the novella, she re-published the novella as a novel. In both narratives, Kyomuhendo, like Mariama Bâ did in So Long a Letter, offers us portrayals of different romantic relationships and marriage. Told from the perspective of the eponymous protagonist Vera, the reader is introduced to her circle of female friends and family who are involved in different love relationships. They are either married, divorced, separated, cohabiting, single but looking, or single and not interested in love relationships or entanglements. Kyomuhendo’s representation of love is a critique of heteronormative relationships in a patriarchal society that seeks to continually confine women to particular gender roles. In this presentation I would like to examine some of these love relationships by focussing on the protagonist’s romantic relationships and marriage. I hope to demonstrate that, although Vera constantly seeks advice from her female friends and family members, she has strong opinions on love, intimacy and marriage. I will argue that it is through the depiction of love, and self-love, that Vera and some of her friends are able to subvert these traditional roles and assert their independence and identity.

Lynda Gichanda Spencer is an associate professor in the Department of Literary Studies in English at Rhodes University. Her research interests include contemporary women’s popular writing, popular culture in Africa, African women’s writing, Eastern African fiction, African cultural studies and transnational literatures. She is co-convenor of the African Feminisms (Afems) Conference (with Sharlene Khan), co-editor of The Journal of Eastern African Cultural and Literary Studies, a member of the Mashariki Literary and Cultural Studies Board, and on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of the African Literature Association. She was principal investigator (with Minesh Dass) of Urban Connections in African Popular Imaginaries which was funded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2017-2023), and principal investigator (with Ashleigh Harris) of Contemporary Africa Texts and Contexts: Decolonising the Archive, Genre and Method (2018-2022), funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT). She currently serves as the Gender and Diversity Officer of the African Multiple Research Centre at Rhodes University.