Tag: Kelvin J. Shachile

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Books Non-Fiction Personalities publishing Releases Reviews

Rehema Kiteto’s journey of daring

TITLE: Daring

AUTHOR: Rehema Malemba Kiteto

GENRE: Memoir

PUBLISHER: The Writers Guild-Kenya

REVIEWER: Kelvin Jaluo Shachile

Coming of age novels must be among the best books we recommend to teenagers and young adults. My assumption for this has always been that coming of age novels are books and stories that allow these young people to look at their lives at the same time reflect on the stories and characters they read about. But then that is fiction, it might be a great reflection of their lives but there is a thin line between those stories and the realities they encounter in their lives.

I have thought for days since I first read Rehema Kiteto’s new memoir titled “Daring” and I have settled to declare it a coming of age story in full realness.

Kenyan author and administrator, Rehema Kiteto made news some years back after her appointment as the youngest administrator in the country at just the age of 24. Having known her for years since I worked with her on our first book “Hell in the Backyard and Other stories” published by Queenex Publishers in 2019, I celebrated this milestone for her.

Days later, as news spread even wider and curiosity in the country spread in wonder of who this mysterious girl was, I started receiving calls and emails from people to get a comment about her. That scared not only me but others close to her.

Some people had theories of how she might have got the job while others remained in awe of her life for they knew her somehow. Daring is a story the country has been waiting for. She writes about her life from childhood to the government administrator she is today. Personalised enough that we get to learn about her encounters with people, love, expectations, disappointments, her blossoming and becoming.

She answers the questions the public had for her since her appointment while situating her story to remind us that it was not an accident she got here. It is actually something that was long overdue. With the right qualifications, experience and values, Rehema’s arrival into the public scene was not an overnight success, it is as she writes, a journey of daring.

She however clarifies that what people said about her did not concern her and the misinterpretations are not something to address. She wrote Daring to dare others to journey on with strength and resilience.

She writes that “My concern was for the young people who might read those online blogs, believe them and throw away their tools of hard work.”  Daring is not only a promising book for teenagers and young adults, it is great for general readership with a promise to resurrect hope in readers who might have in anyway been threatened by the quality of Kenyan self-published books in this recent while. The most exceptional coming of age memoir I have read so far.

The 197 pages long memoir is among the best self-published books I have ever read from any Kenyan. The skillful craft and the way the publisher upheld the integrity and standards of the industry warmed my heart as a book lover. Launched on 25th May of 2024, this new book within a very short time has found itself in the hands of very many people and in places I had never seen memoirs being celebrated, even the Senate of Kenya. I dare say, a well-received memoir from a young person in Kenya threatening to become a national bestseller.

Kelvin Shachile is a writer and curator. He co-authored Hell in the Backyard and other stories (Queenex Publishers, 2019). His writing has appeared in; The Armageddon and Other Stories anthology, A Country of Broken Boys anthology and The Best New African Poets 2018 anthology. Shachile has been featured and published by some of Africa’s finest literary platforms including Agbowo’, Writers Space Africa, Kalahari Review, Akewi’ and elsewhere. Long listed for African Writers Awards and Shortlisted for the Wakini Kuria Prize in 2019. He has worked for Lolwe and briefly for Agbowo’. He is well known for his pamphlet the Game of Writing published and distributed by African Writers Development Trust in 2019, which was reviewed as ‘a bible for new African writers.’ He currently serves on the editorial board of Fiery Scribe Review.

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Books Fiction News Reviews

Kwenzi Gizani should be urgent reading for all

Title: Kwenzi Gizani

Author: Prof. Kithaka wa Mberia

Genre: Play (Tamthilia)

Publisher: Marimba Publications Limited

Reviewer: Kelvin J. Shachile

Kwenzi Gizani is a Kiswahili play that follows the proceedings of the pursuit of justice by Chagi, whose daughter Kanevu has been sexually assaulted by her father Mkando. Chagi stands her ground to seek for clarity and justice as guided by the law but she comes to encounter the real custodians of mercy, each coming with well-structured reasons that have been grounded in either tradition and/or in religion and sometimes in acts of corruption. The play interrogates the length and depth the society goes to bury crimes that while they seem so forgivable and easy to be left to go live to haunt the real victims that carry with them the baggage of shame, stigma and physical pain.

The book highlights contemporary themes that acknowledges the mastery that Prof. Kithaka wa Mberia carries with him since I first encountered his work years back when I read his highly acclaimed play Kifo Kisimani, that was examined by the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) as a set book for secondary schools in the country. I applaud the urgency that mental health has been given in this book; the honest portrayal that accepts the deficit of understanding and patience by some people in the society who disregard it and yet still showcases the availability of those that understand and offer valuable support that should not be taken for granted.

The debate regarding the history of character is laid open and left for the readers to find clarity regarding the dynamics of identity. That sometimes, the people we know are not really who we think they are until they have been offered a chance to be themselves. The question that stays with me is whether the past history has the strength to be used as reason to warrant the award of mercy for someone who has committed a crime. And whether traditional and religious negotiations are possible means to settle high caliber crimes that happen within families and religious groups.

Chagi’s mother, Nyatu is the most memorable character for me in this play, her own contributions reveal the selfishness that people have regarding their own reputation even when the dignity of others is being tarnished.

Other than for those above, Kwenzi Gizani is an accumulation of very important themes from corruption in government authorities to the struggles children go through in schools in the aftermath of them being victims of various vices.

The book reflects the modern society and initiates debates of high potential that require the attention of thinkers, intellectuals, government officials and the entire society to rethink crime, its impacts and the pursuit for justice. I highly recommend Kwenzi Gizani for general readership. It is an important and very urgent piece of literature that needs to be accessed.

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Books Fiction Reviews

Americanah through the eye of a geographer

Title: Americanah

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Reviewer: Kelvin J. Shachile

Unlike Half of a Yellow Sun that made her cry, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes her third novel Americanah as a book that made her laugh. Published in 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf, the voluminous text is a book that made me think. Right from its opening, Americanah displayed an appreciation of spatial variations; a core concept in geography.  The understanding of how both physical and human environments are different across places. The book that has been reviewed by many as one of the most powerful love stories ever written, Chimamanda doesn’t give us a fairytale thought regarding the magic that love can create, but invites serious debates regarding the underlying human experiences and cultural differences that most of the time is shielded from us in some romance stories. Fiction, I have always believed was invented to give us the platform to retell life’s experiences and not just entertain.

Spanning decades, right from the times of military dictatorship in Nigeria to a new democratic country, Chimamanda serves us the human experiences of innocence, love, privilege, dissatisfaction, immigration, disappointments, re-invention, success and reunion. The story is the life journey of Ifemelu, a strong spirited young Nigerian who moves to the United States for her University education but meets a new life upon the realization that she is not just a person; she is a black person and in her later writings on her blog, narrates what it means to hold that label. The book also carries the story of her lover, Obinze who tries his luck to get a visa to the US but fails. He lands in the UK and has the experience of his own as an undocumented immigrant.

Chimamanda carries us from a campus in Nigeria to the US and UK at the same time with fine details that introduce the readers to a critical task of having a keen scrutiny regarding the environments of these spaces. Reading Americanah wasn’t only a journey into understanding the politics of black hair, identity and immigration. It was a reintroduction to the fictional approach of learning and teaching social, cultural and political geography. Chimamanda doesn’t spare the truth regarding what poverty looks like in both Africa and United States. Privilege and social classes are defined. The crossing of borders, transnational encounters and misconceptions of abroad re-initiated in me the eagerness of determining truth and stereotypes and the need for offering clarity regarding locations and spaces while learning and teaching globalization.

I have felt, on so many occasions that Chimamanda writing Americanah was a task of passion and intention; to clarify the narratives of spaces. In one of the classes while discussing about ‘Minorities in Senior Countries’, Americanah became a reference text regarding opportunities and limitations for people from still developing countries who flee home in search for better lives in countries that are considered more developed; regardless of the outcome story, we should all appreciate the existing truth that dominates this text, we should endeavor to teach honest and deep critical aspects of socio-cultural geographies of the world with appreciation of how real human experiences should be made central.

Kelvin J. Shachile is a Kenyan writer. Co-author of Hell in the Backyard and Other stories. Kelvin has been published in anthologies including The Best New African Poets 2018 anthology, The Country of Broken Boys Anthology, The Armageddon and other stories and in Agbowo’, Mwangaza, Kalahari Review, Writers Space Africa and elsewhere.  He holds a B.A from Maasai Mara University and currently pursuing his M.A at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology. He was Longlisted for the 2019 African Writers Awards-Children’s literature Category and shortlisted for Wakini Kuria Award for Children’s literature.