User:Andyisediting

I’m interested in how literatures began in Africa. Simon Gikandi and others provide an overview of this topic and why it is problematic.

My focus here is largely on early novels in African and European languages that appeared in the first half of the twentieth century. To improve coverage of this topic on Wikipedia, I try to expand or create pages on:

• biographies of African authors
• descriptions of their work
• information about their publishers

Increasingly, my approach is to select a country and exhaust available sources before moving on to the next. In doing so, I hope to address in a small way the geographical, racial and gender biases on Wikipedia.

Malawi

My current focus is on Malawi, and my most recent work is a new page for the Malawi Writers Group and an expansion of Aubrey Kachingwe. This followed a previous entry for Samuel Josia Ntara that I will revisit shortly.

I will continue to work on this during 2026.

Lesotho

I was able to greatly expand the page for Thomas Mofolo, including the addition of several images. I also created a page for Everitt Lechesa Segoete, who taught Mofolo and soon followed him in publishing his own novel. I then developed the stub for Atwell Sidwell Mopeli-Paulus, who's 1953 novel Blanket Boy's Moon was an international bestseller., and expanded the page for Ntšeliseng 'Masechele Khaketla, which then benefitted from many additional edits (and a pronunciation file) from others. Finally, I created new pages for Sebolai Matlosa and Kemuel Edward Ntsane.

Ethiopia

I strayed from my usual focus to create a page for Machbuba, an Oromo girl who was taken as a slave to Germany and who helped to lay the foundations for Oromo language studies. I then developed pages for Ethiopian authors who wrote in Amharic and English: Sahle Sellassie Berhane Mariam wrote the first novel in the Chaha language, Senedu Gebru, Abe Gubegna, and Daniachew Worku.

Kenya

I began to greatly expand the entry for Rebekah Njau, Kenya's first female playwright, before creating a new page for David Gian Maillu, who is considered East Africa's most prolific writer. I also worked on entries for Mugo Gatheru and Parmenas Githendu Mockerie.

Zimbabwe

I have developed the page for Alexander Kanengoni and also created a page for Joyce Simango, the first female Shona novelist.

Book series

One of the earliest tasks I undertook on Wikipedia was to develop the already detailed entry for the African Writers Series, which is where I first read many novels from the continent. From that series, I created pages for A Naked Needle, the second English language novel by Nuruddin Farah, and developed the page for his first novel From a Crooked Rib. In both cases, I did the same for Burning Grass, a novel by Cyprian Ekwensi.

I also created an entry for the Pan African Pocket Poets series, and will likely return to document other books series at some point.

Others

Finally, I've worked on the following biographies:

Eddie Iroh who is a Nigerian novelist and journalist best known internationally for his trilogy of war novels: Forty-eight Guns for the General (1976), Toads of War (1979) and The Siren in the Night (1982). All were published in Heinemann's African Writers Series.

Martha Mvungi who was a Tanzanian novelist, short-story writer, academic and teacher. She wrote in both Kiswahili and English.

Bediako Asare who is a Ghanaian journalist and author who published the 1969 novel Rebel.

Dugmore Boetie, the pen name of South African journalist, writer, and musician Douglas Mahonga Buti who is best known for Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost, or Tshotsholoza, a fictionalised autobiographical book first published in 1969. Like a number of the subjects I write about, the authorship of this work is contested.

A. W. Kayper-Mensah who was a Ghanaian poet, broadcaster and diplomat. He published several collections of poetry in English and German, and was included in various anthologies of African poetry

Sources

• Gikandi, Simon (2021). "African". In Feeney, Denis; Lande, Joel B. (eds.). How Literatures Begin: A Global History. Princeton University Press. pp. 323–345. ISBN 978-0-691-21984-4.
• le Roux, Elizabeth (2020). "Africa". In Eliot, Simon; Rose, Jonathan (eds.). A Companion to the The History of the Book. Blackwell. pp. 349–362. ISBN 9781119018179.
• Wenzel, Jennifer (2021). "Zones of Occult Instability: The Birth of the Novel in Africa". Novel. 54 (3): 335–361. doi:10.1215/00295132-9353730.

This user has been on Wikipedia for 4 years, 6 months and 15 days.