Case Study: Teaching Two Caribbean Texts in Kenyan Universities

Abstract

This essay uses Dionne Brand’s In Another Place, Not Here and Erna Brodber’s Myal to discuss the approaches I used in teaching black diasporic literature in two Kenyan universities. It argues that the best approaches are those that encourage students to use higher-order learning processes spontaneously and create an appropriate teaching environment suited to the region’s historical, geographical, and cultural context vis-à-vis black diasporic cultural, historical, geographical, and literary backgrounds for students with some grounding in African literature. The selected methods take into account challenges concerning students’ access to learning resources, students’ individual strengths and interests, medium or large class sizes, and the need to provide adequate background information for literatures that originate from different geographic, linguistic, and cultural contexts than those of the class members. In Another Place, Not Here and Myal illustrate the main concerns and issues that arise when teaching black diasporic literatures in Kenyan universities. Although the texts are mostly taught within an implied comparatist, multi-disciplinary, and translational mode, they also provide context for postcolonial inquiry into the wider black cultural and historical encounter with European imperialism and the resultant power dynamics that continue today.