Epistolary role in East African literary works on HIV/AIDS

Abstract

In East Africa, an epistle as a base for literary analysis is not common. It appears, scholars who have analysed works of fiction or drama relating to HIV/AIDS scourge, have not considered letters inserted in those works as worth examining. Yet, letters inserted in such creative writings as a style to expound different themes are often encountered. Written artistic works on HIV/AIDS in both Kiswahili and English languages have employed this style to illustrate the HIV/AIDS crisis, as lived by characters in their fictional world. Following Wolf Schmid’s theory on narratology, supplemented with Rosenmeyer’s analytical framework (2003) the article uses an epistolary analysis as a technique for identifying themes in a literary work. The argument developed throughout this article is that epistles should be taken as a point of departure in identifying and examining different voices in the narratives on HIV/AIDS on one hand, and in understanding the psycho-social challenges which fictional characters face in their creative or imaginative world. Through this theory the epistles are juxtaposed to the Kiswahili idiom: barua ni nusu ya kuonana (literally translates as “a letter is seeing each other partially”). It would appear that the reader sees fictional characters in HIV/AIDS creative works from a certain perspective as focalized by the letters. The voices which the readers hear from these characters are all directed the letters used. Following this theory it appears that the themes related to HIV/AIDS are related to or influenced by the inserted epistles.