Song of Lawino: Translation, Textuality, and the Making of an African Reading Public

Abstract

This is an essay on the genealogy of Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino and the role it played in the shaping of African literature and its reading public in the age of decolonization. The essay focuses on the engagement of the poem with its implied readers, Okot’s attention to poetic discourse in the shaping of an African public sphere, and the role of translation in the institution of the poem as a work of World Literature.