Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya (Social History of Africa Series)

This book challenges the conventions that undergird the academic study of literature. Where literary scholars' method separates the book from its readership, Creative Writing explores how different kinds of texts were interpreted, used, and recomposed in real-life political discourse. Where social historians often disparage the study of literature as an elitist occupation, Peterson demonstrates how ordinary people used texts to act creatively in their own world. Creative Writing challenges the conventions that undergird the academic study of literature. Where literary scholars' method separates the book from its readership, Creative Writing explores how different kinds of texts were interpreted, used, and recomposed in real-life political discourse. And where social historians often disparage the study of literature as an elitist occupation, Creative Writing demonstrates how ordinary people used texts to act creatively in their own world. As an interdisciplinary essay on the political uses of texts, Creative Writing will draw interest from scholars of comparative literature, from readers of Ngugi wa Thiong'o's fiction, and from historians interested in the nationalist imagination.