AN EXAMINATION OF THE REPRESENTATIONS OF NATURE IN THE SHORT STORIES OF AWARD WINNING ZAMBIANS

Alex Simpande

Abstract


The short story scene of award winners in Zambia is dominated by female writers. Chicken, by Efemia Chela, was nominated for the Caine Prize for African writing in 2014. A Hand to Hold, by Mali Kambandu, won the 2018 Kalemba Prize, a local award for Zambian writers. The Sack, by Namwali Serpell, won the Caine Prize in 2015 and Madam’s Sister, by Mbozi Haimbe, was the African regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2019. Studies between literature and the physical environment have become an area of interest for many writers. Following the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005 – 2014) and Agenda 2030, this study examines the representations of nature and ecocritical issues in the works of four award winning Zambian short story writers. Using the model by Glotfelty (1996), the examination addresses two issues (1) how nature is represented in four award winning short stories (2) the ecocritical issues raised in the short stories. Through a qualitative, textual analysis of the short stories, the findings highlight contributions that literature by Zambian writers can make towards the discourse on sustainability issues and raise awareness about nature and environmental concerns of the 21st century.

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Keywords


ecocriticism, physical environment, nature, short story, Zambia

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References


Bressler, C. E. (1999). Literary criticism: An introduction to theory and practice. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Buell, L. (1996). The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.

Chela, E. (2014). “Chicken”. https://medium.com/@efemiachristiana/chicken-99b134a6251b

Haimbe, M. (2019). “Madam’s Sister”. https://granta.com/madams-sister/

Glotfelty, C. and Fromm, H. (1996). (Eds.). The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens and London: University of Georgia.

Kambandu, M. (2018). “A Hand to Hold”. https://kalembashortstoryprize.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/ahandtoholdfinal.pdf

Khareen B. Culajara. (2016). Exploring Representations of Nature in Literature: Ecocritical Themes in the Fiction of Satur Apoyon. International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, 2(4).

Serpell, N. (2014). “The Sack.” Africa 39. Ed. Ellah Allfrey. London: Bloomsbury.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejls.v2i2.227

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