CENTRING RAPE AND TRAUMA IN GORETTI KYOMUHENDO’S SECRETS NO MORE

Abstract

Criticisms of Secrets no More by Goretti Kyomuhendo need to unpack its considerable promises for greater visibility for female writers in Uganda and an enlarged scope of creative engagement for the East African literature in general. To this extent, corresponding critical attention need to be deployed to reinforce well-placed contentions, mediate critical attempts that grapples with the novel’s unconventional narrativity, and inspire a need to locate and push other frontiers of knowledge of the “textual field”.[1] The study will argue for a need to better appreciate Secrets no More as a piece of art that explores the genocide phase in the history of Rwanda with candour. It will aver that very much unlike many postcolonial African fictional narratives,  the novel’s strength is in its uniqueness of engagement with history in a way that readers’ emotions and sensibilities are subjected to an unusual test of strength for confronting the reality of one of the most debased human conditions. The paper privileges a view of the history of the Rwandan genocide through the lenses of trauma and foregrounding of the peculiar emotional burden of a typical female victim of the genocide together with its aftermaths. This way, the study will present the novel as a major departure from a consistent narration of violence which dominated between 1969 and 1998 – a new form of writing which earned it an unmerited reductive assessment as a “vaginalist” creative addition to the East African literature.