Jane Tapsubei Creider (born 1940s)
is a Kenyan writer of memoir, fiction, and non-fiction, including articles and books co-authored with her husband Chet. A. Creider on the
Nandi language. She is also an artist.
Background
She had a traditional upbringing as a
Nandi
Nandi may refer to:
People
* Nandy (surname), Indian surname
* Nandi (mother of Shaka) (1760–1827), daughter of Bhebe of the Langeni tribe
* Onandi Lowe (born 1974), Jamaican footballer nicknamed Nandi
* Nandi Bushell (born 2010), South Afri ...
and grew up in Kenya near
Lake Nyanza (formerly Lake Victoria), then after working in
Kisumu and
Nairobi she moved to live in Canada.
Her work as a writer include articles, short stories, a novel and memoir, her first book being the autobiography ''Two Lives: My Spirit and I'', published in 1986. ''Two Lives'' tells of her upbringing as a member of the Nandi tribe, being educated by Christian missionaries, going to live in North America, before eventually marrying a Canadian professor: "The autobiography articulates two main cultural models of identity: the traditional Nandi identity, which is constituted by the spirit world of the ancestors and the extended family, and the autonomous individual, which is a European import into African culture. ... In creating the story of her life, Creider almost inadvertently shows how the contacts between two sometimes incommensurable models of identity have produced out of both modern and traditional materials the nomadic trickster/ethnographer she has become."
Creider's writing has been included in collections such as ''
Daughters of Africa
''Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present'' is a compilation of orature and literature by more than 200 women from Africa and the African diaspora, ...
'' (1992), edited by
Margaret Busby
Margaret Yvonne Busby, , Hon. FRSL (born 1944), also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisherJazzmine Breary"Let' ...
, and ''Fiery Spirits'' (1995), edited by Ayanna Black.
Selected writings
* ''Two Lives: My Spirit and I'' – autobiography (London:
The Women's Press, 1986)
* ''A Grammar of Nandi'' (with Chet A. Creider; Hamburg, 1989)
* ''The Shrunken Dream'' – novel (Toronto, 1993)
* ''A Dictionary of the Nandi Language'' (2001)
References
Further reading
* Ng'eny, Elizabeth C.
"The Depiction of Women Characters in Jane Tapsubei Creider's Novel, ''The Shrunken Dream'': Transcending the Conventional Roles of Traditional Society" University of Nairobi, Kenya, 2010.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Creider, Jane Tapsubei
Year of birth missing (living people)
20th-century Kenyan women writers
20th-century Kenyan writers
21st-century Kenyan women writers
Kenyan women novelists
Kenyan writers
20th-century lexicographers
21st-century lexicographers
Canadian lexicographers
Women lexicographers
Canadian ethnographers
Canadian women memoirists