Jane Tapsubei Creider

Jane Tapsubei Creider (born 1940s){{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/creider-jane-tapsubei-c-1940s|title=Creider, Jane Tapsubei (c. 1940s–)|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia.com|access-date=29 January 2022}} 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.{{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40461875|title=The Past in the Present: Living Biographies of the Nandi|first=Jane Tapsubei |last=Creider|author2= Chet A. Creider|journal=Anthropos|volume=79|date=1984|issue=4/6 |pages=537–544|jstor=40461875 |access-date=29 January 2022}} She is also an artist.

Background

She had a traditional upbringing as a Nandi{{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40465355|title=Gender Inversion in Nandi Ritual|first=Jane Tapsubei |last=Creider|author2=Chet A. Creider|journal=Anthropos|volume=92|date=1997|issue=1/3 |pages= 51–58|jstor=40465355 |access-date=29 January 2022}} and grew up in Kenya near Lake Nyanza (formerly Lake Victoria), then after working in Kisumu and Nairobi she moved to live in Canada.{{cite book|editor-first=Margaret|editor-last=Busby|title=Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present|date=1992|publisher=Jonathan Cape|location=London|page=614}}

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."{{cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IoSlHam2gi0C&pg=PA83|first=Joseph|last=Hogan|author2=Rebecca Hogan|title=True Relations: Essays on Autobiography and the Postmodern|chapter=Autobiography in the Contact Zone: Cross-cultural Identity in Jane Tapsubei Creider's Two Lives|pages=83–84|publisher=Greenwood Press|date=1998|isbn=9780313305092|access-date=31 January 2022|via=Google Books}}

Creider's writing has been included in collections such as Daughters of Africa (1992),{{cite web|url=https://nation.africa/kenya/life-and-style/weekend/-new-daughters-of-africa-is-a-must-read-for-aspiring-young-women-writers-241888?view=htmlamp|title='New Daughters of Africa' is a must read for aspiring young women writers|first=Tom|last=Odhiambo|work=Nation|location=Kenya|date=17 January 2020|access-date=29 January 2022}} edited by Margaret Busby, and Fiery Spirits (1995), edited by Ayanna Black.{{cite web|url=http://www.booksincanada.com/article_view.asp?id=1293|title=Words for Survival|first=Olive|last=Senior|author-link=Olive Senior|website=Books in Canada|access-date=29 January 2022}}

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)

Jane Tapsubei Creider

Background

Selected writings

References

Further reading