karen chalamilla

a writer-researcher based in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.

Selected Works

The Women Turning a Private Ritual Into a Public Business

The guardians of ukungwi—a practice that educates girls and women on sex, homemaking and marriage—are reimagining their approach to this East African tradition. Today, they face a dilemma: the risk of losing the cultural essence of ukungwi while seeking to monetize it for sustainability

Cheche Books
Conversations With Authors

In Conversation with Somali writer Salma Ibrahim on her
debut novel “Salutation Road”

Live Screening of The Empty Grave/ Kaburi Wazi and conversation with
co-director Cece Mlay

Binti, Revisited

More than two decades after its release, Tanzanian music artist Lady Jaydee’s debut album still resonates- offering a window into Tanzanian pop, gender politics, and the sound of a generation coming into its own.

Gadi Ramadhani's "My Father's Widow" Solo Exhibition Review

Tanzanian visual artist and curator Gadi Ramadhani’s month-long exhibition at the Alliance Française in Dar es Salaam, My Father’s Widow, is a meditation on death’s aftermath.

Minna Salami Is Inventing New Language in "Can Feminism be African?"

Minna Salami on inventing a new feminist language to explore what it means to do feminism as Africans, in Africa.

Exhibition: Amasaka Gallery, Masaka, Uganda presents Patterns Through Time

Visual artists Tibeb Sirak and Birhanu Manaye explore patterns in nature, personal and African communal rituals, and their capacity to be comforting, uplifting or ensaring when we feel bound to them.

The Political Dilemmas of Tanzania’s Music Artists

Owing to stifled freedom of speech coupled with minimal structural support, Tanzanian music artists are finding themselves without any political space beyond praising the ruling government.

Filming the Prolonged Pain of Colonial Violence

For decades, families in Tanzania have been demanding the return of their ancestors’ human remains from Germany. These ancestors, executed leaders of resistance efforts against German colonial rule, were exhumed from their graves and taken to Germany. Cece Mlay discusses co-producing a new documentary on how their descendants are seeking justice and closure today.

Mkuki Bgoya: “Swahili writers should be mandatory reading in Tanzania, but there’s a deep trauma around books”

Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Zanzibari-born 2021 Nobel Literature laureate’s grand homecoming was punctuated by the translation of his masterpiece, Paradise, into Kiswahili. His publisher, Mkuki Bgoya, speaks about its significance in the Swahili canon.

Interview with Tanzanian Artist Sabi John Kitaule

“There’s a lot of Tanzania’s history and culture that cannot be depicted through realism, like our true emotions about our history and culture. If you are only painting things that you can see, you miss out on a lot of our culture that can’t be physically seen” – Sabi John Kitaule