Judith Namala

Translating a popular song from Luganda into English, Moses spins a fictional story of housework and domestic labor across 40 years of Ugandan history

Serubiri Moses' Judith Namala: A Novella, the author's fiction debut, is an experiment in adaptation, translation and genre. Set in Uganda between the late 1970s and early 2000s, the book stages the domestic dramas of Judith Namala, a Black maid, and Esther Nambi, her Black madam. Unfolding across short vignettes of fiction, poetry, Ugandan history, art criticism and journalistic reportage, Moses' narrative is also an exercise in translation as fictocriticism: unraveling the lyrics to a popular Ugandan song into an expansive new approach to storytelling. Serubiri Moses is a Ugandan author and curator based in New York City. He is an adjunct faculty member in Art History at Hunter College, CUNY, and a visiting faculty member at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.