Taboo and African Literature: Representing Prostitution in Swahili Novels

Female prostitution is a recurrent theme within post-independence Swahili prose, where it is generally associated with the depiction of the dangers and temptations of urban life. The aim of this paper is to analyse, through a micro-corpus of selected Tanzanian novels, the literary representation of women’s practice of engaging in sexual relations, in exchange for money or other kinds of benefit, as it is carried out by authors creating in the Swahili language. The study will also underline the different language strategies adopted by the writers, when depicting the business of prostitution, in order to refer or allude to the sexual sphere, a verbal taboo whose explicit rendition would, generally saying, cause embarrassment and offend people’s sense of dignity (heshima) in Tanzanian socio-cultural contexts.