ABSTRACT
If one tries to attempt a definition of 'popular writing' in Africa, these two texts demonstrate several of its essential features. The first, the taxi driver's prayer, incorporates a tongue-in-cheek intertextuality with 'official' culture in the form of Christianity or establishment religion, and a whole-hearted embrace of fast living, the hectic pace of an urban lifestyle with its attendant dangers. The second, the admonition to inconsiderate drinkers, adds to these a pragmatic acceptance of imperfect material conditions and human weakness, and an unsqueamish straightforwardness about bodily functions. Even a woman writer of romance fiction, like the Nigerian Helen Ovbiagele, displays an extraordinary pragmatism in the matter of sexuality. The fantasy of 'everlasting love' triumphing over all obstacles is a recurring feature of romantic fiction by women, not only in Kenya. African popular writing provides a space for the rewriting of power relations, for transformation, for pleasure in a harsh world where pleasure is not just an escape but a challenge.
