Narrating Beauty through Indigenous Storytelling

Neglected by colonial constructs, African oral tradition is a rich storehouse of cultures. This paper examines how indigenous narrative reconfigures aesthetic value by foregrounding African oral traditions marginalized by colonial constructs. Drawing on Nigeria’s Yoruba oríkì, Kenya’s Gikuyu folktales, and South Africa’s Zulu praise poetry, it demonstrates how these genres characterize beauty outside Eurocentric parameters. Employing postcolonial theory, textual analysis, and ethnographic interviews, this research argues that such accounts contribute both to decolonisation and to global aesthetic debate.