May Balisidya
Tanzanian author (1947-1987)
May Lenna Balisidya Matteru (May 10, 1947 – December 27, 1987) was a Tanzanian author writing in the Swahili language.
She was born in Dodoma and attended primary and secondary school there. Balisidya received a BA from the University of East Africa at Dar es Salaam in 1970 and a MA in oral literature from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1978. She obtained her PhD in African literature from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in November 1987.
From 1977 to 1987, she was a lecturer in the Kiswahili department of the University of Dar es Salaam.
In 1971, she was elected to the Swahili National Council of Tanzania; she served two terms as vice-chairman of the council.
Balisidya died at the age of 40 from cancer.
“May Balisidya” enters the record as tanzanian author (1947-1987). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Balisidya, Tanzanian and author can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“May Balisidya” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Balisidya, Tanzanian and author provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q61796203. VIAF identifies the subject as 284532435. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1987, 1970 and 1978.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “May Balisidya” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.