5 research outputs found
Challenges in implementation of free primary education program: A case study of public primary schools in Gatanga District Murang'a County
No full textContemporary Kenyan culture and identity in children\u27s literature
No full textAbstract
Studies have established the important role played by children’s literature in Kenya as a carrier of culture and identity, with the focus on post-colonial Kenya and indigenous Kenyan culture. Being a product of the society, this literature has developed further in response to the contemporary Kenyan society as portrayed in this study. This paper analyses the representation of contemporary Kenyan culture and identity in three selected children’s fictional texts: A New Dawn by Njoki Gitumbi; Back to the Roots by Egara Kabaji and That’s a Deal by Lilian Ayatta. Cultural and identity issues in the texts are analyzed using categorical distinctions from the Sociological Literary Theory and the Theory of Nations and Nationalism respectively. The study demonstrates that the selected texts are avenues for interrogating what it means to be Kenyan in the contemporary context. The texts are a representation of how Kenyan children literature has developed alongside the Kenyan society. The concerns of the texts reveal how past and present experiences in Kenya affect the norms of behavior, values and attitudes of the present Kenyan society. The significance of the selected children’s books as sites for transmission of culture and construction of identity in the contemporary Kenyan society is established.
The Chief Mau Mau Propagandist: Experiences that Prompted Gakaara wa Wanjau into Anti-Colonial Literary Activism
No full textThe challenge of feminism in Kenya : towards an Afrocentric worldview
No full textThis study deals with African women's literature, and specifically creative writing by Kenyan women, in the context of feminism and Afrocentricity. In the words of Obioma Nnaemeka (1995) critics of African women's literature have tended to rename, misname or silence women's voices in an attempt to make them fit into a feminist! Afrocentricity either or mould. This thesis argues that when attention is paid to African women
themselves, and the cultures from which and within which they write, it is clear that they embrace both feminism and Afrocentricity. By feminism I refer to African women's vision and activism for sexual equality and women's liberation while by Afrocentricity I am thinking of their commitment and pride in their African cultures and
traditions.
The first chapter argues that Kenyan women, in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial times, have been active and voiced in their stance against oppression of any kind. In the second chapter, I explore the relationship between feminism and Afrocentricity in a wider sense. I pay attention to the ways in which the two concepts have manifested themselves in Africa and her Diaspora as well as in the western world. In chapter three, domestic violence, rape, poverty, and a gender insensitive legal and judiciary
system are the dominant issues of concern to short stories writers from Kenya. In the fourth chapter, Ogot is seen as a liberal Afrocentric feminist in her call for African
women to create room for themselves within African systems of thought and practice. Chapter five, on Oludhe Macgoye, argues that to be Afrocentric is cultural rather than
racial. In Chapter six Rebeka Njau and Margaret Ogola are seen as Afrocentric while Tsitsi Dangarembga and Alice Walker are seen as Eurocentric. The thesis concludes that feminism in practice is not necessarily an occidental phenomenon. An African woman writer can be both feminist and Afrocentric
