(The first collection of short stories from Kenya's foremo...)
The first collection of short stories from Kenya's foremost woman novelist. Twelve stories bring alive the author's feeling for the macabre and fantastic - reminiscent of the tragedy in The Promised Land.
(Grace Ogot is a well-known Kenyan novelist. In this colle...)
Grace Ogot is a well-known Kenyan novelist. In this collection of nine stories, she explores themes of social, cultural and spiritual importance. Her imagery is designed to unveil evils which bedevil modern society, such as violence, lust for power and wealth, and family turmoil. Her stories are imbued with the culture of Kenya.
East Africa's best-known woman author, Grace Emily Akinyi Ogot wrote novels and short stories. She also became an important political figure in modern Kenya.
Background
Born in Kenya's Central Nyanza District on May 15, 1930, she was the child of pioneering Christian parents in the traditional Luo stronghold of Asembo. Her father, Joseph Nyanduga, was an early convert to the Anglican Church and one of the first men in Asembo to receive a Western education. He later taught at the Church Missionary Society's Ng'iya Girls' School. She remembered him reading her Bible stories, as well as hearing the traditional stories told by her grandmother. Later Ogot's writing reflected this dual background of tradition and modernity and the tensions between them.
Her older sister, Rose Orondo, served on the Kisumu County Council for several terms, and her younger brother Robert Jalango was elected to Parliament in 1988, representing their family home in Asembo.
Education
Having attended Ng'iya Girls' School and Butere High School, the young woman trained as a nurse in both Uganda and England.
Career
Several years working as a nursing sister and midwifery tutor at Maseno Hospital (run by the Church Missionary Society), and later at the Student Health Service at Makerere University College, provided experience in a number of different careers. She worked as a script-writer and broadcaster for the BBC Overseas Service (later having her own popular weekly radio program in Luo), as a community development officer in Kisumu, and as a public relations officer for Air India. In the late 1960's she opened two branches of a clothing boutique known as Lindy's in Nairobi.
She began to publish short stories both in English and in Luo in the early 1960's and her first novel, The Promised Land, was published in 1966. It was concerned with the challenges faced by Luo pioneers who moved across the border into Tanzania in a search of greater opportunity. Land Without Thunder, a collection of short stories about traditional life in rural western Kenya, appeared in 1968. Two other short story collections have appeared, The Other Woman and Other Stories (Nairobi, 1976) and The Island of Tears (Nairobi, 1980), as well as second novel, The Graduate (Nairobi, 1980). The novel described the tribulations of a young Kenyan graduate who returns home after study in the United States.
Ogot's short stories often weaved old and new material together by presenting traditional curses and mysteries confounding modern Kenyans in new urban settings. A series of historical novels in process went back several centuries to reconstruct Luo history. A number of her stories have been dramatized and performed in Kenya.
Having helped found the Writers' Association of Kenya, she served as its chairman from 1975 to 1980.
President Daniel Arap Moi appointed her to the Kenya Parliament in 1985 and as assistant minister for culture.
In 1988 she was resoundingly returned to the Parliament from her husband's home in Gem and was reappointed to her ministerial position.
She married the historian Bethwell Alan Ogot, a Luo from Gem Location, in 1959 and was the mother of four children. Her husband, served as head of Kenya Railways and also taught history at Kenyatta University.