Women’s literature in Kenya

Kenyan Women’s Literature from Postcolonial Feminist Perspective: Six Stories by Storymoja Writers

Mikhail D. Gromov
United States International University–Africa

Post-colonial feminism
Post-colonial feminism, as one of the relatively recent but no less powerful tenets in modern humanitarian theories, has since its formative days been struggling against many social ailments that have been gnawing at post-colonial societies since and even before the days of decolonization. To wit, adepts of post-colonial feminist stand indexed patriarchy as the root cause of the ailments; patriarchy, in its traditional (pre-colonial), colonial and modernized versions. For the working definition of patriarchy, in this study we will dare use (being conscious, obviously, of scholarly works on the subject of far superior excellence) an account presented by a popular web-based source – for this account, in our view, provides a concise but rather exhaustive description of the entire phenomenon of patriarchy and its implications:
Thus, according to Wikipedia, “patriarchy is a social system in which males hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property at the specific exclusion of women, at least to a large degree. In the domain of the family, fathers or father figures hold authority over women and children. Some patriarchal societies are also patrilineal, meaning that property and title are inherited by the male lineage and descent is reckoned exclusively through the male line, sometimes to the point where significantly more distant male relatives take precedence over female relatives.  Historically, patriarchy has manifested itself in the social, legal, political, and economic organization of a range of different cultures. […] Patriarchy literally means "the rule of the father" and comes from Greek […]
Historically, the term patriarchy was used to refer to autocratic rule by the male head of a family. However, in modern times, it more generally refers to social systems in which adult men primarily hold power. […]  It is the institutionalized subordination and exploitation of women by men that is the crux of patriarchy; this can take many forms […].
Feminist theory defines patriarchy as an unjust social system that enforces gender roles and is oppressive to both men and women. It often includes any social, political, or economic mechanism that evokes male dominance over women. Feminist theory typically characterizes patriarchy as a social construction, which can be overcome by revealing and critically analyzing its manifestations.”

Feminism is generally defined as “a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. In addition, feminism seeks to establish equal opportunities for women in education, employment and other spheres.” (Wikipedia). The specificity of post-colonial version of feminism is basically lies in the postulate that “In many different societies women, like colonized subjects, have been relegated to the position of 'Other', 'colonized' by various forms of patriarchal domination. They thus share with colonized races and cultures an intimate experience of the politics of oppression and repression.” (Post-Colonial Reader 233)
Moreover, women were in reality, as part of colonized races and cultures, subjected to colonial as well as post-colonial politics of oppression and repression. To outline the basic tenets of patriarchy in its diachronic aspect, we quote below a selection of observations by renowned scholars about pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial state of women.

First, it should not be forgotten that in formerly colonized societies patriarchy as the main (if not the only) model of gender relations had ruled long before the colonization came to its onset. The essence of pre-colonial patriarchy, in relation to traditional African society, was expressively formulated by Australian researcher Kirsten Holst Petersen, when she wrote: “My sense of humour has always stopped short at the pleasant little joke about Okonkwo being punished not for beating his wife, but for beating her during the week of peace” (Post-Colonial Reader 237) – stressing that as such beating of wives was considered to be quite normal in the society described in Things Fall Apart. It also should be remembered that traditional patriarchy prepared a “fertile ground” for its development in colonial and post-colonial period, when it, first, conglomerated with “imported” forms of patriarchy brought by colonizing powers. According to the Nigerian scholar Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, “African women suffered a 'double colonization': one form from European domin­ation and the other from indigenous tradition imposed by African men. From my perspective, it is not coloniza­tion that is two, but the forms of oppression that flowed from the process for native females.” (256). This view is supported and developed by Rosalind O'Hanlon, who states: “Colonial officials and native men came to share very similar language and preconceptions about the significance of women and their proper sphere and duties. Women who broke the codes of silence and sub­servience became the objects of extreme hostility, which, in some cases, succeeded in silencing outspoken women.” (quoted in Loomba 222).   
Ania Loomba, a well-known literary scholar and theoretician from India, asserts that in the colonial environment “the strengthening of patriarchy within the family became one way for colonized men to assert their otherwise eroded power”. Even “arguments for women's education in metropolitan as well colonial contexts rely on the logic that educated women will make better wives and mothers. At the same time, educated women have to be taught not to overstep their bounds and usurp authority from men. Too much education, like too little, results in bad domestic practices” (Loomba 219).
Post-colonial societies, as put by Trinh Minh-ha, “are characterized with ‘the policy of 'separate development'” (Post-Colonial Reader 247) – meaning that in many post-colonial societies women, although supposed to be released from any form of “old” and “new” oppression, are in many cases even more marginalized and discriminated against. As put by Ania Loomba, “Patriarchal aspects of indigenous cultures […] are constantly being amplified and strengthened, in some cases by postcolonial states and in others by fundamentalist group­ings within the state.” (Loomba 229).
Thus, Kirsten Holst Petersen makes a sort of summing up of the tasks that women are faced with in the post-colonial situation, when she writes about the reflection of feminist issues in the works of two prominent African writers, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Buchi Emecheta. “Ngugi's ideological starting point seems to me ideal.  'No cultural liberation without women's liberation.' This is a more difficult and therefore more courageous path to take in the African situation than in the Western one, because it has to borrow some concepts — and a vocabulary — from a culture from which at the same time it is trying to disassociate itself and at the same time it has to modify its admiration for some aspects of a culture it is claiming validity for. . . . [But] Buchi Emecheta . . . can recreate the situation and difficulties of women with authen­ticity and give a valuable insight into their thoughts and feelings. […] To her the object seems to be to give women access to power in the society as it exists, to beat men at their own game.” (Post-Colonial Reader 238).

Robert C.J.Young in his Postcolonialism: a Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2003) sums up the essential objectives of post-colonial feminism in the following way:
“At its most general, postcolonial feminism involves any challenge to dominant patriarchal ideologies by women of the 'third world'. Such political activism may consist of contesting local power structures, or it may be a question of challenging racist or Eurocentric views of men and women (including feminists) in the first world. In the postcolonial state, postcolonial feminism begins from the perception that its politics are framed by the active legacies of colonialism, by the institutional infrastructures that were handed over by the colonial powers to elite groups, or appropriated by later elites. All women working for equality against the many obstacles embedded in such a framework engage with these kind of realities in the post-colony” (109).
“Postcolonial feminism is certainly concerned to analyze the nervous conditions of being a woman in a postcolonial environment, whether in the social oppression of the post-colony or the metropolis. Its concern is both with individual problems and with those that affect whole communities. For this reason, it places greater emphasis on social and political campaigns for material, cultural, and legal rights; equal treatment in the law, education, and the workplace; the environment […], alongside the social challenge of everyday patriarchy, typically supported by its institutional and legal discrimination: domestic violence, sexual abuse, rape, honour killings, dowry deaths, female foeticide, child abuse. Feminism in a postcolonial frame begins with the situation of the ordinary woman in a particular place, while also thinking her situation through in relation to broader issues to give her the more powerful basis of collectivity. It will highlight the degree to which women are still working against a colonial legacy that was itself powerfully patriarchal - institutional, economic, political, and ideological.” (116)
Needless to say, that women’s writing in all the post-colonial societies has from the very beginning of post-independence era (and sometimes earlier) became one of the most powerful vessels of propagating feminist ideas in the corresponding audiences and beyond. Women’s writing in Africa is no exception; as put by Anthonia C. Kalu, “The dearth of African literary genres that support the African woman’s participation in the (re)creation and maintenance of societal vision provides evidence of her silencing and apparent invisibility in Africa’s encounter with the West. Her participation is more overt in the postcolonial arena. […] A major concern here is the re-entrenchment of women and/or female-related aspects of selected statements into contemporary discourse. The focus is to examine the society’s capacity to maintain harmony and equilibrium” (Kalu 2000).

Women’s literature in Kenya
Creative writing by women authors in Kenya was initiated almost simultaneously with the country’s post-colonial history – the first short stories by Grace Ogot were published in 1962 and 1964, the year before and after independence; her first novel – and the first novel by a woman writer in East Africa – came out in 1966. Since then, a constellation of names and works has spanned by now four generations of Kenyan women writers, creating a steadily and swiftly growing literary tradition.  
As noted above, 1960s-1980s saw Kenyan women’s writing “coming to birth”; a circle of names that appeared in that initial period now comprises the pride and joy of Kenyan literature. Following the founding figure of Grace Ogot, there came her Western Kenya “landswoman” Asenath Bole Odaga, a prominent novel writer and the founder of one of the first independent publishing houses; Lydia Mumbi Nguya with The First Seed (1975), which some critics labelled as Kenyan version of Things Fall Apart;otherwriters were introducing various new literary forms – “novel in verse” (Muthoni Likimani), magical realist prose (Rebecca Njau), youth and adolescent novella (Miriam Were). The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the first novels of Marjorie Oludhe-Macgoye, a Scotland-born lady who, despite her foreign origin, became one of the most prominent figures in Kenyan women’s writing.
In 1990s, a new generation of Kenyan women authors came to the scene, mainly glorified by novel writers of different generic orientation. While Margaret Ogola became famous for her epic-like family sagas, especially her two-volume chronicle of Sigu family, Monica Genya, Pat Ngurukie and Francis Genga-Idowu entered the realm of “popular” novel, whereas Wairimu Gitau and Stella Kahaki Njuguna were developing “novel of manners” in its Kenyan version. 
With the advance of the new century, 2000s appear as the most plenteous time, for the third (conditionally) generation of Kenyan woman writers boasts even more names and even greater variety. This time witnessed the further development of wide-scale epic-like novel (Yvonne Owuor, Joy Odera), “female” thrillers (Wanjiku wa Ngugi, Martha Mburu, Ciku Kimeria), “social documentaries” (Philo Ikonya), adolescent novel (Florence Mbaya, Kingwa Kamencu, Pasomi Mucha, Nancy Mwanzia), romance novel (Moraa Gitaa, Wambui Githiora) against the background of well-established and well-written “social critical women’s novel” by Georgina Mbithe, Ketty Arucy, Wanjiru Waithaka.

Short story in Kenyan women’s literature
The above-mentioned writers were mainly holding to large literary forms, namely novel and novella 1, and their works were printed by reputable publishing houses, such as Kenya Literature Bureau, East African Publishing House, Oxford University Press, Longhorn, and others. At the same time, the production of short stores by Kenyan women writers was rather low. Although Grace Ogot is frequently named as “mother superior” of short story writing in East Africa (she published three short story collections), the popularity of short story as a genre among these writers was hardly comparable to that of the novel – the first four decades after independence in Kenyan literature were namely “novel” years (cf. Kurtz 1996), and the women writers were also trying to make their contribution into Kenyan novel writing. Besides, it may be assumed that from a publisher’s viewpoint, a novel was more marketable genre compared to a short story collection. In any case, in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s Kenyan short story writing was characterised with predominance of male authors (see Rinkanya 2010), and very few collections of short stories by Kenyan female writers were published in this period – such as The hypocrite and other stories by Rebecca Njau (1977) and Stories by the fireside by Jedida Mandara (1985), both books now becoming collectors’ items. Passbook Number F47927 by Muthoni Likimani (1985) contains, as put in the cover note, “nine fictionalised accounts” of women’s participation in Mau Mau movement. The late 1990s also saw the publication of the collection Midnight blossom (1999) by a young writer Sheila Nhemi.

New generation of female short story writers emerged in the first decade of this century, when several projects were initiated with the basic purpose of give a new tribune for aspiring writers. The first one was Kwani? – “a journal founded by some of Kenya 's most exciting new writers, and published by Kwani Trust” (www.kwani.org). Then came Storymoja, “a venture recently formed by a collective of five writers who are committed to publishing contemporary East African writing of world-class standard” (www. storymoja.com). The very format of these projects publications (Kwani’s periodicals and Storymoja’s website) presumes that short story occupies the leading place in their literary production, and the shorts stories by female authors featured in these projects overpass, surely by number and frequently by quality, the entire short story production by women writers in the previous decades.
The female writers participating in both projects, established (such as Muthoni Garland) and also (and mostly) aspiring ones, dedicate their stories to women-related problems of the contemporary Kenyan society and structure them around a leading female character. And still, many of these problems are caused by the “social challenge of everyday patriarchy, […] its institutional and legal discrimination: domestic violence, sexual abuse, rape” and many other mistreatments that Kenyan females are faced with on routine level, all of them however being essentially characterised by a violent (physically, sexually, and/or psychologically) domination of males over their women counterparts – relatives, colleagues, etc. – rooted in patriarchal notion of a woman as inferior and ever-subordinate “human commodity” of her male commandants. Below we will try to illustrate this assertion, using several works by young female authors from Storymoja project.

Victims
In view of the above, one of the most widespread types of female character found in Kenyan women’s literature is that of a victim – a woman submitted by force to the biddings of a male. At that, it hardly matters which background they have – victimisation penetrates everywhere, it happens in all the walks of life, it takes different forms, and it comes from one and the same reason – a woman disagrees with the demands of male-created and male-dominated society, and pays dearly for this disagreement.
This character type, widely found in Kenyan women’s writing since its beginnings, is preserved in the writings of new generations – for the patriarchal condition that brought this character type to life are very much existent in the present-day Kenyan society. Of course, patriarchal relationship is much prevalent in the rural areas – and on many occasions, the woman’s attempt to seek deliverance may become even a life hazard, such as in the story The Mysterious Visitor (2013) by Beth Nduta. In the village, where the unnamed girl narrator lives, a murder was committed – in the village shop an unknown man, a stranger, killed a woman and a child, and was arrested by the police. “The villagers later came to learn that the woman and her son had run away from home, after years and years of brutality from the man she married. She had sought refuge in a remote village – miles away from hers, but the adamant man came after her”. It is notable at that, that a culprit was not a maniac neither was he a criminal type. “Many people described him as a normal everyday man who could never hurt a fly but with the destruction he left behind, we knew better than to judge a book by its cover.” The fact that this ordinary villager nevertheless painstakingly exercised his “right” to command a woman’s (and by extension the child’s) life testifies how deeply a patriarchal thought of “woman as commodity” resides in the mind of an average rural male.

The rural patriarchal consciousness, in its more “pre-colonial” shape, is pictured in Daybreak (2008) by Cathy Wachiaya. A fourteen-years Maasai girl Nayioma and her friend, a classmate girl Nasieku, are destined by their fathers for circumcision and subsequent forced marriage, which means the irreversible end to their school life. However, the author allows the girls to see “the light at the end of a tunnel” – but this light is only brought by a local NGO “Fight for the Girl Child”, whose officials (“two women, who I recognise from the village school, and a white man”) come to the village to offer the two potential victims an opportunity to continue with schooling. The author appears to drive the reader to a two-sided conclusion: on the one hand, she pessimistically claims that the rescue can only be brought by an external “deus ex machina” ; on the other – it all became possible through the active help of their mothers and neighbour, who organize the girls’ escape to safety. Nayioma’s mother dissolves her daughter’s doubts about escaping, telling her that it will also save the future of her junior sister: “You know you have to. You are the only hope for Nadupoi. I can’t bear the thought of the two of you suffering as I have.” The conclusion, therefore, may be that only the combined efforts of progressive-minded local women and official structures can change the status quo – by not only offering the victims-at-hand the rescue, but moulding them into the future fighters for emancipation, as becomes evident from Nayioma’s curtaining phrase: “Fight for the girl child,” I murmured slowly. A smile spread across my face. “Nadupoi, I will fight for you.”

No matter how more promising the urban environment may appear for a woman’s emancipation (cf. Kurtz 1998 2), even those who were born and raised in the city are by no means immune to the victimisation induced by patriarchal mindset. In Brenda Rhoda’s story Nobody Likes Survivors (2011) the patriarchal thinking is shown in the shape of a “vicious circle” – father continuously rapes his teenage daughter Tracy, finally driving her to suicide; after that his wife, Tracey’s mother, abandons him. As he confesses, he did that because in his childhood he was constantly mistreated (beaten) by his own mother – and she was doing that to him because her own husband, his father, was continuously unfaithful to her, bringing his mistresses home, which in the end drove her to suicide. Thus, his mother’s hatred for man – caused by the patriarchal attitudes of her husband – appears to be transformed into his hatred for women. However, he also demonstrates this hatred in an absolutely patriarchal way – by using his daughter as a commodity for a vicious pleasure. As he confesses in the finale of the story, he had to “recreate” his daughter according to, as may be figured, his own notion of a woman. As a result, “I killed my own daughter. Not physically, I deflowered, drove her to the point of madness and eventually death. I had to get her back, I had to recreate her. So I set it up.”

A notable version of a “victim” character is created by Susan Munywoki in her story Cold Feet on a Sunny Day (2011). Here the writer depicts a case of “self-induced” victimization – the main character Nakaaya, a young girl with an urban background, has voluntarily consented  herself with a role of “a man’s doormat”. The story is based on the episode when Nakaaya, in the church on the day when she is being wed to a rich suitor Raphael, reminiscences about the lost opportunities in her life – she did not become a singer, turned down a scholarship abroad, and managed to work only as a secretary without much training.
“Have I become what I once despised, a gold digging tramp? No, I truly do love Raphael. Then why do I feel this way, torn into two different directions? One side of me tells me that he is the best thing that has ever happened to me. The other side tells me that I haven’t yet lived my life to the fullest. That I still have unfinished business. I should think things through more carefully…” The author leaves the story with an open and ambiguous finale – as Nakaaya is led closer and closer to the altar, she is more and more desperately trying to convince herself that marriage to a rich man has always been her dream. “I look around the church and take in all of my loved ones. My mother, my father, my siblings, relatives, my soon-to-be relatives and all our friends. All here to show solidarity with us as we embark on this next stage of our lives. I could never be happier, I think as the minister begins to lead us in the exchanging of vows. Never.” This seemingly ravishing monologue in the context of the story appears to have a hidden opposite meaning – from this “highest point” of happiness her life as a dependent woman, led only by her husband’s whims and demands, will gradually slide into decline, paved by the unused chances.

Rebels
Other stories by female authors from Storymoja project present a different character – a female who successfully resists gender-based oppression, thus breaking the chains of “everyday patriarchy” and securing for herself a degree of independence and self-reliance needed to solve the initially unfavourable situation. Mostly this is achieved by the proper self-beneficial use of educational and other facilities offered by (yes, mostly!) city life. A vibrant example of a female character who changed her life for the better by using these new opportunities of post-colonial society is given by Yvonne Gitobu in her story Sold for a Song (2010). 
Tasia Wekesa has finished her first semester at the university. Her parents own a coffee plantation, but the income is not high, and her father asks his old friend Wasike for a favour of giving Tasia a job at a café in Nairobi. Wasike, sixteen years older than Tasia, asks her father – in exchange to his favour – to marry off Tasia to him. Even Tasia agrees to that, though solely to help her parents. Wasike turns out to have very conservative views on marriage (e.g., the wife must clean his shoes). Tasia becomes a manager at her café, and Wasike does not like it; he also does not want her to study further (although she herself wants it, and her parents encourage her). She also finds out that Wasike was cheating on her father, pocketing most of his coffee income. Eugene, the senior manager at the café, helps Tasia to restore justice, her prospective marriage to Wasike is broken, Tasia continues her studies and gains a degree in Agricultural Economics.
The story gives an evident example of the victorious unity of progressive forces (symbolised by the young, with their open- and broad-mindedness, spirit of professionalism and hope for the future) over the retrogressive ones (symbolised by Wasike, who keeps “old spirit” of deceit, selfishness and, of course, patriarchy). The author even creates a small, but viable “petty utopia” in the shape of Kikombe Coffee House, where “The unexpected bonus, the nyama in the sukuma wiki of the job, was the exposure to business knowledge that she was getting from the dynamic café. It impressed her no end that the startup business that was doing so well was run by young Kenyan professionals not very much older than her. […] Eugene would call small groups of staff together from time to time to see how they were managing and brief them on new promotions that they would be introducing in order to boost their monthly sales.” It appears, though, that the author’s task was the creation of not an “impossible dream”, but exactly of an ideal that can and should be reached by the joint effort of the progressive forces.

Claudette Oduor in her story The Red Bindi on Diwali (2010) shows that true affection, based on equality and mutual respect, is capable of crossing even the artificial but no less strong borders built by the religious, racial and ethnic differences. The story takes place on the wedding day of the narrator, a young man from a well-off Indian family in Nakuru, a medical doctor by profession; he is getting married to ‘Nishit Patel’s sister’, the daughter of his father’s business partner. However, the hero does not love his wife-to-be, because since his school days he is madly in love with Namunyak, his “Maasai princess”, a qualified lawyer and generally a symbol of perfection, which becomes evident in the narrator’s reminiscences about the growth of their love story:

“Mami and the aunts were outraged. At first they hadn’t liked Namunyak because she did not own a sari. When I bought Namunyak a choli, sari, and salwar kameej, they didn’t like her because I placed a red bindi on her forehead. Red bindis were traditionally for married women. Not only was I marking my territory but also dropping hints for Mami and the aunts. They ran into panic when they saw the bindi, realized what I was trying to tell them.
“She can’t cook an Indian meal,” was their next arsenal. But neither could Nishit Patel’s sister. Namunyak soon learnt to cook, though. During Diwali two years before, it had been Namunyak that made the chicken tandoori, naan, dal, bhindi masala, gajar ka halwa and samosas, among other delicacies. When they saw she could cook an Indian meal, Mami and the aunts tore their hair in distress. They said that only an educated girl like Nishit Patel’s sister deserved me. This made Papa and the uncles laugh because while Nishit Patel’s sister had only reached form four, Namunyak had just been admitted to the Bar and signed her name in the roll of advocates.
“Why do you hang onto her like a leech?” the aunts asked. “You had a silly school boy crush on her in high school. Now you’re a trained doctor, you need to think of settling down. A good Hindu boy like you marries a good Hindu girl like Nishit Patel’s sister. No blacks, whites or Muslims.”
“But I love her,” I replied.

Responding to a growing threat of their boy being taken by a “Maasai leech”, his relatives (especially female) hasten his marriage, but on the wedding day Namunyak sneaks into his house, and they secretly perform a Hindu wedding.
“I placed the Granth Sahib on the marble coffee table. My bride’s gown was a wet towel, but it would have to do. Namunyak cried again as we did the Anand Kara; going round the sacred book four times. As soon as the fourth round was complete, the marriage was binding. She was fully mine, and although she didn’t know it yet, Mami had fully disowned me. Now I wouldn’t be alone on Diwali. And at home, they held a wedding party for me. I placed a red bindi on my Maasai prinсess”.
The narrator is ready even to sacrifice his family relations, which has become an obstacle on the way to his love, but even more so – on the way to his own self-made and self-decided life. As he himself confesses, “I couldn’t let Mami arrange me.” What is notable in the story is the unusual “reversal” of roles – it is a male who is in fact a victim of patriarchy, executed mostly by female family members. It seems, however, to demonstrate once more the strength of traditional patriarchal stands – they have become so internalised, that even the females now see it as their duty to impose the patterns of traditional racial, tribal, religion-bound – and in the long run, still patriarchal – mentality over their male offspring, of which the latter, as shown above, hardly show any enthusiasm.

Conclusion
Kenyan female writers of the younger generation, which was wittily labelled in one Kenyan novel by a writer of Swahili expression as “kizazi cha dotikomu” – “dot com generation”, appear to address in their, mostly digitally created and present, texts mostly the same basic tasks as their predecessors of the previous generations. These tasks are generally two: to outline the present state of a Kenyan woman, of various origins, backgrounds, statuses etc., and to show how this condition could be changed in favour of gender empowerment and equality. For this purpose, two types of characters are created. The first type – the “victim” – epitomises the deplorable conditions (mostly induced by patriarchal consciousness) that a modern Kenyan woman often finds herself in. The second type – a “rebel” – offers various recipes of overcoming these conditions. The authors appear to face their heroines with a tough, although constructive, choice: either they fully accept the role of a victim (even at will, like Nakaaya in the story by Susan Munywoki) – and find themselves in irremediable circumstances, or start growing the seed of rebellion from their early years (like the brave Maasai girls in the story by Cathy Wachiaya), which enable them not to succumb to the circumstances, but change them. This, as one of the founding tasks of Kenyan women’s literature, was at one point convincingly formulated by Lennox Odiemo-Munara (2010:1), who said: “These writers, through the women figures in the texts, subvert, actively resist, and engage with power/authority and, in the process, manage to re-evaluate the dominant zeitgeist, oppositionally establishing the East African woman as an active and speaking subject in the ongoing re-imagining and re-writing of the East African post-colonies.”

Footnotes
1 Although in this article we are speaking mainly about female prose writers, of course we should pay due tribute to women poets, such as Micere Githae Mugo, Pamela Ateka, Caroline Nderitu, Wanja Thairu, Shailja Patel, and playwrights such as Micere Mugo, Rebecca Njau and Nyambura Mpesha.

2 As put by Roger Kurtz, “the city, because it disrupts traditional social patterns, and despite its customary nature as a male environment, can be a place where women are able to create some measure of personal emancipation. Women can free themselves from dependence on fathers, hus­bands, or other men—particularly if they can find employ­ment. The city may be historically male, but it is a complex enough place to allow some maneuvering room for women” (Kurtz 1996:137). And also: “City offers some hope for women, allowing them to create a space for themselves in ways that the patriarchy of rural social structures cannot” (Kurtz 1996:157).

Works cited
Gitobu, Yvonne. Sold for a Song. (http://storymojaafrica.wordpress.com/archives-20092010)
Kalu, Anthonia C. “Women in African Literature.” (http://www.india-seminar.com/2000/490/490%20kalu.htm)
Kurtz, J.Roger. Urban Obsessions, Urban Fears: The Post-Colonial Kenyan Novel. Trenton-Asmara: Africa World Press, 1998.
Loomba, Ania. Colonial-Postcolonial. London/New York: Routledge, 1998.
Munywoki, Susan. Cold Feet on a Sunny Day (http://storymojaafrica.wordpress.com/archives-20112012)
Nduta, Beth.  The Mysterious Visitor (http://storymojaafrica.wordpress.com/archives-2013)
Wachiaya, Cathy. Daybreak. (http://storymojaafrica.wordpress.com/archives-20092010)
Rhoda, Brenda. Nobody Likes Survivors. (http://storymojaafrica.wordpress.com/archives-20112012)
Odiemo-Munara, Lennox. “Women Engagement with Power and Authority in Re-writing East Africa.” Africa Development, No. 4, 2010, pp. 1–18.
Oduor, Claudette. The Red Bindi on Diwali. (http://storymojaafrica.wordpress.com/archives-20092010)
Rinkanya, Alina. “Short Story in Kenya”. Nairobi Journal of Literature, No. 6, 2010, pp. 29-39
Young, Robert C.J. Postcolonialism: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.