Coming To Birth Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye Summary

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  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Coming to Birth Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, 2000-12-01 In this quietly powerful and eminently readable novel, winner of the prestigious Sinclair Prize, Kenyan writer Marjorie Macgoye deftly interweaves the story of one young woman’s tumultuous coming of age with the history of a nation emerging from colonialism. At the age of sixteen, Paulina leaves her small village in western Kenya to join her new husband, Martin, in the bustling city of Nairobi. It is 1956, and Kenya is in the final days of the Emergency, as the British seek to suppress violent anti-colonial revolts. But Paulina knows little about, about city life, or about marriage, and Martin’s clumsy attempts to control her soon lead to a relationship filled with silences, misunderstandings, and unfulfilled expectations. Soon Paulina’s inability to bear a child effectively banishes her from the confines of traditional women’s roles. As her country at last moves toward independence, Paulina manages to achieve a kind of independence as well: She accepts a job that will require her to live separately from her husband, and she has an affair that leads to the birth of her first child. But Paulina’s hard-won contentment will be shattered when Kenya’s turbulent history intrudes into her private life, bringing with it tragedy—and a new test of her quiet courage and determination. Paulina’s patient struggles for survival and identity are revealed through Marjorie Macgoye’s keen and sensitive vision—a vision which extends to embrace the whole of a nation and a people likewise struggling to find their way. As the Weekly Standard of Kenya notes, Coming to Birth is a radical novel in firmly asserting our common humanity.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: The Concubine Elechi Amadi, 2017-04-26 Amadi’s masterpiece of African literature captures village life and practices not yet touched by the white man. The novel’s beautiful, hardworking protagonist, Ihouma, is admired by all in her village. Yet those who express their love for her meet with mysterious tragedy, leaving her devastated. This enticing odyssey, where exemplary attributes go unrewarded and the boundaries between myth and reality are muted, outwits readers with unexpected twists that make them want to keep turning the page.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: The Present Moment Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, 2014-08-30 This contemporary African classic tells the story of seven unforgettable Kenyan women as it traces more than sixty years of turbulent national history. Like their country, this group of old women is divided by ethnicity, language, class, and religion. But around the charcoal fire at the Refuge, the old-age home they share in Nairobi, they uncover the hidden personal histories that connect them as women: stories of their struggles for self-determination; of conflict, violence, and loss, but also of survival. Each woman has found her way to the Refuge because of a devastating life experience—the loss of family and security to revolution, emigration, or poverty. But as they reflect upon their tragedies, they also become aware of the community they have formed—a community of collective history, strength, humor, and affection. And they learn that they are more connected than they know, as the murder of a student in the neighborhood reveals how their lives have intersected across generations, how securely the past is tied to the present—and to the future—of their young nation.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Scarlet Song Mariama Bâ, 1994 Cultural differences between the families of Mireille, daughter of a French diplomat, and Ousmane, son of a poor Muslim family in Senegal, threatens to destroy their marriage.--Amazon.com viewed Dec. 12, 2022.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Human Rights, Inc. Joseph R. Slaughter, 2009-08-25 In this timely study of the historical, ideological, and formal interdependencies of the novel and human rights, Joseph Slaughter demonstrates that the twentieth-century rise of “world literature” and international human rights law are related phenomena. Slaughter argues that international law shares with the modern novel a particular conception of the human individual. The Bildungsroman, the novel of coming of age, fills out this image, offering a conceptual vocabulary, a humanist social vision, and a narrative grammar for what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and early literary theorists both call “the free and full development of the human personality.” Revising our received understanding of the relationship between law and literature, Slaughter suggests that this narrative form has acted as a cultural surrogate for the weak executive authority of international law, naturalizing the assumptions and conditions that make human rights appear commonsensical. As a kind of novelistic correlative to human rights law, the Bildungsroman has thus been doing some of the sociocultural work of enforcement that the law cannot do for itself. This analysis of the cultural work of law and of the social work of literature challenges traditional Eurocentric histories of both international law and the dissemination of the novel. Taking his point of departure in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, Slaughter focuses on recent postcolonial versions of the coming-of-age story to show how the promise of human rights becomes legible in narrative and how the novel and the law are complicit in contemporary projects of globalization: in colonialism, neoimperalism, humanitarianism, and the spread of multinational consumer capitalism. Slaughter raises important practical and ethical questions that we must confront in advocating for human rights and reading world literature—imperatives that, today more than ever, are intertwined.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Chira Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, 1997
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: The Successor F. D. Imbuga, 1979
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: A Walk in the Night Alex La Guma, 1968 Of French and Malagasy stock, involved in South African politics from an early age, Alex La Guma was arrested for treason with 155 others in 1956 and finally acquitted in 1960. During the State of Emergency following the Sharpeville massacre he was detained for five months. Continuing to write, he endured house arrest and solitary confinement. La Guma left South Africa as a refugee in 1966 and lived in exile in London and Havana. He died in 1986. A Walk in the Night and Other Stories reveals La Guma as one of the most important African writers of his time. These works reveal the plight of non-whites in apartheid South Africa, laying bare the lives of the poor and the outcasts who filled the ghettoes and shantytowns.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: New Horizons in English 4 ,
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: To Grasp at a Star Kingwa Kamencu, 2005 Novella containing two stories, both focusing on adolescent rebelliousness.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Children of the New World Assia Djebar, 2005 A compelling war novel, as seen by women, sheds light on the current Iraq conflict.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: The Black Hermit Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, 1968
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: A Grain of Wheat Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 1968
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe, 1994-09-01 “A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: The Life and Loves of a She Devil Fay Weldon, 2009-10-15 'ONE OF OUR VERY BEST WRITERS' Sunday Times 'A tour de force' The Times 'Intoxicating' Daily Telegraph 'Devilishly delightful' New York Times Book Review 'Beautifully and compellingly written' Sunday Express 'Audacious' Times Literary Supplement THE BESTSELLING CLASSIC TALE OF A WOMAN SCORNED, FROM A MUCH-LOVED BRITISH AUTHOR Ruth Patchett never thought of herself as particularly devilish. Rather the opposite in fact - simply a tall, not terribly attractive woman living a quiet life as a wife and mother in a respectable suburb. But when she discovers that her husband is having a passionate affair with the lovely romantic novelist Mary Fisher, she is so seized by envy that she becomes truly diabolic. Within weeks she has burnt down the family home, collected the insurance, made love to the local drunk and embarked on a course of destruction and revenge. A blackly comic satire of the war of the sexes, The Life and Loves of a She Devil is the fantasy of the wronged woman made real. PRAISE FOR FAY WELDON 'She's a Queen of Words' Caitlin Moran 'A national treasure' Literary Review 'The literary equivalent of a stiff drink, a dip in the Atlantic in January, a pep talk by a mildly sadistic coach' New York Times 'Times have changed and Weldon is one of the people who have changed them' The Times 'One of the great lionesses of modern English literature' Harper's Bazaar 'Fay Weldon's voice is as unmistakeable as her acerbic wit' Financial Times
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Song of Nyarloka and Other Poems Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, 1977
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: The Politics of Housing in (Post-)Colonial Africa Kirsten Rüther, Martina Barker-Ciganikova, Daniela Waldburger, Carl-Philipp Bodenstein, 2020-06-08 Housing matters, no matter when or where. This volume of collected essays on housing in colonial and postcolonial Africa seeks to elaborate the how and the why. Housing is much more than a living everyday practice. It unfolds in its disparate dimensions of time, space and agency. Context dependent, it acquires diverse, often ambivalent, meanings. Housing can be a promise, an unfulfilled dream, a tool of self- and class-assertion, a negotiation process, or a means to achieve other ends. Our focus lies in analyzing housing in its multifacetedness, be it a lens to offer insights into complex processes that shape societies; be it a tool of empire to exercise control over private relations of inhabitants; or be it a means to create good, obedient and productive citizens. Contributions to this volume range from the field of history, to architecture and urban planning, African Studies, linguistics, and literature. The individual case studies home in on specific aspects and dimensions of housing and seek to bring them into dialogue with each other. By doing so, the volume aims to add to the vibrant academic debate on studying urban practices and their significance for current social change.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: World Poetry Katharine Washburn, Clifton Fadiman, 1998 An anthology of the best poetry ever written contains more than sixteen hundred poems, spanning more than four millennia, from ancient Sumer and Egypt to the late twentieth century
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Dust Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, 2014-01-28 From a breathtaking new voice, a novel about a splintered family in Kenya—a story of power and deceit, unrequited love, survival and sacrifice. Odidi Oganda, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His grief-stricken sister, Ajany, just returned from Brazil, and their father bring his body back to their crumbling home in the Kenyan drylands, seeking some comfort and peace. But the murder has stirred memories long left untouched and unleashed a series of unexpected events: Odidi and Ajany’s mercurial mother flees in a fit of rage; a young Englishman arrives at the Ogandas’ house, seeking his missing father; a hardened policeman who has borne witness to unspeakable acts reopens a cold case; and an all-seeing Trader with a murky identity plots an overdue revenge. In scenes stretching from the violent upheaval of contemporary Kenya back through a shocking political assassination in 1969 and the Mau Mau uprisings against British colonial rule in the 1950s, we come to learn the secrets held by this parched landscape, buried deep within the shared past of the family and of a conflicted nation. Here is a spellbinding novel about a brother and sister who have lost their way; about how myths come to pass, history is written, and war stains us forever.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Poems from East Africa David Cook, David Rubadiri, 1996 The spirit of the poetic flowering of the 1960s is encapsulated in this comprehensive anthology. The collection gives voice to some fifty poets from Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, writing in English. The diversity of the interests and styles of the individual poets is illustrated: a blend of the gentle lyricism that is a feature of East African writing. All the major poets are included, and many not so well known. Amongst the best known are Jared Angira, Jonathan Kariara, Joseph Kariuki, Taban Lo Liyong, Okot p'Bitek, and David Rubadiri - one of the editors.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Unanswered Cries Osman Conteh, 2002
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Gabriel's Story David Anthony Durham, 2007-12-18 When Gabriel Lynch moves with his mother and brother from a brownstone in Baltimore to a dirt-floor hovel on a homestead in Kansas, he is not pleased. He does not dislike his new stepfather, a former slave, but he has no desire to submit to a life of drudgery and toil on the untamed prairie. So he joins up with a motley crew headed for Texas only to be sucked into an ever-westward wandering replete with a mindless violence he can neither abet nor avoid–a terrifying trek he penitently fears may never allow for a safe return. David Anthony Durham is a genuine talent bent on devastating originality and Gabriel’s Story is as formidable a debut as we have witnessed.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: The Dilemma of a Ghost Ama Ata Aidoo, 1983*
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: The Heinemann Book of African Women's Poetry Stella Chipasula, 1995
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Global Healing Karen Laura Thornber, 2020-03-02 Read an interview with Karen Thornber. In Global Healing: Literature, Advocacy, Care, Karen Laura Thornber analyzes how narratives from diverse communities globally engage with a broad variety of diseases and other serious health conditions and advocate for empathic, compassionate, and respectful care that facilitates healing and enables wellbeing. The three parts of this book discuss writings from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania that implore societies to shatter the devastating social stigmas which prevent billions from accessing effective care; to increase the availability of quality person-focused healthcare; and to prioritize partnerships that facilitate healing and enable wellbeing for both patients and loved ones. Thornber’s Global Healing remaps the contours of comparative literature, world literature, the medical humanities, and the health humanities. Watch a video interview with Thornber by the Mahindra Humanities Center, part of their conversations on Covid-19. Read an interview with Thornber on Brill's Humanities Matter blog.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: A Journey Within Florence Mbaya, 2008 After completing her undergraduate studies Monika Saliku anxiously waits to see what shape her career will take. For her it is a foregone conclusion that she will get an appointment in the city and savour the familiar throb of urban life. However she receives a setback when she is appointed to a bucolic outpost settling for a career she loathes. As she journeys to the small dusty town her struggle to self-realisation has just begun.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Song of a Prisoner Okot p'Bitek, 1971 Song of Prisoner confronts the tragedy of Africa's decade of freedom. The traverses the whole spectrum of her political sickness and contrasts it with the enduring reality of the bush - roots of family and clan, and the optimism of Africa's children in the face of hunger, hardship and humiliation.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Distant Shores Kristin Hannah, 2011-06-28 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved author of The Women explores the heartbreaking choices facing a couple who have forgotten how to love each other. “Hannah examines whether love and commitment are enough to sustain a marriage when two people who have put their individual dreams on ice get a chance to defrost them . . . in fast-moving prose punctuated by snappy asides.”—People Elizabeth and Jackson Shore married young, raised two daughters, and weathered the storms of youth as they built a family. From a distance, their lives look picture perfect. But after the girls leave home, Jack and Elizabeth quietly drift apart. When Jack accepts a wonderful new job, Elizabeth puts her own needs aside to follow him across the country. Then tragedy turns Elizabeth’s world upside down. In the aftermath, she questions everything about her life—her choices, her marriage, even her long-forgotten dreams. In a daring move that shocks her husband, friends, and daughters, she lets go of the woman she has become—and reaches out for the woman she wants to be.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Betrayal in the City F. D. Imbuga, 1987 Betrayal in the City, first published in 1976 and 1977, was Kenya's national entry to the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos, Nigeria. The play is an incisive, thought-provoking examination of the problems of independence and freedom in post-colonial African states, where a sizeable number of people feel that their future is either blank or bleak. In the words of Mosese, one of the characters: It was better while we waited. Now we have nothing to look forward to. We have killed our past and are busy killing our future.--Page 4 of cover
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Satans and Shaitans Obinna Udenwe, 2022-11-17 A calculating secret society and a forbidden love affair between the children of its Evangelist leaders intertwine to dangerous effect in this powerful story about political terrorism and corruption in Nigeria.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: The Invisible Weevil Mary Karooro Okurut, 1998 A fictionalized account of the post-colonial period of Ugandan history. Spanning the decades of successive regimes of thinly disguised presidents, Opolo, Duduma, Polle and Kazi. Weaving together the strands of political and gender concerns this is humorous and somber work full of unforgettable episodes.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Studies in Trans-disciplinary Method Michael J. Shapiro, 2013 This groundbreaking and innovative text demonstrates how method can be understood in much broader and more interesting ways.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Building the Nation and Other Poems Christopher Henry Muwanga Barlow, 2000 Crafted with rare wit and humour, the poems in this book deal with a diverse range of themes such as political opportunism and sycophancy, war, the baffling paradox of god, the enchanting richness and beauty of nature, and the fascinating yet sadly agonising and intractable nature of love. Spanning decades of experience and deep reflection by a veteran poet, this collection offers fresh and enriching insights into subjects that are of interest and concern to us all.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Major Minorities , 2022-06-08
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: New Horizons in English 3 ,
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Urban Obsessions, Urban Fears John Roger Kurtz, 1998 Kurtz's analysis the development of the Kenyan novel in English emphasizes the historical contingencies affecting the production of literature in Kenya, and how succeeding generations have drawn from and expanded the thematic repertoire established by the 'first generation' of works in the 1960s.He explores the relationship between the novel and the city, and how obsessions and fears about the urbanization have been expressed and represented through different generations of Kenyan writers. Kurtz has also put together the first annotated bibliography of all the anglophone Kenyan novels that have appeared since Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote Weep Not, Child.Ngugi's Weep Not, Child made an immediate impact on its publication in 1964. Since then hundreds of novels by Kenyans have been published. This is a comprehensive introduction to the postcolonial novel in English. Three broad areas are identified: -- the first generation of the sixties -- the 'golden age' of the seventies -- and the years after Kenyatta in the 80s and 90sA unifying feature is an uneasy but marked emphasis on the city-particularly Nairobi. The city is used by novelists as both the site and the symbol for a range of obsessions and fears about postcolonial society. There is particular emphasis on the changing ways in which the city has been portrayed since Ngugi's first novel, the relation of popular literature to the city, the portrayal of women in the city and the special status of Meja Mwangi's urban novels.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Flee, Mama Flee David Mulwa, 2014
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: A Man Who Is Not a Man Thando Mgqolozana, 2020-02-16 After Lumkile is arrested for robbery, his estranged mother appears and removes him to the Eastern Cape, where he makes a fresh start - reinventing himself at a new school and falling in love. When the time comes for Lumkile to enter manhood by undergoing a ritual circumcision, he prepares eagerly for the ceremonies ahead. However, in his makeshift hut on the mountain, Lumkile realises that something has gone terribly wrong. Having been taught that 'what happens at the mountain stays at the mountain' he faces a stark choice: to seek medical help and risk being forever ostracised and labelled as a 'failed man'; or to suffer life-changing injuries or even death. This deftly written novel is one young man's intimate account of a botched circumcision, and his journey to accept his fate and embrace his future, as he gains a deeper understanding of what it really means to be a man.
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: Book Review Digest , 2002
  coming to birth marjorie oludhe macgoye summary: The Sacred Seed Rebeka Njau, 2003
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Apr 28, 2021 · "in coming months" "in the next few months" (this may suggest more immediacy than other options, …

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Jun 4, 2016 · I will be coming tomorrow. The act of "coming" here is taking a long time from the speaker/writer's …

Coming vs. Going - English Language Learners Stack Exch…
Aug 19, 2020 · Indeed, "immigration" and "coming to a new country" are closely aligned. The problem is that …

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Are you coming? is a complete question asking whether someone will join you in your travels. The same applies in …

word choice - I am cumming or I am coming - English Language …
Feb 7, 2015 · will cum, will come, cummed, came, is cumming, is coming, have cum, have come. Because only a few of the standard recognized resources (dictionaries) describe these words …

adjectives - When should I use next, upcoming and coming?
Apr 28, 2021 · "in coming months" "in the next few months" (this may suggest more immediacy than other options, but not necessarily) "in the upcoming months" (this is awkward and …

future time - "Will come" or "Will be coming" - English Language ...
Jun 4, 2016 · I will be coming tomorrow. The act of "coming" here is taking a long time from the speaker/writer's point of view. One example where this would apply is if by "coming" the …

Coming vs. Going - English Language Learners Stack Exchange
Aug 19, 2020 · Indeed, "immigration" and "coming to a new country" are closely aligned. The problem is that your example sentence seems to be spoken by an omniscient narrator who …

present tense - Do you come? Are you coming? - English …
Are you coming? is a complete question asking whether someone will join you in your travels. The same applies in your next two sentences. Are you coming with me? (correct) Do you come …

Is coming or comes - English Language Learners Stack Exchange
Jul 20, 2021 · A movie timetable is a future arrangement, and it would be normal and natural to use present continuous in this situation. This is re-enforced by idiom. Movie trailers often say …

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May 28, 2019 · The phrase "coming up" can also be sued to mean "happening soon, as in . The Fourth of July is coming up. In this sense "coming" could also be used, but "coming up" …

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Apr 13, 2017 · Edit: Inspired by comments, the closest next Saturday can also be identified as "this coming Saturday", and the next following Saturday, as "Saturday week" or (as I learned …

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Jun 22, 2019 · Had The Game of Thrones used "winter is coming up" it just wouldn't have had the same ring to it as "winter is coming." But which form to use is a matter of personal opinion and …

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Oct 15, 2015 · If X is coming soon, something could come before X, even though by saying soon you are saying not much time will pass before X comes. If X is coming next, nothing else …