Narrating Publicness In Selected Contemporary Kenyan Women’s Autobiographies

Abstract

This study examines how Kenyan women who have been occupiers of public or privileged spaces narrate their publicness. The study focuses on three contemporary Kenyan women’s autobiographies: Ciarunji Chesaina’s Run Gazelle Run, Rebeka Njau’s Mirrors of my Life and Phoebe Asiyo’s It is Possible: An African Woman Speaks. The selected writers are public figures in contemporary Kenya and therefore the study interrogates how they use their life narratives to paint a portrait of Kenya. It also examines how the three writers use various autobiographical strategies to explore and assert their private and public identities. The objectives of the study are: to examine the autobiographical elements employed by the three writers, to explore the strategies of narrating self that the three writers employ and to examine the issues the three autobiographers comment on in their life narratives. The study is guided by three theoretical frameworks: the theory of the autobiography, feminism criticism and the theory of narratology. The study is divided into five chapters: chapter one forms the background to the study, chapter two focuses on Chesaina’s text; Run Gazelle Run, chapter three analyses with Mirrors of my Life by Njau and chapter for is dedicated to Asiyo’s It is Possible: An African Woman Speaks. The last chapter is dedicated to the findings and conclusion of the study. The study seeks to advance knowledge by examining strategies of self-narration by contemporary Kenyan woman autobiographers who have at one point in their lives occupied public spaces in the country.