The intersection of the self and history in Kenyan autobiographies

Abstract

Life writing has increasingly become a popular genre which calls for sustained interrogation and analysis of the narratives produced. The autobiography is not only the story of the narrating subject but can be read as the history of the society within which the subject writes or lives. This essay reads a selection of Kenyan autobiographies representative of the various periods that the nation has lived through with a bid to examine how the narrating subjects inscribe themselves into the history of the nation. I argue that reading Kenyan autobiographies allows one to understand, through personal narratives, the history and the making of the Kenyan nation.