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Worries of the Heart (Paperback)
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Worries of the Heart (Paperback)
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Growing up in the Maragoli community in Kenya, Kenda Mutongi
encountered a perplexing contradiction. While the young teachers at
her village school railed against colonialism, many of her elders,
including her widowed mother, praised their former British masters.
In this moving book, Mutongi explores how both the challenges and
contradictions of colonial rule and the frustrations and failures
of independence shaped the lives of Maragoli widows and their
complex relations with each other, their families, and the larger
community.
Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, rates
of widowhood have been remarkably high in Kenya. Yet despite their
numbers, widows and their families exist at the margins of society,
and their lives act as a barometer for the harsh realities of rural
Kenya. Mutongi here argues that widows survive by publicly airing
their social, economic, and political problems, their "worries of
the heart." Initially aimed at the men in their community, and then
their colonial rulers, this strategy changed after independence as
widows increasingly invoked the language of citizenship to demand
their rights from the new leaders of Kenya--leaders whose failure
to meet the needs of ordinary citizens has led to deep
disenchantment and altered Kenyans' view of their colonial past. An
innovative blend of ethnography and historical research, "Worries
of the Heart" is a poignant narrative rich with insights into
postcolonial Africa.
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