By Edna Karugo
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, the iconic writer who through the years became difficult to separate from her literary nature took a bow from the land of the living at her home in Ngara on Tuesday afternoon. Now that light has gone out of her physical world, all that remains is the torch of a literary icon that was focused – feminist maybe – as some writers and critics have noted. Marjorie was aged 87.
Her work was widely read at ones convenience but more studied in English and literature lessons; if it was not Coming to Birth, then it was A Freedom Song, or Song of the Unborn Dead – Song of Nyarloka.
Literary scholars describe her as a lady who easily oozed Kenyan culture than most Kenyans would, albeit through the pen. But who was Marjorie? Dr Jennifer Muchiri, a writer and lecturer at the University of Nairobi’s Literature department, says Marjorie had a unique way of ensuring her work conformed to the African culture. Marjorie was not born in the Kenyan culture, but when she got married to D.G.W Macgoye, a medical doctor, she weaved easily into his culture and embraced it as her own.
“Look at her work like the Freedom Song or Coming to Birth; she has roped in the Luo culture and by extension the African culture so effortlessly and both just like the other works she did still remain relevant to this day, speaking to issues that Kenya is grappling more 50 years after independence.
in the video she narrates the poem of the dead.
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, the iconic writer who through the years became difficult to separate from her literary nature took a bow from the land of the living at her home in Ngara on Tuesday afternoon. Now that light has gone out of her physical world, all that remains is the torch of a literary icon that was focused – feminist maybe – as some writers and critics have noted. Marjorie was aged 87.
Her work was widely read at ones convenience but more studied in English and literature lessons; if it was not Coming to Birth, then it was A Freedom Song, or Song of the Unborn Dead – Song of Nyarloka.
Literary scholars describe her as a lady who easily oozed Kenyan culture than most Kenyans would, albeit through the pen. But who was Marjorie? Dr Jennifer Muchiri, a writer and lecturer at the University of Nairobi’s Literature department, says Marjorie had a unique way of ensuring her work conformed to the African culture. Marjorie was not born in the Kenyan culture, but when she got married to D.G.W Macgoye, a medical doctor, she weaved easily into his culture and embraced it as her own.
“Look at her work like the Freedom Song or Coming to Birth; she has roped in the Luo culture and by extension the African culture so effortlessly and both just like the other works she did still remain relevant to this day, speaking to issues that Kenya is grappling more 50 years after independence.
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