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Fiction/African Studies
$11.95 U.S.
1986 WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL SINCLAIR PRIZE FOR FICTION
I n this quietly powerful and eminently readable novel, award-winning Kenyan novelist Marjorie Macgoye deftly interweaves the story of one young woman’s tumultuous coming of age with the history of a nation emerging from colonialism.
Sixteen-year-old Paulina leaves her traditional rural village with high hopes to meet her new husband in Nairobi, which in 1956 is still in the midst of “the Emergency” as the British seek to suppress anti-colonial revolts. Her naivete is soon tempered by the realities of political turmoil, urban poverty, and married life, and by the pain of her own inability to bear a child. Soon on her own, Paulina must rely upon her skills and determination in a struggle for survival, independence, and identity. Her remarkable inner Journey comes to embrace the experience of an entire nation also struggling to find its way.
“For Macgoye, the narrative of the ordinary woman trying to hold things together in a rapidly changing world becomes a narrative of the becoming of the nation and the human struggle for dignity. . . . She makes her story become all our story.” — Ngugi wa Thiong’o
“Coming to Birth is modern Kenya’s response to Out of Africa. . . . [An] illuminating book that is a worthy winner of the Sinclair Prize.”
—The Times (London)
“A cooly stunning novel out of Kenya. ... I have no doubt that it is deadly accurate; it is certainly compulsively readable.” —Fay Weldon
“This story . . . stays in the bloodstream and alters the vision.”
—The Sunday Times (London)
MARJORIE OLUDHE MACGOYE, one Of contemporary Kenya’s most widely' known and respected writers^ is the,author of poetry, nonfictiom children’s books, and several other fe hovels; including The Present Moment. In 1986 she became the first African woman to win the Sinclair Prize: SheJives in Nairobi. J. ROGER KURTZ, assistant professor of postcolonlal and world literatures in the department of English at SUNY Brockport, is author of Urban ‘ Obsessions, Urban Fears: The Postcolonial Kenyan Novel. JEAN HAY teaches history at the African Studies Center, Boston University. / , » , ' ;
Cover design: Ann Petter
Cover art: Irma Stern, African Woman, 1940. Private collection (S.A.). Courtesy of the Irma Stern Trust, Cape Town, South Africa Printed in Canada
THE FEMINIST PRESS
at The City University of New York
ISBN