Margaret Ogola
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Margaret A Ogola is the celebrated Kenyan author of the novel The River and the Source, and its sequel, I Swear by Apollo. The River and the Source follows four generations of Kenyan women in a rapidly changing country and society. Critics have described it as a wonderful book, it has been on the KCSE syllabus for many years, and it won the Africa Region Commonwealth Award for Literature. She also is the recipient of the Familias Award for Humanitarian Service of the World Congress of Families. [1]
Of her first novel, Ogola says:
"The inspiration for this book came from my mother who handed down to me the wisdom and lives of her own mother and grandmother. This strength and support that is found in the African family is the most important part of our culture, and should be preserved and nurtured at all costs."
In an analysis of The River and the Source, Tom Odhiambo writes: "The several female protagonists in the text, representing different historical periods in Kenya's history, symbolically articulate a kind of womanhood in contemporary Kenya that projects its own social agency and identity. In the process, these characters rewrite the persona that has been allocated to women in postcolonial Kenya's national story." Odhiambo contends that "Ogola's text seeks to project Kenyan women as capable of not only telling their own stories but also of claiming their rightful place and identity in the broader national life." [2]
She has also written Cardinal Otunga: A gift of grace, about Maurice Michael Otunga (1923–2003), Roman Catholic Archbishop Emeritus of Nairobi. She is a supernumerary member of the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei.
Ogola is a paediatrician based in Nairobi and the director of Cottolengo Hospice, a hospice for HIV and AIDS orphans. She is also Vice-President of Family Life Counselling (Kenya) and interested in women's empowerment.
Ogola is married and has four children.
[edit] Quotation
"Unless we recognise that each individual is irrepeatable and valuable by virtue of simply being conceived human, we cannot begin to talk about human rights. This includes the right to be born, as all of us have enjoyed. True justice should be for each human being, visible and invisible, young and old, disabled and able, to enjoy fully their right to life. The accidental attributes that we acquire such as colour, sex intelligence, economic circumstances, physical or mental disability should not be used as an excuse to deprive a person of life."
Quoted from a speech she gave: On the Dignity of the African Woman
[edit] Bibliography
From the collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC:
- The river and the source (1994) ISBN 9966882057
- Cardinal Otunga: a gift of grace with Margaret Roche (1999) ISBN 9966214267
- I swear by Apollo (2002) ISBN 9966882723
- Place of destiny (2005) ISBN 9966080627
- Narrator or "presenter" for The odds against us -- but there’s hope (VHS videocassette) Nairobi: Ukweli Video Productions, c2002.
