Grace Ogot

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Grace Ogot (b. May 15, 1930) is a renowned Kenyan author of short stories and novels. She is the first female writer from Kenya to win international attention and she was the first woman to have fiction published by the East African Publishing House.

Ogot was born Grace Emily Akinyi in Asembo, in the district of Nyanza. She trained as a nurse in Uganda and in England. She has worked as a midwife, a tutor, as journalist, as a BBC Overseas Service broadcaster, and in a managerial capacity for the Air India Corporation of East Africa. In 1984 she became one of only a handful of women to serve as a Member of Parliament and the only woman assistant minister in the cabinet of then President Daniel Arap Moi. Ogot has since held various Ambassadorial posts, representing her country at the United Nations and UNESCO. Ogot was a founding member of the Writers' Association of Kenya.

She married the historian Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot, a Luo from Gem Location, in 1959, and is the mother of four children.

Grace Ogot's first book was Land Without Thunder, a book of short stories. Her first novel was The Promised Land. Her other works include: The Strange Bride, The Graduate, The Other Woman and The Island of Tears.

Grace Ogot can be said to be one of Africa's finest writers. Her writing style is splendid in its evocation of vivid imagery; she captures the formalities of traditional African interpersonal exchanges, governed by protocol and symbolism.

Many of her stories are set against the scenic background of Lake Victoria and the traditions of the Luo people. Her prose is evocative of traditional folklore – such as in The Strange Bride, a novel about a mystical and provocative female character in ancient Luoland. Grace Ogot also tackles issues of emigration – as is the case in The Promised Land, a novel set in the 1930s, whereby her main protagonists emigrate from Nyanza to northern Tanzania, in search of fertile land and wealth. The Graduate is also a novel about the complexities of emigration; in it, the male protagonist returns from the United States to Kenya, after completing his studies. Many of the short stories in Land Without Thunder are set in ancient Luoland; Ogot's descriptions, literary tools, and storylines offer a valuable insight into Luo culture in pre-colonial East Africa. Ogot has published works in both English and Luo – some of her works were first published in the Dholuo language.

She was interviewed in 1974 by Lee Nichols for a Voice of America radio broadcast that was aired between 1975-1979 (Voice of America radio series Conversations with African writers, no. 23). The Library of Congress has a copy of the broadcast tape and the unedited original interview. The broadcast transcript appears in the book Conversations with African Writers (Washington, D.C.: Voice of America, 1981), p. 207-216.

[edit] Bibliography

From the collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC:

  • Aloo kod Apul-Apul (1981) in Luo.
  • Ber wat (1981) in Luo.
  • The graduate (1980)
  • The island of tears (1980)
  • Land without thunder; short stories (1968)
  • Miaha (1983) in Luo; translated as The strange bride by Okoth Okombo (1989) ISBN 996646865X
  • The other woman: selected short stories (1976)
  • The Promised Land: a novel (1966)
  • The strange bride translated from Dholuo by Okoth Okombo.
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