Coming To Birth by Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

About Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

Coming To Birth by Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

The protagonist, Paulina, comes to Nairobi as a 16-year-old bride in 1956, the year Britain imposed martial law on Kenya. Pregnant and frightened by the big city, country-reared Paulina soon suffers a miscarriage. (Kirkus Reviews) Over the next decade, as Kenya moves toward independence and Paulina moves toward selfhood, the novel traces both journeys with compassion and insight. Macgoye tries to compare pre-colonial and post-colonial Kenya through the perspective of a Kenyan woman. Her husband tries to control her, which leads to an unhappy marriage filled with misunderstanding and disappointment. (Wikipedia) Yet Paulina grows, learns, and ultimately claims her own power. The novel won the Sinclair Prize for Fiction and has been used as a set book in Kenyan secondary schools for decades. Macgoye — a British woman who made Kenya her permanent home — wrote with a deep insider's understanding of Kenyan life and a genuine love for the country and its people.