The Present Moment by Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

About Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

The Present Moment by Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

Set in a Nairobi home for the elderly, The Present Moment brings together seven old women from different backgrounds and generations — Christian converts, former concubines, survivors of colonial violence, and witnesses to independence. As they share their stories, a vast panorama of Kenyan history unfolds, from the early colonial period through independence and beyond. Macgoye gives each woman a distinctive voice and a fully realised inner life, showing how history is lived in the bodies and memories of ordinary people — especially women — who are rarely the subjects of official history books. It is a quiet, deeply moving book that rewards patient reading with profound insight into what it has meant to be a woman in Kenya across the twentieth century.