Folklore and Socio-Political Identity in Joe Khamisi’s The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator and Dash Before Dusk: A Slave Descendant’s Journey in Freedom

Abstract

Joe Khamisi’s first publication The Politics of Betrayal is a memoir and the second Dash Before Dusk is an autobiography. They both contain a personal and a group identity narration capturing a period in the Kenyan nation’s history. This paper discusses the use of folklore for sociopolitical identity in the two texts. This is a qualitative research study. Close reading has been done followed by interpretation of the selected works based on the study objectives. The specific objectives are to identify integration of folklore in the selected works, and to interrogate how the author uses folklore to signal sociopolitical identity. Tenets from the postcolonial and autobiographical theories provide a study guide. The selected works are a good record of Kenya’s immediate history from 2002 to 2007 and the colonial period to the present especially from 1943 up to 2007 when the author lost his Bahari constituency seat.