A Gendered Socialist Vision of Micere Mugo's Poetry

Abstract

This study examines how the concepts of gender and class are deployed in Micere Mugo's two poetry collections, Daughter of My People Sing! (1976) and My Mother's Poem and Other Songs (1994); how the two concepts are fused to generate a gendered socialist vision; and how the poetry's form contributes to the above vision. The vision is explicated within the thematic rubric of tradition and values, love and marriage, anti-colonial struggles and the state of the neo-colony, and feminism. The study is guided by the hypotheses that, Micere Mugo's poetry highlights the cultural, political, economic and social issues defining Africa; that the poetry has been influenced by African oral forms; and that women's issues are an integral component of the poetry. The study proceeds from the Marxist, Post-colonial and Feminist theoretical frameworks. These theories pay close attention to both the form and content of works of art. The study reveals that Micere Mugo simultaneously deploys gender and class to evolve a vision for the African society; that she conceives men and women as equal human entities whose unity is required to extirpate the African patriarchy and social problems engendered by the advent of capitalism in Africa; that she utilizes African oral forms to articulate egalitarian imperatives; and that a socialist order is best placed to rehumanize a world de-humanized by the voracious acquisitive appetites of capitalism. In other words, Micere Mugo's poetic vision vouches for the construction of a gender sensitive socialist order. The study is based on library and internet research, and interviews conducted with Micere.These interviews have formed an integral part of Mango's literary biography in the introduction to this project. A close reading of the primary texts has been undertaken and it is on that basis that connections have been made between the texts and the concrete world.