Transcending racial/cultural spaces: the power of the woman in Yusuf Dawood's The Price of Living and Water Under the Bridge

Abstract

This paper interrogates Yusuf Dawood's portrayal of women characters in two of his novels – The Price of Living (1983) and Water Under the Bridge (1991) against the background of the post‐independence multiracial Kenya. Positing that Dawood's portrayal of women differs substantially from that of other authors, the paper engages with notions of group identity and the role of women as disturbing and subverting traditional notions of femininity, cultural and racial purity. This, then, is shown as one way in which women, traditionally viewed as culturally conservative even if by coercion, contribute to the debates on nation‐formation.