Contesting traditions through self-narration in Grace Ogot’s days of my life

Abstract

This study examines the use of self-narrative to express dissatisfaction with traditions and how this expression of dissent allows the projection of female agency. This is a study of Grace Ogot’s autobiography, Days of My Life, which examines how her life from the beginning has been one of attaining “firsts” in diverse fields from education, employment to political leadership, holding that her contests with tradition borrows from her upbringing. It is to this realization that the study begins by looking at a biographical account of her life. Noting that Ogot’s life, including that of her parents, spans the duration from pre-colonial to the post-colonial era, the study relies on her self-narration as replica of the story of Kenyan women’s development towards realization of fair representation in patriarchal traditional set-up. It is thus an attempt to find not only how women have been denied liberty by patriarchal arrangement, but also a study to find how women try to acquire this voice against a backdrop of male-dominance. Towards this end, the study is conducted from a feminist theoretical perspective, which proposes that societal arrangement privileges males at the expense of females. The study seeks to show how Ogot presents a narrative of female characters whose lives offer counter-narratives to the prevailing attitudes in her society, which is informed by male-dominance. Thus the study concludes that the need to liberate women is an all-involving and continuous process that should interest everybody irrespective of gender differences