Browsing by Author "Barasa, Violet Nasambu"
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- ItemDramatizing Silence and Women’s Agency in Angel’s Diary(Journal of Language, Technology & Entrepreneurship in Africa, 2019-12) Barasa, Violet NasambuThis article examines the different mechanisms used by women in Angel’s Diary, a popular television theatre text aired on Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) to demonstrate their agency. Using Angel’s Diary as its point of reference, the article interrogates the dynamics of women’s position that characterize their existence and their inexorable struggle to affirm their potential in a limiting and unequal society. The positioning of women in the society is informed by historical, economic, political, social and cultural experiences in Africa that place a woman in a marginal locus. The article therefore deals with strategies that women use to overcome the inequalities, dominations and ‘normalized’ practices that are manifestations of domination and silencing apparatus of various aspects of women’s potential. Methodologically, the paper employed qualitative approach in reading Angel’s Diary. Content analysis of video tapes was the primary method used. In content analysis, I interrogated ways employed by women to subvert social norms, forms of domination and the eventual resistance to emancipate the self. The article found out that women characters in Angel’s Diary employ strategies such as the journey, music, monologues, and silence to transcend the limitation created around them and perpetuated through the father figure.
- ItemPerforming Urban Social Realities in Contemporary Kenya(Taylor and Francis Online, Journal Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, 2020-05) Barasa, Violet NasambuThis article examines class dynamics in Kenya’s urban cities using television theatre episodes that dramatise the interaction between marginalised and privileged citizens. In the main, the analysis in the article focuses on selected Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) television theatre texts. Through a critical examination of Siku ya kimataifa ya mtoto Mwafrika (The International Day of the African child), and Marehemu Ocholla (The late Ocholla), both episodes of Vioja Mahakamani (incidents/drama in the courtroom) aired on KBC, the paper postulates that the different social classes advanced in the texts represent the everyday struggles that sections of city dwellers grapple with partly because of their class positioning. In addition, the article holds that the marginalisation of a majority of urban dwellers, such as street children, predispose them to crime and other anti-social behaviour as the only means to survive in the city.
- ItemReconstructing Kenyan Women's Image in Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye's Coming to Birth(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2008-02) Barasa, Violet NasambuThis study examines how Macgoye, in her novel Coming to Birth, articulates the place of women characters in the Kenyan society from colonial to postcolonial periods. It investigates how Macgoye explores Kenya’s postcolonial socio-political dynamics and their influences in the construction of individual women’s identities. The study relies on feminist articulations to help us capture the contestation between patriarchal dominance and women agency as presented in Coming to Birth. I argue that, through the utilisation of political changes and events, Macgoye demonstrates the capacity of African women and Kenyan women in particular to break from the fetters of social-cultural structures to achieve self-realisation as free agents. The study begins with a review of Macgoye’s writings and a general literature survey on feminist debates that are relevant in articulating women’s experiences in Africa and Kenya in particular. By focusing on the theme of politics, the research proceeds to demonstrate how socio-political changes influence the formation of identities and choices of individuals in the society as exemplified by the protagonist, Paulina. Given the centrality of women’s agency in Coming to Birth, the work proceeds to explore strategies that women employ for their individual emancipation within a society dominated by patriarchal dictates. I do this by focusing on marriage and motherhood and how women interrogate the construction of these institutions. The work then explores other key elements pertinent to women emancipation used in Coming to Birth, namely, Christianity, education, rural/urban dynamics and traditional practices. Finally, friendship is discussed as a site that enables women to transcend social structures imposed on them by society.