Narrative in the Time of Aids

Postcolonial Kenyan Women's Literature

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9249986
AutoresMarie Kruger (0000-0002-1972-4450, autor de correspondencia)
Año2004
Volumen35
Número1
Páginas108-129
Fecha de publicación2004-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaResearch in African Literatures (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0034-5210 • E-ISSN: 1527-2044
EditorialIndiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2979/ral.2004.35.1.108
OpenAlexW2076451970
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas29

Confessions of an AIDS Victim (1993) and Chira (1997) portray AIDS in postcolonial Kenya as a painful social experience that blurs and shifts cultural values until the search for a new normative and narrative community becomes inevitable. In the midst of such turbulent change, the possibility for dissent and subversion grows, but so does the desire to integrate split subjectivities into a meaningful narrative with a clearly defined moral center. The protagonists in both novels respond to the advance of a potentially terminal disease with the need for a clear sense of right and wrong. Hybrid identities return once more to the reliable and deceptively stable boundaries of religious or experiential authority. The relationship between identity and authority, however, remains precarious, and the ambiguity applies to both the moral authority that the characters long for and the narrative authority that legitimizes such longing

Art · Kenya · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Sociology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · History · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology