Tom Odhiambo
Biographic Data
| ID | 96355 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tom Odhiambo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tom |
| FAMILY NAME | Odhiambo |
| SIGNATURE | ODHIAMBO T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8364-2185 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Remembering the past and reflecting on Kenya's present
in colonial Kenya and went to school at a time when girls were unlikely to be encouraged to seek formal education. But coming from a Christian family, she was encouraged to study
Journeying into Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies
Men in African Film and Fiction
The Reinvention of the Theory of Failed Morality in Kenya and Africa
It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower by Michela WrongFourth Estate (London), 2009, ISBN 9-0-00-724196-5 Michela Wrong’s book arrived in Kenya in a very clandestine manner in the early months of 2009. It did not come via the usual route of the bookshops. Rather, excerpts from it were serialized in the leading Kenyan newspaper, The Daily Nation. When the real copies of the book reached Nairobi, they were being sold by newspaper…
Kenyan Popular Fiction in English and the Melodramas of the Underdogs
The postcolonial urban landscape, especially in Africa, remains a place defined by an inchoate relationship between the different social classes occupying it. This essay is a brief analysis of the relationship between the poor and the rich in an urban setting as dramatized in popular literature from Kenya. The essay emphasizes the calculated strategies that the poor adopt, as underdogs, in the battle with the rich over resources . Such strategies…
The Black Female Body as a 'Consumer and a Consumable' in CurrentDrumandTrue LoveMagazines in South Africa1
Juvenile delinquency and violence in the fiction of three Kenyan writers
This essay is a preliminary examination of crime and violence in postcolonial Kenyan fiction. It examines how three Kenyan writers have dealt with the themes of crime and violence in their fiction. Through examination of the fiction of John Kiriamiti, Meja Mwangi and John Kigia, the paper postulates that the prevalence of juvenile delinquents in this fiction and the related acts of violence and criminality could be read as indicators of the failu…
Biography of a Trade Unionist and the Resurrection of the 'Indian Question' in Twenty-First Century Kenya
The place of Indians/Asians in Kenya's national history remains on the margins. The postcolonial Kenyan nation-state has been reluctant to acknowledge the role that Kenyans of Indian/Asian origin played and continue to play in the evolution of modern Kenya. Makhan Singh is one such Kenyan of Indian origin whose place in the Kenyan historiography has remained uncelebrated. This article offers a preliminary meta-critique of Zarina Patel's Unquiet: …
Sexual Anxieties and Rampant Masculinities in Postcolonial Kenyan Literature
Postcolonial African society has been characterised as one in transition. Institutions, communities and individuals experienced (and some continue to experience) rapid political, social, economic and cultural changes with differing consequences. The independence era in many African countries, the 1960s, unleashed freedoms and liberties that had been unimaginable to a majority of native Africans during the colonial era. These freedoms changed the …
Writing alternative womanhood in Kenya in Margaret Ogola'sThe River and the Source
Postcolonial Kenya continues to grapple with the problem of gender inequality. Whether through acts of omission or commission and despite notable and significant achievements such as Wangari Maathai winning the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and the appointment of several women to senior government positions, Kenyan women still compare poorly to their men counterparts in several spheres of life. This is why it is significant that stories of successful wo…
Inventing Africa in the Twentieth Century: Cultural Imagination, Politics and Transnationalism inDrumMagazine
The city as a marker of modernity in postcolonial Kenyan popular fiction
The city is one of the most enduring symbols of modernity in Africa. Owing to its advanced industrial, economic and infrastructural development in relation to other parts of most postcolonial African countries, the city invites an intense artistic gaze. The Kenyan city of Nairobi is one such example of a postcolonial African city which has provided writers with ready-made literary material. Nairobi is depicted in popular Kenyan fiction as a key s…
Holding the Traveller's Gaze Accountable in Shiva Naipaul'sNorth of South: An African Journey
Travelogues are partly based on what is witnessed, observed and noted about the places and people visited and what is already known in advance, mainly from an existing archive. The archive, therefore, is an important element in travel writing. However, an author cannot avoid responsibility for what she/he notes/writes/composes about a place and its people. In a sense, a biography of a place may represent a writer's struggles to compromise between…
The Romantic Detective in Two Kenyan Popular Novels
Fiction meant for light reading or writing that is ostensibly intended for entertainment can also be a vehicle for critical political, cultural and social commentary. Popular genres such as the thriller or romance indeed have the capacity to combine the elements of excitement and assessment of social life. For instance, a romance story that tells of a relationship between a man and a woman can also be read as an allegory of the relationship betwe…
Specificities: Troubled Love and Marriage as Work in Kenyan Popular Fiction
(2003). Specificities: Troubled Love and Marriage as Work in Kenyan Popular Fiction. Social Identities: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 423-436
Inventing Africa in the Twentieth Century: Cultural Imagination, Politics and Transnationalism inDrumMagazine
The Black Female Body as a 'Consumer and a Consumable' in CurrentDrumandTrue LoveMagazines in South Africa1
Sexual Anxieties and Rampant Masculinities in Postcolonial Kenyan Literature
Postcolonial African society has been characterised as one in transition. Institutions, communities and individuals experienced (and some continue to experience) rapid political, social, economic and cultural changes with differing consequences. The independence era in many African countries, the 1960s, unleashed freedoms and liberties that had been unimaginable to a majority of native Africans during the colonial era. These freedoms changed the …
Specificities: Troubled Love and Marriage as Work in Kenyan Popular Fiction
(2003). Specificities: Troubled Love and Marriage as Work in Kenyan Popular Fiction. Social Identities: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 423-436
Kenyan Popular Fiction in English and the Melodramas of the Underdogs
The postcolonial urban landscape, especially in Africa, remains a place defined by an inchoate relationship between the different social classes occupying it. This essay is a brief analysis of the relationship between the poor and the rich in an urban setting as dramatized in popular literature from Kenya. The essay emphasizes the calculated strategies that the poor adopt, as underdogs, in the battle with the rich over resources . Such strategies…
Biography of a Trade Unionist and the Resurrection of the 'Indian Question' in Twenty-First Century Kenya
The place of Indians/Asians in Kenya's national history remains on the margins. The postcolonial Kenyan nation-state has been reluctant to acknowledge the role that Kenyans of Indian/Asian origin played and continue to play in the evolution of modern Kenya. Makhan Singh is one such Kenyan of Indian origin whose place in the Kenyan historiography has remained uncelebrated. This article offers a preliminary meta-critique of Zarina Patel's Unquiet: …
Writing alternative womanhood in Kenya in Margaret Ogola'sThe River and the Source
Postcolonial Kenya continues to grapple with the problem of gender inequality. Whether through acts of omission or commission and despite notable and significant achievements such as Wangari Maathai winning the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and the appointment of several women to senior government positions, Kenyan women still compare poorly to their men counterparts in several spheres of life. This is why it is significant that stories of successful wo…
The Romantic Detective in Two Kenyan Popular Novels
Fiction meant for light reading or writing that is ostensibly intended for entertainment can also be a vehicle for critical political, cultural and social commentary. Popular genres such as the thriller or romance indeed have the capacity to combine the elements of excitement and assessment of social life. For instance, a romance story that tells of a relationship between a man and a woman can also be read as an allegory of the relationship betwe…
Holding the Traveller's Gaze Accountable in Shiva Naipaul'sNorth of South: An African Journey
Travelogues are partly based on what is witnessed, observed and noted about the places and people visited and what is already known in advance, mainly from an existing archive. The archive, therefore, is an important element in travel writing. However, an author cannot avoid responsibility for what she/he notes/writes/composes about a place and its people. In a sense, a biography of a place may represent a writer's struggles to compromise between…
Specificities: Troubled Love and Marriage as Work in Kenyan Popular Fiction
(2003). Specificities: Troubled Love and Marriage as Work in Kenyan Popular Fiction. Social Identities: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 423-436
Holding the Traveller's Gaze Accountable in Shiva Naipaul'sNorth of South: An African Journey
Travelogues are partly based on what is witnessed, observed and noted about the places and people visited and what is already known in advance, mainly from an existing archive. The archive, therefore, is an important element in travel writing. However, an author cannot avoid responsibility for what she/he notes/writes/composes about a place and its people. In a sense, a biography of a place may represent a writer's struggles to compromise between…
The Romantic Detective in Two Kenyan Popular Novels
Fiction meant for light reading or writing that is ostensibly intended for entertainment can also be a vehicle for critical political, cultural and social commentary. Popular genres such as the thriller or romance indeed have the capacity to combine the elements of excitement and assessment of social life. For instance, a romance story that tells of a relationship between a man and a woman can also be read as an allegory of the relationship betwe…
The city as a marker of modernity in postcolonial Kenyan popular fiction
The city is one of the most enduring symbols of modernity in Africa. Owing to its advanced industrial, economic and infrastructural development in relation to other parts of most postcolonial African countries, the city invites an intense artistic gaze. The Kenyan city of Nairobi is one such example of a postcolonial African city which has provided writers with ready-made literary material. Nairobi is depicted in popular Kenyan fiction as a key s…
Writing alternative womanhood in Kenya in Margaret Ogola'sThe River and the Source
Postcolonial Kenya continues to grapple with the problem of gender inequality. Whether through acts of omission or commission and despite notable and significant achievements such as Wangari Maathai winning the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and the appointment of several women to senior government positions, Kenyan women still compare poorly to their men counterparts in several spheres of life. This is why it is significant that stories of successful wo…
Inventing Africa in the Twentieth Century: Cultural Imagination, Politics and Transnationalism inDrumMagazine
Juvenile delinquency and violence in the fiction of three Kenyan writers
This essay is a preliminary examination of crime and violence in postcolonial Kenyan fiction. It examines how three Kenyan writers have dealt with the themes of crime and violence in their fiction. Through examination of the fiction of John Kiriamiti, Meja Mwangi and John Kigia, the paper postulates that the prevalence of juvenile delinquents in this fiction and the related acts of violence and criminality could be read as indicators of the failu…
Biography of a Trade Unionist and the Resurrection of the 'Indian Question' in Twenty-First Century Kenya
The place of Indians/Asians in Kenya's national history remains on the margins. The postcolonial Kenyan nation-state has been reluctant to acknowledge the role that Kenyans of Indian/Asian origin played and continue to play in the evolution of modern Kenya. Makhan Singh is one such Kenyan of Indian origin whose place in the Kenyan historiography has remained uncelebrated. This article offers a preliminary meta-critique of Zarina Patel's Unquiet: …
Sexual Anxieties and Rampant Masculinities in Postcolonial Kenyan Literature
Postcolonial African society has been characterised as one in transition. Institutions, communities and individuals experienced (and some continue to experience) rapid political, social, economic and cultural changes with differing consequences. The independence era in many African countries, the 1960s, unleashed freedoms and liberties that had been unimaginable to a majority of native Africans during the colonial era. These freedoms changed the …
Kenyan Popular Fiction in English and the Melodramas of the Underdogs
The postcolonial urban landscape, especially in Africa, remains a place defined by an inchoate relationship between the different social classes occupying it. This essay is a brief analysis of the relationship between the poor and the rich in an urban setting as dramatized in popular literature from Kenya. The essay emphasizes the calculated strategies that the poor adopt, as underdogs, in the battle with the rich over resources . Such strategies…
The Black Female Body as a 'Consumer and a Consumable' in CurrentDrumandTrue LoveMagazines in South Africa1
The Reinvention of the Theory of Failed Morality in Kenya and Africa
It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower by Michela WrongFourth Estate (London), 2009, ISBN 9-0-00-724196-5 Michela Wrong’s book arrived in Kenya in a very clandestine manner in the early months of 2009. It did not come via the usual route of the bookshops. Rather, excerpts from it were serialized in the leading Kenyan newspaper, The Daily Nation. When the real copies of the book reached Nairobi, they were being sold by newspaper…
Men in African Film and Fiction
Journeying into Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies
Remembering the past and reflecting on Kenya's present
in colonial Kenya and went to school at a time when girls were unlikely to be encouraged to seek formal education. But coming from a Christian family, she was encouraged to study
Sociology (14 works) · History (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · African history and culture studies (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · History (8 works) · Kenya (8 works)