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Book Cover
E-book
Author Mutongi, Kenda

Title Worries of the heart : widows, family, and community in Kenya / Kenda Mutongi
Published Chicago : University of Chicago Press, ©2007

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 256 pages) : illustrations, maps
Contents Everyday life -- Western Kenya, 1880-1902 -- Feeble little lads looking for food -- "What harm can an old dry bone do?" -- Lessons in practical Christianity -- Living "in line" -- The impact of gold mining -- Land conflicts in the 1930s -- Family life -- Educating "progressive" sons -- The burden of "progressive" sons -- Cash, cows, and bridewealth -- Domestic education at the girls boarding school -- Moral panic -- Wife beating -- Postcolonial promises -- Citizenship and land rights in postcolonial Kenya -- Rural widows, city widows, and the fight for inheritance
Summary Growing up in the Maragoli community in Kenya, Kenda Mutongi encountered a perplexing contradiction. While the young teachers at her village school railed against colonialism, many of her elders, including her widowed mother, praised their former British masters. In this moving book, Mutongi explores how both the challenges and contradictions of colonial rule and the frustrations and failures of independence shaped the lives of Maragoli widows and their complex relations with each other, their families, and the larger community. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, rates
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Widows -- Kenya -- Maragoli -- Social conditions
Women -- Kenya -- Maragoli -- Social conditions
Families -- Kenya -- Maragoli
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Sociology -- Marriage & Family.
Colonial influence
Families
Widows -- Social conditions
Women -- Social conditions
SUBJECT Kenya -- Colonial influence
Subject Kenya
Kenya -- Maragoli
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2006038721
ISBN 9780226554228
0226554228
1281966002
9781281966001
0226554198
9780226554198
9786611966003
6611966005