Coming to Birth - (Women Writing Africa) by Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye (Paperback)

About the Book

This powerful novel of a young Kenyan woman's journey is "a worthy winner of the Sinclair Prize"--The Independent.

Book Synopsis

In this quietly powerful and eminently readable novel, winner of the prestigious Sinclair Prize, Kenyan writer Marjorie Macgoye deftly interweaves the story of one young woman's tumultuous coming of age with the history of a nation emerging from colonialism.

At the age of sixteen, Paulina leaves her small village in western Kenya to join her new husband, Martin, in the bustling city of Nairobi. It is 1956, and Kenya is in the final days of the "Emergency," as the British seek to suppress violent anti-colonial revolts.

But Paulina knows little about, about city life, or about marriage, and Martin's clumsy attempts to control her soon lead to a relationship filled with silences, misunderstandings, and unfulfilled expectations. Soon Paulina's inability to bear a child effectively banishes her from the confines of traditional women's roles. As her country at last moves toward independence, Paulina manages to achieve a kind of independence as well: She accepts a job that will require her to live separately from her husband, and she has an affair that leads to the birth of her first child. But Paulina's hard-won contentment will be shattered when Kenya's turbulent history intrudes into her private life, bringing with it tragedy--and a new test of her quiet courage and determination.

Paulina's patient struggles for survival and identity are revealed through Marjorie Macgoye's keen and sensitive vision--a vision which extends to embrace the whole of a nation and a people likewise struggling to find their way. As the Weekly Standard of Kenya notes, "Coming to Birth is a radical novel in firmly asserting our common humanity."

Review Quotes

"Coming to Birth is modern Kenya's response to Out of Africa. . . . [An] illuminating book that is a worthy winner of the Sinclair Prize." --Times (London)

"A cooly stunning novel out of Kenya, in which the politics of female emotion and the politics of an emergent nation interweave. . . . I have no doubt that it is deadly accurate; it is certainly compulsively readable." --Fay Weldon

"A young woman confronts her destiny with little to help her but courage and persistence--like any heroine of Charlotte Bronte or George Eliot. . . . A striking statement of the cause feminists have at heart, made all the more striking for the unobtrusive distinction with which the story is told." --London Review of Books

"Coming to Birth is a radical novel in firmly asserting our common humanity." --Weekly Review (Nairobi)

"This story . . . stays in the bloodstream and alters the vision." --Sunday Times (London)

"For Macgoye, the narrative of the ordinary woman trying to hold things together in a rapidly changing world becomes a narrative of the becoming of the nation and the human struggle for dignity. . . . She makes her story become all our story." --Ngugi wa Thiong'o

"Coming to Birth is modern Kenya's response to Out of Africa. . . . [An] illuminating book that is a worthy winner of the Sinclair Prize." --Times (London)

"A cooly stunning novel out of Kenya, in which the politics of female emotion and the politics of an emergent nation interweave. . . . I have no doubt that it is deadly accurate; it is certainly compulsively readable." --Fay Weldon

"A young woman confronts her destiny with little to help her but courage and persistence--like any heroine of Charlotte Bronte or George Eliot. . . . A striking statement of the cause feminists have at heart, made all the more striking for the unobtrusive distinction with which the story is told." --London Review of Books

"Coming to Birth is a radical novel in firmly asserting our common humanity." --Weekly Review (Nairobi)

"This story . . . stays in the bloodstream and alters the vision." --Sunday Times (London)

"For Macgoye, the narrative of the ordinary woman trying to hold things together in a rapidly changing world becomes a narrative of the becoming of the nation and the human struggle for dignity. . . . She makes her story become all our story." --Ngugi wa Thiong'o

About the Author

Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye (1928-2015) was one of the most prolific women writers, not only in Kenya, but also in Africa. She has distinguished herself as a writer of novels, poetry, and children's stories. She was born in Southampton, England, and came to Kenya as a missionary bookseller in 1954. She married D.G.W. Macgoye in 1960 and subsequently integrated into her husband's extended family and the Luo community. This feature is well manifested in her literary works which have been acknowledged all over the world. Coming to Birth won the Sinclair Prize for fiction in 1986, while Homing In won second place in the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 1985.