Journal article
Narrative in the Time of AIDS: Postcolonial Kenyan Women's Literature
Research in African literatures, Vol.35(1), pp.108-129
03/2004
DOI: 10.2979/RAL.2004.35.1.108
Abstract
Confessions of an AIDS Victim. (1993) and Chira (1997) portray AIDS in postcolonial Kenya as a painlul 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 lor dissent and subversion grows, but so does the desire to integrate split subjectivities into a meaninglul 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. © 2004.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Narrative in the Time of AIDS: Postcolonial Kenyan Women's Literature
- Creators
- Marie Krüger
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Research in African literatures, Vol.35(1), pp.108-129
- DOI
- 10.2979/RAL.2004.35.1.108
- ISSN
- 0034-5210
- eISSN
- 1527-2044
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 03/2004
- Academic Unit
- International Programs; Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies; English
- Record Identifier
- 9984271968102771
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