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Thinking around Genre: The Moral Narrative and Femininity in Kenyan Popular Media

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2017

Dina Ligaga
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Abstract

In this article, I revisit a familiar narrative format of the moral narrative that I argue is used to narrate stories of (especially) women in the public sphere in Kenya. Reading a range of media texts, I trace a pattern of representation that I identify as contained within a recognizable genre of the moral narrative and use this genre to identify a structure of narrative of issues around gender and sexuality in Kenya. The examples are drawn from a popular radio drama program as well as from popular press reports of wayward women. The article also engages counter-narratives created by women such Vera Sidika and Huddah Monroe who, by publicly displaying their near-naked bodies in public platforms, create room for a counter-reading of discourses of gender and sexuality in the Kenyan public imaginary. This article will push the boundaries for reading popular cultural forms caught within generic constraints and reflect on the value counter-readings have in complicating readings of gender and sexuality in Kenya more generally.

Keywords

gendersexualitypopular culturemoralitygenremoral narrative
Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry , Volume 4 , Special Issue 2: Special Issue: African Genre , April 2017 , pp. 222 - 236
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

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