| Intro | Novelist, essayist and poet | ||
| A.K.A. | Marjorie Phyllis King | ||
| Was |
Writer Poet Essayist |
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| From |
Kenya England |
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| Type | Literature | ||
| Gender | female | ||
| Birth |
21 October 1928, Southampton, United Kingdom |
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| Death |
1 December 2015, Nairobi, Kenya |
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| Star sign | Libra | ||
| Education |
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Marjorie Phyllis Oludhe Macgoye (21 October 1928 – 1 December 2015) was an English-born Kenyan novelist, essayist and poet. She has been called the “mother of Kenyan literature”.
Biography
Born Marjorie King in 1928 in Southampton, England, Marjorie travelled to Kenya to work as a missionary in 1954. She worked at the S.J. Moore Bookshop on Government Road, now Moi Avenue in Nairobi, for some years. There she organised readings that were attended by, among others, Okot P’Bitek, author of Song of Lawino, and Jonathan Kariara, a Kenyan poet. She met Macgoye, a medical doctor, and the two were married in 1960.
In 1971, an anthology entitled Poems from East Africa included the acclaimed poem “A Freedom Song”. Her 1986 novel Coming to Birth won the Sinclair Prize and has been used as a set book in Kenyan high schools.
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye died on 1 December 2015, at her home in Nairobi.
Works
- 1972: Murder in Majengo
- 1977: Song of Nyarloka and Other Poems
- 1986: Coming to Birth
- 1987: Street Life
- 1987: The Present Moment
- 1994: Homing In
- 1997: Chira
- 2005: A Farm Called Kishinev (winner: Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature)
- 2009: The Composition of Poetry
Footnotes
Further reading
- Kibera, Valerie, ‘Adopted Motherlands: The Novels of Majorie Macgoye and Bessie Head’, Motherlands: Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 1992, pp. 310–329.