The Kenyan Consumer-Reader: Gender, Consumption, and Grace Ogot's Crisis of Authorship

Abstract

Grace Ogot has been lauded for advancing equality for African women in her writing. However her contributions to crucial debates about African authorship and readership have not yet been acknowledged. In her English-language fiction, Ogot addressed her readers as consumers, which in turn helped her conceptualize her work's social role in post-independence Kenya. This article examines two of Ogot's short stories, “Karantina” (1968) and “The Middle Door” (1972), as reflections on the social aspects of Kenyan fiction. By analyzing Ogot's engagement with elite consumption in these stories, in particular how she responded to consumption as a political concern, this article draws attention to Ogot's ambivalence about her writing's social function and, in doing so, contributes to recent discussions about the commodity status of African literature by acknowledging African readers as consumers.