Worries of the heart : widows, family, and community in Kenya / Kenda Mutongi.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Everyday life -- Western Kenya, 1880-1902 -- Feeble little lads looking for food -- "What harm can an old dry bone do?" -- Lessons in practical Christianity -- Living "in line" -- The impact of gold mining -- Land conflicts in the 1930s -- Family life -- Educating "progressive" sons -- The burden of "progressive" sons -- Cash, cows, and bridewealth -- Domestic education at the girls boarding school -- Moral panic -- Wife beating -- Postcolonial promises -- Citizenship and land rights in postcolonial Kenya -- Rural widows, city widows, and the fight for inheritance.

Print version record.

Growing up in the Maragoli community in Kenya, Kenda Mutongi encountered a perplexing contradiction. While the young teachers at her village school railed against colonialism, many of her elders, including her widowed mother, praised their former British masters. In this moving book, Mutongi explores how both the challenges and contradictions of colonial rule and the frustrations and failures of independence shaped the lives of Maragoli widows and their complex relations with each other, their families, and the larger community. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, rates.

English.

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