African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900–1950 — 2000

By Tabitha Kanogo

“This is the most interesting general Kenyan social history that I have had the pleasure to read for many years. It fills a large gap in the colonial history of Kenyan women as they negotiated changes in the most domestic areas of their experience. Within a broad analysis of colonial opportunities for physical, social and educational mobility, Kanogo shows how African and British male authorities tried, with uncertain opinions and from different perspectives, to control female initiatives, and how, to varying degrees, women managed to achieve increasing measures of control over their own lives.”

John Lonsdale — Trinity College, Cambridge

Tabitha Kanogo is an associate professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley.