Monday, November 7, 2022

Abstract

Research paper by Alina Rinkanya published 

Moraa Gitaa is one of  the  most  prolific  and  well - known  Kenyan  women  authors  of  the  new generation. Born and raised in Mombasa, she has worked for more than  15 years with various organizations, among them the British Council, Aga Khan Foundation and PEN Kenya Centre.

Gitaa won First Prize in the National Book Development Council of Kenya Adult Fiction literary award in 2008, was nominated for the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing, and was one of the Kenya Chapter winners of the 2014 Burt Award for African Literature.

In her  fictional  works,  which  include  four  novels,  a  number  of  stories  and  a  secondary  school reader,  she  manages  to  treat  a  wide  range  of  issues  topical  for  modern  Kenyan  society,  and especially for the  younger  generation,  focusing  on  the  challenges  that  haunt  young  females.

Among the problems treated  in  her  works  are  drug  addiction,  human  trafficking,  sexual  abuse, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, gender discrimination, inter-generational and ethnic tensions,  economic  marginalization,  HIV  and  AIDS,  corruption  and  transnational  crime.  All these concerns are tackled by the author in the setting of her native Coastal province, –but the setting is also symbolically used as a microcosm for the whole country.

The paper analyses the four novels  of  Gitaa -Crucible  for  Silver  and  Furnace  for  Gold  (2008),  Shifting  Sands  (2012),  Hila  (2014)  and  Shark  Attack  (2017). 

The  paper  concludes that Gitaa’s works are notable not  only  as  an  example  of  social  criticism  in  literature,  but  also  as  inspirational  texts  for  young readers.

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