"She is made of and coloured by the earth itself": Motherhood and Nation in Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's Dust

Abstract

<p>Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor identifies, '[t]he human body and person [as] the locus of [her] artistic quest'¹ and it is this focus on the body which drives her intimate portrait of Kenya's independence struggle in her novel, <i>Dust</i>. Rather than engaging with the concerns of 'diasporic identities [and] cultural otherness' ², which so often form the preoccupations of the African literary diaspora, Owuor's rendering of East Africa acknowledges the alterity experienced by Africans in their own lands, inhabiting peripheries within their home nations.</p>