M.GVassanji and Marjorie Oludhe-Mcgoye at the Michael Joseph Centre in Nairobi. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
When she arrived in Kenya at the age 26, she was a bookseller for the Church Missionary Society. She lived in Pumwani area of Nairobi, a black man’s reserve in the city. Here, she came face to face with human suffering. That suffering is what is reflected in her works.
Six years later, Marjorie quit her job to marry Daniel Oludhe-Macgoye, a Luo medical officer to whom she had been unofficially engaged for two years. She soon became a citizen of Kenya. Except for a four-year stint in Tanzania, Marjorie has lived and worked in Kenya.
As we mourn Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, we in the literary world remember her and her works. Her childhood was affected by the Great Depression and by the two world wars — World War I left its mark on her and World War II overshadowed her teenage years.
Writing and reading were always part of Marjorie’s life. At age seven, she published her first polemic in the Daily Mirror. Marjorie had always assumed that higher education was beyond her reach. However, she got a scholarship to the Royal Holloway College of the University of London to study English.
