Folklore and Socio-Political Identity in Joe Khamisi’s The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator and Dash Before Dusk: A Slave Descendant’s Journey in Freedom
APA Citation: Chelule, J. C. (2021). Folklore and Socio-Political Identity in Joe Khamisi’s The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator and Dash Before Dusk: A Slave Descendant’s Journey in Freedom. Ngano: The Journal of Eastern African Oral Literature, 2, 82-89.
Abstract
Joe Khamisi’s first publication The Politics of Betrayal is a memoir and the second
Dash Before Dusk is an autobiography. They both contain a personal and a group
identity narration capturing a period in the Kenyan nation’s history. This paper
discusses the use of folklore for sociopolitical identity in the two texts. This is a
qualitative research study. Close reading has been done followed by interpretation of
the selected works based on the study objectives. The specific objectives are to identify
integration of folklore in the selected works, and to interrogate how the author uses
folklore to signal sociopolitical identity. Tenets from the postcolonial and
autobiographical theories provide a study guide. The selected works are a good record
of Kenya’s immediate history from 2002 to 2007 and the colonial period to the present
especially from 1943 up to 2007 when the author lost his Bahari constituency seat.