Know your author — Grace Ogot

pioneering Christian parents in the traditional Luo stronghold of Asembo.
Her father, Joseph Nyanduga, was an early convert to the Anglican Church and one of the first men in Asembo to receive a Western education. He later taught at the Church Missionary Society’s Ng’iya Girls’ School.
She remembered him reading her Bible stories, as well as hearing the traditional stories told by her grandmother.
Later Ogot’s writing reflected this dual background of tradition and modernity and the tensions between them. Ogot has worked as a midwife, a tutor, as journalist, as a BBC Overseas Service broadcaster, and in a managerial capacity for the Air India Corporation of East Africa.
In 1984 she became one of only a handful of women to serve as a Member of Parliament and the only woman assistant minister in the cabinet of then President Daniel Arap Moi.
Ogot has since held various Ambassadorial posts, representing her country at the United Nations and Unesco.
She was also a founding member of the Writers’ Association of Kenya.
She married historian Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot, a Luo from Gem Location, in 1959, and is the mother of four children.
Ogot’s family members shared her interest in politics.
Her husband served as head of Kenya Railways and also taught history at Kenyatta University. Her older sister, Rose Orondo, served on the Kisumu County Council for several terms, and her younger brother Robert Jalango was elected to Parliament in 1988, representing their family home in Asembo.
Her first novel, The Promised Land, was published in 1966. It was concerned with the challenges faced by Luo pioneers who moved across the border into Tanzania in a search of greater opportunity.
Land Without Thunder, a collection of short stories about traditional life in rural western Kenya, appeared in 1968. Two other short story collections have appeared, The Other Woman and Other Stories (Nairobi, 1976) and The Island of Tears (Nairobi, 1980),
Her second novel, The Graduate (Nairobi, 1980), the novel described the tribulations of a young Kenyan graduate who returns home after study in the United States.
Ogot’s short stories often weaved old and new material together by presenting traditional curses and mysteries confounding modern Kenyans in new urban settings.
A series of historical novels in process went back several centuries to reconstruct Luo history. A number of her stories have been dramatised and performed in Kenya. Many of her stories are set against the scenic background of Lake Victoria and the traditions of the Luo people. Her prose is evocative of traditional folklore — such as in The Strange Bride, a novel about a mystical and provocative female character in ancient Luoland.
In her writings, Ogot also tackles issues of emigration — as is the case in The Promised Land, a novel set in the 1930s, whereby her main protagonists emigrate from Nyanza to northern Tanzania, in search of fertile land and wealth.
Many of the short stories in Land Without Thunder are set in ancient Luoland. Ogot’s descriptions, literary tools, and storylines offer a valuable insight into Luo culture in pre-colonial East Africa.
She has published works in both English and Luo – some of her works were first published in the Dholuo language.
She was interviewed in 1974 by Lee Nichols for a Voice of America radio broadcast that was aired between 1975-1979 (Voice of America radio series Conversations with African writers, no. 23).
The Library of Congress has a copy of the broadcast tape and the unedited original interview. The broadcast transcript appears in the book Conversations with African Writers (Washington, D.C: Voice of America, 1981), p. 207-216.
Some of her publications include; Aloo kod Apul-Apul (1981) written in  Luo, Ber wat (1981) also in Luo, The Graduate, Nairobi, 1980, The Island of Tears (short stories), Nairobi, 1980, Land Without Thunder; short stories, Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968.
Another one of her books Miaha written in Luo in 1983 was translated as The Strange Bride by Okoth Okombo 1989. She also wrote The Other Woman: selected short stories in 1976. The Promised Land a novel was published in 1966.
The novels and short stories of Grace Ogot were widely available. Oladele Taiwo devoted a chapter of her Female Novelists of Modern Africa (1984) to Ogot’s literary development.
Bernth Lindfors has published “An Interview with Grace Ogot” in World Literature Written in English in 1979 O. R. Dathorne included a chapter on “Grace Ogot: Role of the Black Woman” in African Literature in the Twentieth Century (1974).
Ogot’s book, The Strange Bride, was published in 1989.
She was one of 570 women writers of the 20th-century chosen to appear in Modern Women Writers, a four-volume set including criticism, biographical material, and excerpts from published works, released in 1996.
Ogot also worked as a scriptwriter and an announcer for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s East African Service, as a headmistress, as a community development officer in Kisumu.
She appeared on Voice of Kenya radio and television and as a columnist in View Point in the East African Standard. — Wikipedia/ The Herald.