The Present Moment
The Present Moment
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye
A novel that pays tribute to the lives of seven aging women.
A moving novel that probes questions about family and community through the stories of seven elderly women living in a rest home. Moving from past to present, from village to city, from war to peace, The Present Moment weaves together the strands of these women's lives as they form a community of collective history, strength, humor, and affection.
"Peasant, trader, seamstress, coffee picker, housemaid, and more, these are the womanhood of Kenya. . . . Here is a shared wisdom, a common poetic voice. Macgoye paints a group portrait colored by deep respect, compassion, and admiration." —Commonwealth Today
"With the vividly specific economy of the best poetry . . . [Macgoye] confers a stature and significance on humble lives; or, rather, shows that behind the most unpromising human facades lurk lives of extraordinary courage, enterprise, and resilience." —Sunday Nation (Nairobi)
"The Present Moment bears witness to the predicament of . . . a community of human beings whose existential room for maneuver is only just more spacious than that of slaves. Macgoye treats this subject matter with remarkable restraint. . . . Rather than rail against the injustices of colonial rule, she allows them to become self-evident . . . in the stories [each woman] tells. . . . Ambitious [and] effective." —London Review of Books
