A FREEDOM SONG POEM ANALYSIS BY MARJORIE OLUDHE MACYGOYE

A FREEDOM SONG POEM BY MARJORIE OLUDHE MACYGOYE.
                                                   

A FREEDOM SONG

BY Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye (Kenya)

 

Atieno washes dishes,

Atieno plucks the chicken,

Atieno gets up early,

Beds her sucks down in the kitchen,

Atieno eight years old

Atieno yo.

Since she’s my sister’s child

Atieno needs no pay

While she works my wife can sit

Sewing each sunny day,

With her earning I support

Atieno yo.

Atieno’s sly and jealous

Bad example to the kids

Since she minds them, like a school girl

Wants their dresses, shoes and beads.

Atieno ten years old,

Atieno yo.

Now my wife has gone to study

Atieno’s less free,

Don’t I feed her, school my own ones,

Pay the party, union fee

All for progress? Aren’t you grateful,

Atieno yo?

Visitors need much attention,

Specially when I work nights.

That girl stays too long at market

Who will teach her what is right?

Atieno rising fourteen,

Atieno yo.

Atieno’s had a baby

So we know that she is bad

Fifty-fifty it may live

To repeat the life she had,

Ending in post partum bleeding

Atieno yo.

Atieno’s soon replaced

Meat and sugar more than all

She ate in such a narrow life

Were lavished in her funeral

Atieno’s gone to glory

Atieno yo.

INTRODUCTION

Biography Edit

Born Marjorie King in 1928 in Southampton, England,[1] Marjorie travelled to Kenya to work as a missionary in 1954. She worked at the S.J. Moore Bookshop on Government Road, now Moi Avenue in Nairobi, for some years. There she organised readings that were attended by, among others, Okot P'Bitek, author of Song of Lawino, and Jonathan Kariara, a Kenyan poet. She met Macgoye, a medical doctor, and the two were married in 1960.[1]

In 1971, an anthology entitled Poems from East Africa included the acclaimed poem "A Freedom Song".[1] Her 1986 novel Coming to Birth won the Sinclair Prize[1] and has been used as a set book in Kenyan high schools.[citation needed]

Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye died on 1 December 2015, at her home in Nairobi.[3]

(Google Wikipedia)

UNDER THIS DISCUSSION WERE GOING TO COVER POSSIBLE QUESTIONS LIKE

>What is the poem about

>Tone

>mood

>Poetic devices

>Rhyme Schem 

>Relevance

>messages

> Possible Themes like

     Child labour

     Oppression

      Humiliation

     Hypocrisy

     Poor parental care

    Exploitation and others

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