ABSTRACT
Couched in post-colonial feminism and urban development theoretical stances (the latter as presented in the study of Roger Kurtz), this chapter examines how gender-based atrocity spreads far beyond the domestic sphere, curbing women’s agency and fundamental rights in all ambits of life, such as professional, social, and political among others. Kenyan urban women’s novel after 2000 sensitively reflects all aspects of gender-based atrocity in various spheres of life creating images of role-model characters, who resist gender-based atrocities at all levels. The chapter demonstrates that various forms of gender-based atrocity, as depicted in Kenyan women’s urban novel after 2000, intertwine and stimulate each other creating the “environment of atrocity” as part of a social landscape of post-colonial Kenya – the environment which the authors, through their mouthpiece characters, are trying to do away with. The modern urban environment and the women’s urban mentality are read as twin enablers of the modern woman’s struggle for self-emancipation from gender-based atrocities.
