ABSTRACT
The notion of narrating “the self” remains a much-debated topic in autobiographical studies. This is even more so in the study of African female autobiographies, where the explicit or implicit use of “I” serves as a subversive strategy to reclaim a conflicted sense of the self, and to further individual agenda. This study builds on the premise that, over time, women have been subjected to historical and persisting injustices that have seen their exclusion from or their being “silenced” in political discourses and in mainstream national histories. This, the author argues, is because of various hegemonic structures including gender roles, religion, and colonial and traditional institutions. This study attempts to explain how through her autobiographical writing, Janet Kataaha Museveni, a Ugandan woman politician and the country’s first lady, creatively and strategically deploys narrative voice and political metaphors in her autobiography to negotiate her numerous identities as politician, mother, wife, and woman. The chapter demonstrates how Museveni manipulates these narrative/rhetorical strategies to build her political image, legitimize her husband’s presidency, and write herself and other Ugandan women into their national history.
