ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the production of settler sexuality in several of Nora Strange's novels, a set of sources that have been almost entirely ignored in histories of Kenyan colonialism. It explains the unique nature of settler colonialism in Kenya, a space where a relatively tiny white population sought to establish itself as the dominant political force in the colony. The chapter discusses the romance novel as an understudied eugenic text. The romance's intense focus on love and sexual coupling makes it a uniquely malleable genre for exploring concerns about sexual dysfunction and reproduction. The chapter analyses settler sexuality in several of Strange's novels, focusing particularly on how the landscape is envisioned as a curative for settler queerness. By putting the "overcivilized" settler back in touch with his/her innate sexuality, and by exposing him/her to the dangers of disease and wild animals, this reparative eugenic landscape opens the settler to sex and reproduction—thus ensuring the continuation of the settler state.
