ABSTRACT
This chapter begins an examination of the oncogenic women trope in the Kenyan culturescape. A critical analysis of Kenyan author and MD Margaret Ogola’s final novel reflects those negative attitudes about women’s bodies and the similar ideas about women’s proclivity to contract cancer. Two characters in Place of Destiny suffer from cancer, and the text constructs a gendered representation of both the causes and the reactions to those cancers. Therein, the representation of passivity in the female cancer victim undercuts female bodily autonomy.
