The last few days have been spent editing my book manuscript, which incidentally is due to the publisher on Sunday, Feb 1 2009. Suffice it to say, it will not be ready on time, but am pushing hard to be only a few days late. I had 330 pages four days ago, am aiming for about 270 pages in the next 12 hours, the publisher wants 300 pages...
Back in the day, I thot I was a good writer. The Kenyan education system I went through encouraged a lot of reading and writing, I still remember writing compositions in primary school and loving it. And I did study Language and Literature in Kenyatta University. However, the last few years of being in academia and re-learning to write for academic audiences, I think I have lost my art! Whereas the rules are slowly flexing to allow for creativity, for the most part, academic writing is rather dry. APA encourages that dryness...how many academic papers have you read that make you doze in boredom? So here is my struggle. I am writing a book about women and leadership in Kenya. It is an academic book, a rescripting of my doctoral dissertation. I want it to be palatable to the educated publics, not simply to those within the academy. And therein lies my challenge. More than half the book are stories of women leaders from Kenya, I want those to be widely accessible. I also want the stories to communicate the essence of women's leadership in Kenya, and for folks from the Global South to read those stories and feel a sense of resonance. So I write on, struggle on, to make this, my first book communicate, inform and inspire. I hope that it will communicate the essence of leadership within the culture of Ubuntu as espoused by the 16 women leaders I interviewed. The title of the book is Tempered Radicals and Servant Leaders: Portraits of the Spirited Leadership of African Women. That might change by the time it gets published...
