"Our Voices, Our Stories"

Life, Struggle and Strength in Kenya’s Women’s Own Words

 
Bearbeiterin: Prof Dr. Angelika Mietzner

Our Voices, our Stoies is a project dedicated to amplifying the voices of women working in a crochet cooperative in Tiwi, Kenya. The women featured in this book come from diverse regions across the country and share life experiences marked by loss, resilience, structural inequality, and moments of deep personal strength. Their stories are not simply objects of research – they are acts of expression, resistance, and dignity.

The project does not aim to interpret or explain their lives from an external academic perspective. Instead, it creates a space where their narratives can speak for themselves. Each biography was shared voluntarily and shaped in close collaboration with the women, who decided what to tell and how to tell it. The narratives are accompanied by reflective essays on colonial continuities, social precarity, and ethical storytelling.

The book is committed to a decolonial approach: recognizing power asymmetries in research and representation, critically reflecting on positionality, and resisting the appropriation of lived experience for abstract knowledge production. The aim is not to speak for these women, but with and alongside them – to make room for their voices to be heard in their own terms.

The stories are shared with consent, care, and the intention to spark dialogue, not conclusions. They are encounters, not data. They ask not for interpretation, but for listening.