COSTECH Integrated Repository

Houseboying: Negotiating the Intersectionality of Race, Gender, Class and Age in Selected Fiction

Show simple item record

dc.creator Wakota, John
dc.date 2018-05-01T07:26:18Z
dc.date 2018-05-01T07:26:18Z
dc.date 2016
dc.date.accessioned 2021-05-03T13:11:12Z
dc.date.available 2021-05-03T13:11:12Z
dc.identifier ISSN 1821-7427 (Print), ISSN 2467-4745 (Online)
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11810/4700
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11810/4700
dc.description Tracing a thread from the fictionalized pre-colonial to the post-independence period, this paper analyzes the representation of houseboying by locating it at the intersection of gender, race, and class. Reading the representation of domestic service against a backcloth of a discourse that constructs the houseboy as a primitive being, the paper analyzes houseboying as a process of civilization; a form of power relations; and a site where social inequalities and social differences are produced; contested; negotiated; and renegotiated. Since houseboying requires servile postures and is stereotypically based on reversal of gender roles, the question this paper asks is how does the houseboy acquire them given that his background is portrayed to be patriarchal per se where even boys are groomed to be prospective paterfamilias? In analyzing the portrayal of how the houseboy’s masculinity is compromised and how he deals with the resultant societal stigma associated with his work, the paper also examines how, ironically, the houseboys are portrayed to be complacent in sustaining and occasionally enforcing the asymmetrical master-servant relationship. It argues that the houseboy’s ‘slavish’ posture is only situational—a performance and a strategic adaptation to the demands of domestic service.
dc.language en
dc.publisher Dar es Salaam university College of Education
dc.subject Houseboys, Fiction, Race, Gender, Class
dc.title Houseboying: Negotiating the Intersectionality of Race, Gender, Class and Age in Selected Fiction
dc.type Journal Article, Peer Reviewed


Files in this item

Files Size Format View

There are no files associated with this item.

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

Search COSTECH


Advanced Search

Browse

My Account