In the epic poem "RATENG' AND BRIDE" by Joseph R Alila (the author of such novels as "Whisper to My Aching Heart" and "Sunset on Polygamy"), the poet pleads with the hero (Rateng') to abandon a lifelong ambition of reigning in an elusive Bride, to redeem his honor and Ramogi people's collective pride. Of Rateng's elusive Bride--call her Power, Leadership or The Presidency--Alila reminds his hero of her corrupting, material allure and deadly charms; that like a gem, a Powerful Presidency corrupts everybody it touches, and its corrupting effects linger like the nauseating smell of a scared...

In the novella WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART, novelist Joseph R. Alila ("The Milayi Curse") tells a story about two eighteenth-century Luo widows who battle against great odds to become mothers of a future people. In this moving romantic story, a young widow (Apiny) is the bearer of the damning spiritually untouchable label in the patriarchal African society. Ejected alongside her widowed mother-in-law (Awino) and ridiculed by friends, Apiny waits for fifteen years before she receives another man in her bed. Even then, her moment of triumph only comes after Awino (an old widow whose womb is all...

A young Pastor, Rew Smith, leads the affluent Oakpound New Hope Church, in which things appear to be well, but his church has a deep spiritual problem: His church suffers from a shortage of love. His church lacks a nurturing spirit for the undoctrinated new converts. Pastor Smith's lay leaders call new converts names, and hardly attend to them, as the young Pastor spends most of his evenings at Oakpound Big Boys Health and Fitness Club. Members of his Lay Leadership bask in self praise and embrace a form of spirituality without any force of love behind it. Led by Mrs. Smith, some members of...

Author Joseph R. Alila's newest novel, BIRTHRIGHT, is a narrative of how one man's cruel silence over his son's ancestry almost destroys the latter among a people who value bloodlines, protocol, and order in marriage. The battle over birthright in the home of one Odongo Ougo of Thim Lich has turned tragic on many fronts. Atieno, a victim of a marriage protocol that destined her to the rank of second wife, even though she is the older and longer-married wife of Odongo, has had enough. Atieno swears her son, Okulu, on an oath to finish off Aura and her son Juma. Primed to kill, Okulu, an abused...

In Joseph R Alila's novel REBELS, set in Kenya's 1970s and early 1980s, a widowed bride (Betty Kinda), flees from the custody of her parents on realizing that her fate is in the hands of her in-laws, who must give her a replacement husband before the burial of her late fiance (Mika Olongo). Reaching Kisumu City, Betty meets one Nurse Rose, an annealed widow, who not only shields and adopts her but also enrolls her in a day secondary school (she is pregnant). Suddenly, the young widow has put her in-laws (the Ombos of Korondo Ridge) and her parents (the Kindas of Rabuor Ridge) in a culturally...