"Worries of the heart": widowed mothers, daughters and masculinities in Maragoli, western Kenya, 1940-60.

H  of gender have shown the importance of documenting and scrutinizing instances in which gender terminologies are invoked and employed.# A compelling instance can be found in an examination of the widows of Maragoli. In this upland rural area of about two hundred square kilometers in western Kenya, the dynamic relations surrounding widowhood provide a useful opportunity to analyze the construction of feminine and masculine categories, as well as the political strategies that emerged out of these categories. Widows in this rural part of Kenya were certainly subject to the limitations imposed on them by the invocation of strict gender categorization – perhaps at this point in their lives more than any other. And yet, surprisingly, these widows were able to use such categories for their own