Book: DALA and DIASPORA - TESTAMENT - A LUO FAMILY STORY by Edward Orony Omolo

categories: Book, Ethnography, Anthropolopogy, Luo Customary Laws, Luo Marriage Law, Luo Customs, Wife Inheritance, Luo Burial Rites, Diaspora, Dala, Autobiography

Edward Orony Omolo

about this book: Dala and Diaspora is an excellent work- - -clearly one of the most provoking, yet stimulating, perceptive, sensitive, and attractive works of a peoples' culture as it appears in recent decades. No author has written a story about the inside of his own culture and compared to modern times while quoting the influence of Christianity and British colonial administration directly. No reader can afford to neglect it.

The book is written both for and about the Luo. The author, a Luo uses stories to reveal the intrigues of his Luo culture and traditions. It brings together ideas and debates which Luo express about their past and present with findings, arguments and questions produced about "the Luo people" by a Luo writing about his own cultural preconceptions and re-examines the genuine concerns of his views of his cultural restraints.

This is a grassroots social novel at its best. The chapters on women, children and Luo system that describe family relationships traced through the male line, wife inheritance, girl education and Christianity is excellent. The author provides one of the most perceptive accounts of Luo birthrights, Diaspora life and village life (Dala) as Luo people value bloodlines (kinship), protocol, and their order in marriage and the central importance of a family.