Analyse af 'They Sold My Sister'

In the short story “They Sold My Sister” by L.O. Sunkuli, we meet a young Maasai girl, Naliki who tells us the story of how her parents forced her older sister, Nyamalo, into an arranged marriage. Naliki is experiencing on closest range how her sister marries the stranger, Ole Sirayo, despite her wish to continue her education.

The main actions of the story, takes place in an African village in Kenya. The village is possibly quite small, due to how Nyamalo and her brother Tumuka are to travel to another city to tend to their studies on a boarding school. The social environment in the family is most likely, poor although not poor enough for Naliki’s father not to have the capital to finance Nyamalo and Tumuka’s studies. This short story has, in difference to many short stories, no detailed description of the surroundings due to the way this story is presented. We follow the actions of the story through the eyes of young 10 year-old Naliki, as seem as a memoir of her experience, a flashback. We follow her story until to the events of her sister’s marriage and the flashback ends and we exit her memories to hear her story in present time. Here she explains that she fears to undergo the same horrifying fate as her sister, since she has discovered several indications that she is to be sold as well.