Nollywood Cinema and Its Housemaids’ Fandom: The Case of Eldoret, Kenya
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Published:April 2025
This chapter is based on an ethnographic study of local housemaid fans of Nollywood televisual cinema in Eldoret, Kenya. It explores the social conditions that produce and at the same time marginalize the typical female domestic worker. It examines the serendipitously constructed identity of the housemaids as Nollywood televisual cinema fans and how it becomes a form of therapy for them to navigate the challenges of the social identity of the housemaid. The chapter considers the Eldoret housemaids’ Nollywood fandom as a case of repurposed leisure, to the extent that they draw parallels between the narratively constructed experiences in Nollywood cinema and their real-life experience, making it possible for them to identify with and draw inspiration from the desirable narrative closure and poetic justice of Nollywood cinema.