[1] In the 1960s Waciuma and Grace Ogot became the first Kenyan women writers to be published in English.
[2] Charity Wanjiku Waciuma grew up in pre-Independence Kenya, during the violent anti-colonial struggle between the Mau-Mau and British rulers.
[3][4] She became one of Kenya's pioneering writers for children with the publication in 1966 of her first book Mweru, the Ostrich Girl, which was followed by her other titles for young adults: The Golden Feather, Merry Making, and Who's Calling?.
[3] Waciuma wrote in English hesitantly on the controversial cultural tradition of female genital excision, at a time when not all authors of African descent in the 1960s did so.
Her works were published before the decolonization of Kenya, and writing on this sensitive issue was before the fight for women's rights had become prominent, and before the physical and psychological effects of that particular practice for affected women were generally acknowledged or given global attention.