Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat is a Kenyan novel written in English, a language traditionally associated with colonialism and oppression in Africa. Despite the fact that the novel is written in English, Ngugi still uses language to speak to...

In his powerful novel Weep Not, Child, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o paints a haunting portrait of the heated anti-colonial protestation and excruciating violence of British-occupied Kenya. The crippling dehumanization of Kenya’s citizens by British...

In her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Laura Mulvey argues that a movie audience derives pleasure from the artform by identifying themselves in the characters on screen (Mulvey, 3). Like cinema, the theatre isolates the audience,...

The structure of the African novel is seen to be made up from two different frameworks, the external, or international, and the indigenous “mode of discourse and artistic expression.” 1 Therefore, the typical African novel contains elements in its...

Culture as a way of life of a given society that is forwarded from one generation to the next has undergone drastic changes in African societies following the colonization period by European powers. The facets mostly affected include political...

The River Between The novel by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, The River Between, tells the story of two tribes that hold very different beliefs central to themselves. However, though they agree on very little, there are still people that believe in peace and...

The River Between, a novel by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, is set during the pre-colonial eras of the1930s amongst the Gikuyu tribe of the Bantus living in Central Kenya. In the story, a clear rift is developed between two villages, Kameno and Makuyu, the...

Matigari, a novel by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, alludes to the effects of post-colonialism in an African society. In the novel, the main character, Matigari, in a search for truth and justice, stumbles upon several instances of these effects. In many ways...

Matigari by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o follows the eponymous hero in his search for truth and justice for his oppressed kinsmen, from the moment he puts down his arms to when another freedom fighter takes them up. The narrative is almost cyclical, and this...

In the story A Meeting in the Dark”, Ngugi wa Thiong’o describes patriarchy in the Gikuyu (a tribe in Kenya) culture. Patriarchy dictates the social aspects of the Gikuyu people such as education, religion, circumcision, gender roles and marriage....