Studies in Literature, vol. 1, 37-50 (1999, Lagos)

NGUGI AND THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS IN EAST AFRICAN

FICTION

Harry Olufunwa

Department of English

University of Lagos, Akoka

Introduction

This paper is an examination of the ways in which Ngugi wa Thiong’o, one of Africa’s most

prominent novelists, has contributed to the emergence of a new consciousness in the fiction of

East Africa. It seeks to critical analyse the role and nature of fiction as a force for a social

change, the role of the writer as a conscious agent seeking to convince his audience of the

validity of change, and his projection of certain points of view as well as the propriety of certain

attitudes to life which form the basis of specific actions. Altogether, this paper is concerned with

the concept of a new consciousness.

In this study, a new consciousness is defined as the introduction of a new mental outlook

in an individual or a group which leads to the alteration of established perceptions of reality in

some significant way, or which compels the examination of some aspects of the human condition

from hitherto-unconsidered perspectives. It may be acquired in the course of normal human

development (such as the increased ability to understand the complex motivations of human

actions which usually comes with physical maturity); as a consequence of some traumatic or

otherwise profoundly significant experience (such as the sudden death of a loved one which

compels one to look at the nature of human existence in a new light); or by deliberate and

systematic instruction designed to instill new perspectives in those so instructed (such as the

process of induction of recruits into the armed forces).

A new consciousness may be acquired through a combination of all three methods. This

is, in fact, what Ngugi does. In the two novels examined here, The River Between and Petals of

Blood, we shall see how various characters acquire new perceptions and insights into the nature

of their society as they mature physically, through significant experiences, and as a result of

instruction. Ngugi’s reader is also expected to develop a heightened awareness of social realities

just as the fictional characters do. The reason for this is to be found in the author’s own

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intellectual response to his world. As one whose political views are Marxist in orientation, his

perspectives are based upon a class analysis of society, an element of which is the belief that art

must serve functional needs:

Let our pens be the voices of the people. Let our pens give voices to silence.1

One of the most important aspects of this task is that of raising the awareness of the people as a

first step towards revolutionary change.

Ngugi’s novels under examination are capable of charting the emergence of a new

consciousness in the form of radically-altered perspectives and attitudes to existing social,

political and economic realities in Kenya and in Africa as a whole.

As a form of fiction, the novel is a literary genre which has been recognized as overtly

concerned with the depiction of man in society, and this it does through the treatment of themes,

the movement of plot and the delineation of characters. As such, the novel is particularly well-

equipped to initiate and chart the emergence of a new consciousness. Indeed, it has been argued

that the modern novel emerged in eighteenth-century Europe as a new literary form in response

to the need for a form which could adequately reflect the consciousness of the rising middle

class. In Africa, the novel has been put to use in examining the issue of a new consciousness in a

continent just emerging from colonial rule and beset by problems of underdevelopment.

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The consciousness of the East African was adversely affected by colonialism in three main ways:

the racial, the communal and the personal. At the racial level, there was the incursion of white

people into Kenyan territory as conquerors, administrators and settlers. At the communal level,

indigenous East Africans witnessed the weakening and destruction of norms and beliefs which

constituted traditional society and their replacements by often inappropriate foreign values. At

the personal level, the East African has had to confront the implications of a modern society

ambiguously positioned between the old and the new.

As the largest country in the region, both in terms of population, size and economic

potential, Kenya seems to embody the most acute expression of the trauma engendered by the

effects of colonialism. To differing extents, a great deal of East African writing has been

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concerned with analyzing this issue. In poetry, Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino argues for the pre-

eminence of traditional cultural norms as the yardstick for determining acceptable behavior.

Novelists like Meja Mwangi and Ngugi wa Thiong’o have portrayed the richness of traditional

culture and the subsequent weakening it underwent as a result of Westernization.

The two novels selected for analysis represent the twin poles of Ngugi’s fictional output.

The River Between, published in 1965, examines the dilemma of an African ethnic group torn

between Christianity and Westernization on the one hand, and indigenous ritual and values on

the other. Petals of Blood, first published in 1977, is more overtly “political” in tone and in

intent. It deals with the consequences of rampant corruption and maladministration and their

effects upon ordinary citizens. A cursory survey of Ngugi’s early fiction reveals a pattern of

increasing self-awareness of the ravages wrought by historical events upon the consciousness of

the Kenyan. In one of his earliest established stories “The Fig Tree,” published in 1959, he

examines the plight of a young woman who flees the wrath of her husband at her barrenness.

Her inability to produce a child makes her an outsider, physically and psychically, unable to fit

into the natural rhythms of traditional Kikuyu life. She seeks sanctuary in a fig tree sacred to

Murungu, the supreme deity of the Kikuyu, discovers that she is pregnant and returns to her

home. Her realization that the ethnic group “must … support the tribe, giving it a new life”2

gives rise to themes of alienation, exile, a new consciousness and return which recur in Ngugi’s

novels.3

The River Between, for example, does not simply pose the dilemma of choosing between

African and Western values: it reflects the crises in the consciousness of a people whose beliefs

are no longer the certainties their predecessors had considered them to be. Like Achebe, Ngugi

seeks to depict the strengths and frailties of traditional life in this novel. However, he was to later

realize that he had even greater responsibilities as an artist; he also had to “seek out the sources,

the causes and the trends of a revolutionary struggle which already destroyed the traditional

power-map drawn up by the colonialist nations.”4

In Petals of Blood, Ngugi takes up this task. In seeking out the genesis of revolutionary

struggle in the novel, he filters the historical experiences that have shaped Kenya though the

minds of individual characters, thereby portraying the emergence of a new consciousness as a

complex and dynamic process in constant evolution rather than a fixed or static phenomenon.

The two novels chosen for this study therefore represent an unbroken trend in the development

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of a new consciousness: The River Between examining the divisions and distortions engendered

by colonialism; Petals of Blood analyzing the chaotic legacy of colonialism in post-independence

Kenya and charting the emergence of a new consciousness designed to reverse this negative

trend.

The first question Ngugi seeks to answer in charting the emergence of a new

consciousness is one of identity. Who is a true Kenyan? As elsewhere in Africa, the question is

particularly important to this issue because it explicitly underlines the fact that a new vision of

self, what Ngugi calls a “true self-image”5 free from the distortions of colonialism, is the

foundation of a new consciousness. The peculiar nature of Kenya’s history and its multi-ethnic

and multi-racial nature has made this a complex and difficult question which resists the easy

categorization of ethnic group and race, as Ngugi himself admits:

In Kenya … there is really no concept of a nation. One is always a Kikuyu, a Luo,

a Nandi, an Asian or a European. To live on the level of race of tribe is to be less

than whole.6

For Ngugi, identity is synonymous with an individual’s rootedness in the community; a

complete, organic identification with its hopes and aspirations, and by extension with the hopes

and aspirations of other communities like it. In The River Between, the creation myth of the

Kikuyu is inextricably woven into the land:

Murugu brought the man and the woman here and again showed them the whole

vastness of the land. He gave the country to them and their children and the

children of their children, tene na tene, world without end.7

Identity is possession, and possession is identity, a symbiosis transcending mundane ideas of

ownership and social status. Without one, the other is lost. As Ngugi characterizes it, Kenyan

identity is rooted in the land, and in the flora and fauna which characterize it and make it unique.

In Petals of Blood, the villagers of Ilmorog display a similar sense of connectedness to the land.

They are dependent on it for both spiritual and material sustenance.

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At the beginning of April it started raining. The eyes of the elders beamed with

expectation of a new life over Illmorog: their wrinkled faces seemed to stretch

and tighten with sinews of energy.8

Land, in other words, is the means through which many of Ngugi’s characters define themselves,

its solidity and concreteness providing them with a firm basis in reality from which they face the

vicissitudes of life. This point becomes even clearer when it is seen that characters whose

attitudes and actions are perceived to be negative are in some significant way are unable to

achieve this symbiotic relationship with the land. In The River Between, Joshua’s house is

ostensibly demonstrative of his relative prosperity, but it also emphasizes his self-alienation as a

Christian who has consciously rejected the traditions in which he was nurtured:

There was a general uniformity between all the houses that lay scattered all over

this ridge. They consisted of round thatched huts standing in groups of three or

four …. Joshua’s house was different. His was a tin-roofed rectangular building

standing quite distinctly by itself on the ridge. (p. 28)

Some characters in Petals of Blood discover that an inability to establish any sense of

rootedness in the land is part of the exploitation they suffer. Godfrey Munira, the teacher whose

desire for change is thwarted by his “sense of non-being” (p. 15), is “an outsider to [the villagers]

involvement with both the land and what they called ‘things of blood’” (p. 18). In the novel, land

is the basis of identity, but not in a narrowly capitalist sense. Ngugi makes this clear by revealing

the paradox that it is the landless and the poor who are most attached to the land, as opposed to

the large landowners for whom it is merely evidence of material success. The old woman

Mariamu is seen as “inseparable from the land” (p. 147), even though she is only muhoi, a

squatter. In contrast, Munira’s father, Ezekiel Waweru, sees land as a commodity to be

accumulated: he is “one of the most powerful landlords in the area, adding to his pyrethrum

estates, new tea estates he bought from the departing colonialists” (p. 93).

In both novels, land reflects, as nothing else does, the communalistic ethos which defines

Africans and establishes the veracity and worth of their past. Land is personal identity,

communal identity, a link with the glorious past and respected ancestors and a means of

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sustenance. It is because the land is so multifarious in meaning that it is at the same time a basis

of identity and the starting-point from which a new consciousness emerges, both in

psychological and political senses. It is significant that on his return to Ilmorog, the radicalized

Karega notes that the idea of land as a material possession has already begun to have negative

consequences:

Kenya, the soil, was the people’s common shamba, and there was no way it could

be right for a few, or a section, or a single nationality to inherit for their own use

what was communal …. (p. 302)

In charting the evolution of a new consciousness, Ngugi stresses the importance of a

sense of history, an ability to know where things started to go wrong, where “the rain first began

to beat us,”9 to use Achebe’s inimitable phrase. It is in this regard that the importance of memory

becomes manifest in the two novels. In The River Between, this historical sense is perhaps most

clearly explicated in the roles of seers and prophets who, as links between the past, the present

and the future, have a duty to remind the community of the strength of the traditional heritage

and to warn it of the dangers threatening that heritage.

The novel’s central character Waiyaki, is descended from a line of seers whose vision

helped ensure the survival of the ethnic group, “the select few sent by Murungu to save people in

their hour of need” (p. 3). Faced with the threat of the white man which his predecessors had

predicted, Waiyaki is warned never to forget his origins:

Learn all the wisdom and all the secrets of the white man. But do not follow his

vices. Be true to your people and the ancient rites. (p. 20)

Nyakinyua, Ilmorog’s oldest woman in Petals of Blood, plays the role of seer, her unique vision

enabling her to identify the very basis of traditional life and point out the ways in which

colonialism has weakened it. In the novel, the role a sense of history plays in the emergence of a

new consciousness is very significant. Several characters recall events which have significantly

shaped their attitudes to life and to other people. Others recollect major events in Kenyan history

which they have witnessed and the mental and physical scars they still bear. In this regard, it is

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significant that those characters who are opposed to radical change, and for that reason incapable

of developing a new consciousness, are seen to have relative short memories. An example is

Chui’s amnesia about his role as a strike-leader, a forgetfulness that is all the more pronounced

when it is placed against his image in the eyes of adoring Siriana students.

These acts of remembrance and recall lead to the development of new insights and

perspectives which in turn form the basis for the emergence of a new consciousness. For Ngugi,

it is not enough to realize that there is injustice and oppression; one must also be aware of the

dialectics of injustice and the nature of society:

Any ideal, any vision is nothing unless it is given institutional forms and solid

economic basis.10

Thus, this new consciousness is first, a clear awareness of the individual as a member of a

given community, inextricably linked to other communities on the receiving end of neglect,

marginalization and poverty; second, a clear knowledge of the problems confronting the society

which stems from an ability to put such issues into a proper historical perspective; and third, a

preparedness to engage in the communal – as opposed to individual – struggle for change. In the

two novels in focus, Ngugi stresses the nature of a new consciousness as a communal

phenomenon. Identity is not depicted as an individual or personal construct; it is anchored on the

individual’s clear recognition of a network of ties to others, to the land and to the culture into

which the individual is born. In The River Between, Waiyaki’s difficulties are compounded by

his individualistic approach to his task. Similarly, in Petals of Blood, the lawyer’s awareness of

the oppression inherent in Kenyan society and his preparedness to fight it only amounts to a one-

man crusade which is effectively halted by his murder.

New consciousness emerges in the two novels as a result of conflict and there are two

main types in the novel: conflict within individuals and conflict between social groups with

opposing aspirations. The first type of conflict emerges from the fact that the development of a

new consciousness is essentially an internal, psychological process. It is never easily arrived at,

and often involves a great deal of doubt and self-questioning. One issue in particular gives

Ngugi’s characters food for thought: the question of an appropriate attitude to life in a society

caught between indigenous tradition and Western culture, and characterized by the near-total

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dominance of the rich over the poor. Characters in both novels try to work their way towards an

understanding of their predicament, and for those who succeed, new perceptions may be gained

which become the basis of a new consciousness.

As a young man entrusted with ensuring the survival of his ethnic group, Waiyaki is

keenly aware of the weight of this expectation. He is often portrayed by the author as struggling

to understand situations and continually gauging the propriety of his reactions. His rumination

makes this plain:

Waiyaki often found himself trying to puzzle out the meaning of the old prophesy.

Did Chege really think Waiyaki could be that savior? Was he to drive out the

white man? Was that the salvation? And what would a savior do with the band of

men who, along with Joshua, stuck so rigidly to the new faith? (p. 80)

Through what Chidi Amuta calls “psychoanalytic characterization,”11

the four main

protagonists in Petals of Blood examine themselves even more intently, consciously seeking to

account for the relationship between social background and personal history as they have

impacted upon the determination of their place in society. Munira, Wanja, Karega and Abdalla

all reflect on their lives, searching for some connection that will explain the situation in which

they find themselves. As Lewis Nkosi puts it, “they attempt to find a place for themselves in the

new Kenya society … releasing that none has been made for them.”12

Wanja exemplifies this

process. Once a promising student, she finds that all her potentials come to nothing. The only

thing left in her is an ability to arouse sexual desire in men, an ability which in the context of

Kenyan capitalism leads inevitably to prostitution. The critic Emmanuel Ngara argues that she is

“completely alienated from herself not just by selling her labour, but by selling her body as a

commodity.”13

As a prostitute, Wanja is exploited by those who use her, but she also exploits

them by making them slaves to their desire for her. This anomalous position enhances her insight

into the nature of herself and her society, as is seen in her acute self-awareness:

She was contemplating live mental images of places and scenes to which she had

once been. Though she tried to hide this to herself, she knew that these scenes

were indelibly embedded in her deepest memories of pain and loss, past victories

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and defeats, momentary conquests and humiliations, resolutions of new

beginnings that were only false starts to nowhere. (pp. 63-64)

In addition, mental attitudes are refracted through the prism of other perspectives which

bring their own biases into play. For example, Munira thinks about Wanja and Karega; Wanja

thinks about Munira and Karega; Karega thinks about Wanja and Munira. Personal opinions are

thus evaluated within the context of other opinions and prejudices, revealing a complex

intertwining network of similarities and differences which characterize relationships in the novel.

As Simon Gikandi states: “the relationship of the characters and the juxtaposing of

consciousness on different levels of growth is one of the means by which Ngugi presents

contemporary experience in Petals of Blood.”14

In this way, we are made aware of the emergence

of a new consciousness as a dynamic and evolutionary process developing in response to the

stimuli of memory, personal relationships and unfolding events, the inner conflicts of characters

mirroring the tensions inherent in society itself.

In the novels, conflict does not stop at the psychological level. There is also conflict

between social groups. The battle-line is drawn between two sides: those who desire change as a

result of a new consciousness and those who wish to retain the status quo because it benefits

them. It is a tribute to Ngugi’s skill that the divisions are not as simplistic as this categorization

seems to suggest. For one thing, both groups appear to want positive change: Waiyaki and

Joshua claim to want change, even using the same terms – “saviour” and “rebirth”; in Petals of

Blood, the forces of exploitation actually claim to bring modernization and economic prosperity.

The significant difference is that those who genuinely desire change conceive of it as a

movement from a situation inhibiting the progress of the masses to one which enables them to

realise some of their aspirations. On the other hand, those who wish to retain the status quo

perceive the idea of change in terms of stasis, activity without motion, the end result of which is

an even worse situation for the people. Thus, Joshua appears to lead an evangelistic movement,

but in actuality his ultimate aim is submission to the white man rather than to Christ:

He prayed that the people should leave their ways and follow the ways of the

white man. (p. 32)

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In essence, he wishes to force the ethnic group into a Faustian pact with the white man:

Christianity in return for the excision of the most valuable aspects of tradition. The paradox is

that he wishes to destroy traditional society in order to save it.

A similar contradiction is inherent in Petals of Blood. Those who benefited most from the

advent of the new Kenya are the ones most interested in maintaining the old order. Nderi wa

Riera, a prominent political figure in the novel, is “a strong advocate of African culture, African

personality, Black authenticity” (p. 174), but his emphasis on cultural purity is only a mask for

his incompetence and greed. When his constituents come to him with their problems, his

ignorance of their distress is evident. Unsurprisingly, he sees it as an attempt to alter the status

quo.

It was more likely, he thought, that somebody wanted to unseat him. (p. 175)

Because differing attitudes to change are the basis of conflict, these differences are

irreconcilable. In both novels, little hope is given for a harmonious resolution. Waiyaki’s union

with Joshua’s daughter Nyambura does hold initial hopes of reconciliation, but this is negated by

the anger Waiyaki’s decision arouses. In Petals of Blood, there is even less hope of

reconciliation. Indeed, the novel begins with the most extreme form of hostility – the reported

murder of three brewery directors. The essential incompatibility of the opposing sides may be

traced to the inevitability of class conflict in Marxist praxis, and indeed it is for this reason that

the need for a new, revolutionary consciousness is emphasized: since reconciliation is

impossible, those who seek radical change must themselves first develop the consciousness that

will sustain it.

Comparing his technical approach in the two novels, Ngugi states:

The River Between [has] a linear plot. One action leads to the next along the

normal sequence and divisions of time – seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks,

moths, years. Event leads to event in a relay in a field of continuous time … The

point of view is largely that of the central character. The one narrative voice is

that of the omniscient narrator/author … Petals of Blood has taken a stage further

the techniques of flashback, multiple narrative voices, movement in time and

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space and parallel biographies and stories. The technique allowed me to move

freely in time and space through the centuries and through all the important

landmarks in Kenya’s history form the early times and back to the twelve days

duration of the present of the novel.15

The two novels are clearly different in technique, but both help highlight the ways in

which Ngugi treats the emergence of a new consciousness. In The River Between, the linear plot

enables the reader to follow Waiyaki as his perception and awareness of situations evolve. It

traces his emotional maturity and development from childhood through adolescence to

adulthood, charting the gradual emergence of a new consciousness as he attains a true

understanding of his role against the background of changing events.

Much of this can be charted through the increasingly sophisticated nature of his

reasoning. Events and action neatly interlock within the novel’s overall linear pattern. For

example, Waiyaki’s first appearance is in the role of a peacemaker. He separates his quarrelling

friends by a sheer force of personality that both recognize and acknowledge. This looks forward

to his later role as “savior” charged with restoring purity to the ethnic group. Ngugi also

skillfully uses point of view to facilitate plot movement. Waiyaki and Joshua both see

themselves as saviours, the former because of the ancient prophecy, the latter because of his

evangelic mission. Both are so full of a sense of mission that they move inexorably towards

conflict, and the ethnic group with them.

In Petals of Blood, Ngugi’s technique clearly reveals the emergence of a new

consciousness. He dispenses with a protagonist around whom all the action is centred, choosing

instead to focus in varying degrees upon a variety of individuals from different backgrounds

existing in various locations at different periods in time. Continuous shifts in points of view and

the free movement of his narrative through space and time create and reinforce the reader’s

awareness of the characters as acting within the context of a community and within the

continuum of time. This, in turn, underlines the impact of environment and perception upon

moral outlook.

An idea of the success of this can be seen in the lives of Chui, Munira and Karega. All

three are promising students expelled from Siriana, but their subsequent careers are very

dissimilar, and in fact become representative of three different attitudes to the Kenyan situation.

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Chui returns to Siriana as its reactionary headmaster, and later becomes a big businessman;

Munira becomes a village headmaster, unable to join either the exploiters or the exploited, and

eventually seeks solace in fundamentalist Christianity; after a period of agonized soul-searching,

Karega becomes a leader of those determined to bring revolutionary change to Kenya. It is the

author’s handling of these characters – placing them within the context of other people, past and

current events – that enables the reader to realize that individuals can be so similar and yet so

different.

Both novels use the journey motif to indicate the emergence of new perceptions. In The

River Between for example, there is the physical and emotional journey towards adulthood,

represented by the traditional rites of passage: second birth, initiation and circumcision. There is

also the journey toward the attainment of a new set of values for the ethic group, and here two

destinations are apparent: one leads outwards, to the white man and involves the abandoning of

indigenous mores; the other seeks to restore those mores to their former prominence. Leaders of

both groups speak of their ultimate triumph in terms of journeys: Joshua’s journey to “the new

Jerusalem” (p. 36); Waiyaki’s vision of himself as “the one who would lead the tribe to the light”

(p. 101). Providing a backdrop is the river of life itself, the River Honia, whose uninterrupted

flow represents the timelessness and continuity of life.

In Petals of Blood, the four sections put together clearly indicate a journey of some kind;

“Walking …Toward Bethlehem … To Be Born … Again … A Luta Continua!” However, it is

also evident that the journey is as much psychological as it is physical. Its open-endedness, seen

in the reference to a continuing struggle even after “Bethlehem” is reached, indicates the self-

renewing nature of a new consciousness in reaction to the advent of new challenges. A

significant event in the novel is the villagers’ journey to Nairobi. It parallels the psychological

journeys of individual characters who come face-to-face with crucial aspects of their past.

Abdalla’s Mau Mau days and Wanja’s meeting with Kimeria are two examples. The trans-Africa

road which runs through Ilmorog is representative of journeys: it brings predatory capitalism, but

also attracts forces of revolutionary change like Karega, and it physically links similar African

communities, thereby testifying to their essential unity in the face of oppression.

The persistence of the journey motif in the two novels is an indication of the importance

of the emergence of a new consciousness in Ngugi’s fiction. Indeed, the emergence of a new

consciousness is itself a journey, compelling individuals and communities in the novels to travel

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through despair to hope. One way in which this is conveyed is through the author’s use of

flashback. As a technique for the exposition of antecedent events, the flashback interrupts the

chronological sequence of events. In Petals of Blood, it helps to create the awareness of the inter-

relatedness of seemingly disparate occurrences separated from one another by time and space.

For example, the climactic event of the novel, the murder of the three directors, has just taken

place when the novel starts, but chronologically it is one of the last events to happen. The novel

therefore unravels the causes of the state of affairs in Kenya itself. Crimes though they are, the

murders are only a symptom of social ills which are far more negative in their implications for

the country. Ngugi thus defeats our expectations. We think we are about to trace the causes of

the murders, but what is investigated is a far greater crime: the dispossession of a people. In fact,

the directors are subsequently shown to be part of the corrupt and oppressive system that has

destroyed the lives of so many. This is one of the ways in which Ngugi’s technique works to

defeat our expectations and shake us out of conventional approaches to social issues.

Indeed, both novels, and especially Petals of Blood require what Angela Smith calls a

participating reader “who recognizes the implicit links in the novel.”16

In The River Between, we

are compelled to think about the dilemma of choosing between the old and the new, particularly

as it is symbolized in the seemingly unanswerable questions Waiyaki continually asks himself.

In Petals of Blood, the reader is presented with a broad spectrum of human responses to the

Kenyan situation: one can join the oppressors, like Chui; oppose them, like Karega; or retreat

into oneself, like Munira. A position must be taken for, as Ngugi clearly shows, Munira’s

fence-sitting is itself a position.

As Ngugi’s subsequent work, especially his indigenous-language fiction has shown, the

reader is expected to come away entertained, educated and enlightened, but most importantly

with a new sense of awareness about himself in relation to the pressing issues of his society.

This is perhaps the most crucial aspect of Ngugi’s contribution to the emergence of a new

consciousness in east African fiction.

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NOTES

Ngugi wa Thiong’o “Freedom of the Artist,” Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-

Colonial Kenya (London: New Beacon Books, 1983) 69.

J.T Ngugi, “The Fig Tree,” A Selection of African Prose: Written Prose, 2 vols. complied by W.

H. Whitely (London: Oxford University Press, 1964) 183.

Gerald Moore, The Chosen Tongue: English Writing in the Tropical World (London: Longman

Green and Co. Ltd., 1969) 157-8.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “Wole Soyinka, T.M. Aluko and the Satiric Voice,” Homecoming: Essays

on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics. (London: Heinemann Educational

Books, 1972) 65.

Ngugi, “Towards a National Culture,” Homecoming, 4.

Ngugi, “Kenya: The Two Rifts,” Homecoming, 22-3.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The River Between, (1965: London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1978)

18. (All subsequent references are to this edition of the novel and are made within the paper).

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Petals of Blood, (1977; Oxford: Heinemann Education Publishers, 1986) 20.

(All subsequent references are to this edition of the novel and are made within the paper).

Chinua Achebe, “The Role of the writer in a New Nation,” G. D. Killam (ed.) African Writers on

African Writing (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973) 8.

Ngugi, “Towards a National Culture,” Homecoming, 13.

Chidi Amuta, The Theory of African Literature: Implications for Practical Criticism (London:

Zed Books Ltd., 1989) 151.

Lewis Nkosi, Task and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature (Essex: Longman Group

Limited, 1981) 18.

Emmanuel Ngara, Art and Ideology in the African Novel: A Study of the Influence of Marxism on

African Writing (London: Heinmann Education Books Ltd., 1985).

Simon Gikandi, Reading the African Novel (London: James Currey Ltd., 1987) 141.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o “The Language of African Culture,” Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of

Language in African Literature (1981; London: James Currey Ltd., 1986) 75-76.

Angela Smith, East African Writing in English (London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1989) 16.