In the House of the Interpreter

It is apparent from all of Ngũgĩ’s writing that his education has been one of his biggest influences in his life. It is even the frame with which he chooses to space out his memoirs. Beginning with Dreams in a Time of War, he then goes on to document himself through the path of his education in In the House of the Interpreter and following that, Birth of a Dream Weaver. It is notable that he chooses to separate the memoirs by the different stages of his education.

While he attends boarding school, he remains acutely aware of his foundations in the peasant class of Kenya. This becomes especially apparent when he returns home after his first school term to find that his whole community has been displaced and forced into a concentration village alongside other households from different communities. He chooses to open the memoir en media res, jumping right to this disrupting and alienating encounter with home. The Alliance becomes his sanctuary, then, now that his home has been dismantled with only a fruit tree remaining to remind him of what used to be there.

Interestingly, he identifies the Alliance as his sanctuary, but it is also a site of colonial rule in which presents Ngũgĩ with strong images of contradiction. He soon began to realize that the school established two contradictory pillars of education: “the notion of self-reliance and the aim of producing civic-minded blacks who would work within the parameters of the existing racial state” (10). The aim of the Alliance School was to create self-reliance only within the structure of colonialism.

Ngũgĩ’s time at Alliance is marked by contradictions: the contradictory nature of the schools goals, the feeling of sanctuary while his home was being destroyed, and also the songs and prayers in support of the British state he sings at school while his brother Good Wallace is fighting for Kenyan independence. These are only a few examples of the duality in Ngũgĩ’s experience between the Alliance and his village origins. After having read all of his school-age memoirs, the stark difference between Ngũgĩ’s educational experience and his experience at home brings valuable insight to how he is able to use his extensive education to address issues he was observing when he returned home to see his mother and family, and later his wife and child.

Works Cited

Ngũgĩ, Thiong’o wa. In the House of the Interpreter. Pantheon Books, 2012.

Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance

It was fascinating to see Ngũgĩ address his thoughts about capitalism very directly. While all of his novels and memoirs incorporate analysis and critique of capitalism, he writes at length about it in Something Torn and New. He explicitly associated the European Renaissance with the rise of capitalist modernity and the imperia mindset that resulted in the widespread colonisation of Africa. In his opinion, “There is no region, no culture, no nation that has not been affected by colonialism and its aftermath” (xi). So, it can be argued that he might think something similar about the reach of capitalism, as well.

The expansion of Europe’s wealth and industrialization was built on the exploitation of African people and land. Additionally, the capitalist focus on individually likely contributed to the strategic fracturing of African communities through the imposition of both physical and intellectual barriers. Through a comprehensive and systematic imposition of these colonial structures, European states strongly influenced the cultural memory of generations. It is this capitalist drive to destroy and exploit that Ngũgĩ condemns so strongly.

His writings in Something Torn and New echo his condemnation of capitalism in Wrestling with the Devil in which he writes, “Capitalism itself is a system of unabashed theft and robbery. Thus, theft, robbery, and corruption can never be wrong under capitalism, because they are inherent in it” (192). In his eyes, imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. It is very easy to dismiss capitalism as an abusive and corrupt system, though. Many do it with strong words and sensible reasoning, but very few, including Ngũgĩ, offer up a fitting alternative to a system that so many people believe they are thriving under. I think Ngũgĩ gives a fantastic argument against capitalism, but wish he would dive deeper to examine other ways in which countries could have flourishing economies without exploitation. Perhaps his advocating for community organizing and local production is his offered alternative, but it not nearly as explicit an argument as his points against capitalism. His argument could benefit from further explanation of different alternatives, in my opinion. It may be time for capitalism to fall in the minds of Ngũgĩ and his colleagues, but what will replace it? Hopefully not a system that is equally damaging, only in different ways.

Works Cited

Ngũgĩ, Thiong’o wa. Something Torn and New. BasicCivitas Books, 2009.

–. Wrestling with the Devil. New Press, 2018.

Wrestling with the Devil

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s tale of struggle against the psychological warfare of imprisonment without trial reaffirms his use of writing as a tool of freedom. For Ngũgĩ, writing his novel in prison was the only way to resist falling victim to the tactics used by guards and religious and political leaders to try to break him and turn him. He writes, “Writing this novel has been a daily, almost hourly, assertion of my will to remain human and free despite the state’s program of animal degradation of political prisoners” (9). Writing, then, becomes his exercise of mental strength in an environment created to break him. So the very thing that placed him in prison becomes his method of spiritual and psychological resistance. I believe his consistent dedication to intellectual resistance was one of the things that allowed him to emerge from his imprisonment with more resilience and honesty than others such as Jomo Kenyatta and Harry Thuku who turned against anticolonialists while in prison. These two are prominent examples of how effective the imprisonment strategy can be.

Ngũgĩ also identifies another point of separation between himself and Thuka and Kenyatta: class. To Ngũgĩ, the two were never able to transcend their bourgeois class position as a result of missionary education, which they could have shirked by “fully and consciously immersing themselves in the fortunes of the peasantry and working class” (119).

It is also interesting how his act of resistance through writing became a community effort as a few of his fellow prisoners would contribute spare paper, toilet paper, and writing materials to his project. Both in prison and outside of it, it seems community strength is what carries Ngũgĩ through his intellectual journey of resistance. He refers to his work with the Kamrĩthĩũ Community Centre as his “homecoming” from wandering in the “bourgeois jungle and the wilderness of foreign cultures and languages” (141). I think this speaks strongly to the benefits of community in social movements, something both Ngũgĩ and many social movement theorists identify as vital.

This fellowship was something Ngũgĩ had to learn, but once he caught on, it ignited his drive to resist colonial oppression and invest in the strength of the Kenyan peasantry.

Works Cited

Ngũgĩ, Thiong’o wa. Wrestling with the Devil. New Press, 2018.

The Trial of Dedan Kimathi

It was nice to read The Trial of Dedan Kimathi to get an idea of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s style as a playwright. Even though it is a collaboratively written play, I can still see strong elements of Ngũgĩ’s arguments that he makes in Decolonising the Mind and Something Torn and New. During Dedan Kimathi’s third trial, his argument with the Politician indicates the persuasiveness of arguments made to support colonialist policies made by Kenyan leaders. Despite being Kenyan, these leaders still advocate for policies that are ultimately harmful to the country as a whole and beneficial to the elite few. He delivers a scathing rebuttal to the Politicians request that they work together to be “given” independence. He says: “Partners in Progress. Towards what end? What will you do to the widows, orphans, the labouring millions? New masters. We labor for you, pick coffee and tea for you. Is that why poor men died and continue to die in the forests?” (47).

Through the character of the politician, the playwrights demonstrate the pervasiveness of European education which influenced highly educated Kenyans to adopt colonial understandings of African people and their own country. These leaders become the neocolonial face of Europe, maintaining oppressive government structures even after the country gains independence.

A particularly striking scene in the play occurs in the Second Movement when Kimathi is beaten and tortured in prison. Instead of watching the beating, the audience only hears the sounds of the violence while they watch actors mime “black history” (56). The stage notes clarify that “there should be as much harmony between the action on the visible stage and the goings on in the torture chamber” as possible (56). By shoring up the scenes of the torture and miming of black history, the playwrights are placing Kimathi’s imprisonment and torture within the greater narrative of black history, emphasising the interconnectedness of his story with history as they do many times throughout the play. While the play depicts the story of Kimathi’s trial, it provides much wider views of how peasants and resistance fighters are participating in an interconnected resistance struggle, both on the individual and collective level. These activities, while they may seem separate in the play, all come together at the end as the resistance members unite in song and become the central focus of the final scene. Kimathis is no longer in focus, but the unified group end in a freedom song, an image that could be related to by many resistance groups across the country.

Works Cited

Mugo, Micere Githae and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. RevSocialist, 1976, https://www.dkut.ac.ke/downloads/The%20Trial%20of%20Dedan%20Kimathi%20-%20Ngugi%20wa%20Thiong’o.pdf.

Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir

In Dreams in a Time of War, young Ngũgĩ is able to conceptualize colonial violence and war in terms of the traditional storytelling he has grown up with at home. While he grows up entirely comfortable with the communal activity of storytelling with mystical and folklore elements, the blunt historical narratives of war are distant from him as a child. In order to conceive a personal image of figures such as Hitler and Mussolini who “threatened to enslave Africans,” young Ngũgĩ envisioned them as “the bad, ugly ogres” (35) fighting against heroes like his brother Joseph Kabae and his cousin. Because he is not entirely familiar with his brother, Joseph Kabae becomes “a character in a fairyland far away” (36). As his brother pops in and out of his life, Ngũgĩ paints him as a character jumping in and out of a story. At one time, though, the distant brother character brings home a taste of what a real image of a time of war may be when Kabae and a few of his fellow soldiers attempt to drive to Ngũgĩ’s village. The soldiers spend the whole night digging their large military trucks out of the mud in an odd and confusing experience for Ngũgĩ. Just as soon as he arrives, his brother is gone, taking the war convoy with him. This becomes one of the young boy’s most striking images of war far away. In this way, Ngũgĩ was able to imagine the tales of war and his unfamiliar brother in a way that he understood as a child.

He does this in times not related to war, as well. On the occasion which he is released from the hospital as a young boy without his mother, he turns to traditional children’s tales which told that “if you whispered in the mouth of a clay pot the name of a loved one, he or she would hear you” (47). Very soon, his mother arrived to guide him home, confirming his faith in the truth of storytelling, but also building a magical image of his mother, the woman who could do all things.

His distancing of himself from the reality of fear and violence through the use of characters like ogres also contributes to the dream-like remembrance of his childhood. The memoir is given to us in short bursts interspersed with analyses of history and politics. This interwoven but fragmented structure mimics the experience of a dream. In this way, Ngũgĩ may reflect on his childhood experience while also supporting it with information he has come to know through his life and education. His adult years allow him to add insight to his childhood experiences.

Works Cited

Ngũgĩ, Thiong’o wa. Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir. Anchor Books, 2011.

Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer’s Awakening

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is in the incredible position as a writer to have experienced the transition of Kenya from a colonized state to a free and independent African state, a historical shift that is extraordinarily influential to his writing. As a college student studying English Literature at Makerere University in Uganda, Ngũgĩ could see the power of language first hand. In Birth of a Dream Weaver, he writes, “The English Department was the house of the language of power in the colony” (3). It taught the language and perspective of colonial rule through English Literature and language to African students. For some students, this would be a tool to transform them into neocolonial intellectual leaders instilled with colonial biases and mindsets. For others like Ngũgĩ, however, the education provided by the coloniser would be turned into a weapon of critique and resistance.

It struck me how the freedom provided to Ngũgĩ in college, in contrast to his previous schooling, allows him to make choices about when to engage with certain materials. On one occasion, Ngũgĩ decides to drop his religious studies class after finding out that it was merely a study of Christianity in which the professor was hostile to deviating opinions or ideas. Choosing not to participate in classes he deemed unproductive was not something he could do a Alliance High School, so this is a brand new experience of academic independence for him. He writes, “That was my first exercise of my academic and religious freedom, and it felt good” (33). It is encounters like this that inspire Ngũgĩ to write a novel as an undergraduate and hold separate reading groups for students outside of English Literature classes so they may speak freely about the texts and criticise them openly. So, I find it incredibly notable how Ngugi and some of his peers were utilizing the critical thinking and advanced writing skills they received from missionary and government schools to develop their anticolonial ideologies.

Ngũgĩ would go on to use these thoughts and conversations to inform his future writing and grow into one of the most prominent African anticolonial writers. I wonder how Ngũgĩ’s activism would be different if he had received less education or different forms of it. I think one of the reasons he was able to remain so critical of the Ugandan college education was his trips back home to Kenya where his family and community were being displaced by colonial rule. While traveling back and forth between Uganda and Kenya, he could get an accurate image of the effects of colonization. Unlike some others, he did not distance himself from the reality of colonial rule, but rather paired his awareness of it with the tools he was receiving at school in order to become a powerful anticolonial intellectual figure.

Works Cited

Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ wa. Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer’s Awakening. The New Press, 2016.

Decolonising the Mind

In Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), Wa Thiong’o provides a wealth of critique, analysis, and observations of postcolonial African language politics. Throughout the text, he supports his claims with relevant anecdotes, historical evidence, and personal accounts. It is in the chapter “The Language of African Theatre,” though, that he provides the most tangible and detailed example of the strength of literary tradition in African culture. In this section, he shares how the Kamĩrĩĩthũ Community Education and Cultural Centre came into being and demonstrates how the surrounding community was able to use the space it provided in order to create a socialized production based in Kenyan cultural and literary tradition.

By contrasting the Kamĩrĩĩthũ Community Education and Cultural Centre with past attempts at radicalizing the nation of Kenyan Theatre, he successfully communicates just how special the Kamĩrĩĩthũ Centre was in its ability to embrace community culture and participation. Wa Thiong’o aptly states that Kenyan theatre movements in the early seventies could never be truly inclusive of the country’s culture or break free from its colonial confinements because even the most radical scripts were written in English and from the perspective of the petty-bourgeoisie (see section IV). It was also confined literally within the walls that colonists had forced Kenyans to perform art in when they eliminated the popular cultural stage found in free and empty public spaces. No longer allowed to perform out in the open, Kenyans could only perform within enclosed spaces which were often inaccessible to the peasantry. Here, he provides explicit evidence for how colonial strategies hoped to remove the oppressed peoples from their linguistic and cultural traditions, breaking their bond with their history and cultural identities.

The Kamĩrĩĩthũ Centre, however, broke from these oppressive structures. Performed in an open-air space, the productions were performed using the Gĩkũyũ language, allowing the content, actors, rehearsals, and perception to be steeped in the linguistic tradition on the community in which it was performed. The community was able to participate actively in the discussion and rehearsal of the productions, including the reintroduction of forms of dance, song, and mime characteristic to the people’s traditions. The Kamĩrĩĩthũ Centre’s success in embracing the peasantry language and culture allowed the participants an accessible education on the content and form of theatre. For a people disempowered by colonialism through strategic denial of education, this became a powerful, uplifting experience.

The fate of the Kamĩrĩĩthũ Centre, however, demonstrates how threatening colonial powers see a unified, culturally intelligent people. As Wa Thiong’o explains, the Kamĩrĩĩthũ Centre was outlawed by the Kenyan government in 1982 after they rose to national popularity. This instance is a direct example of Wa Thiong’o’s own point that colonizing powers left countries to be independent, but only after establishing an elite, neocolonial class which still held the values and views of the colonial regime. The new regime’s values were established through systematic education of select groups with western thought and in exclusively western languages. So, these powers become threatened by a people reconnected to their linguistic, and therefore cultural and historical roots. The Kamĩrĩĩthũ Centre, though razed to the ground by the government, could never be fully threatened or destroyed by the neocolonial government because their theatrical tradition was never rooted in the space itself, but rather the unity of the group, its culture, and its artistic values. The real threat to the regime, then, is a linguistically and traditionally unified people, something Wa Thiong’o consistently advocates for throughout his texts.

 

Leadership 101 – Final Reflection

This reflection was originally published April 4, 2016, on another platform. 

 

The discussions, readings, and exercises done in this class have informed my contributions to the final project by displaying the connection between arts and leadership, developing my personal definition of collaboration, and preparing me for the advantages and drawbacks of collaborative work.

Before this class, I have only had experience in performance art in the form of theatre, but this class introduced me to visual art and another form of performance art. The introduction to Womanhouse gave me a fantastic primary example of women using collaboration to fulfill an artistic vision. It also provided methods for collaboration that I could use in the final project. Inspired by the circular discussions of Womanhouse, we attempted to keep the discussion as equal as possible, not appointing a leader of designating specific roles. Everybody was free to contribute any ideas that they wished. In the brainstorming phase, we shared our common experiences of struggling in the arts, sharing stories and finding shared feelings. I think this created a great initial atmosphere of sharing and equality. Like Womanhouse, we discussed each barrier among the group but split roughly into smaller groups to create the slides about barriers on our particular topics (the ones we wrote our passion papers on). Maura Kelly’s article, Does Artistic Collaboration Ever Work?, helped me to realize that when leading a collaborative project, it is necessary to create something that is a combination of each person’s style and ideas. So, it became easier for me to let go of ideas or opinions that others did not think should be in the final project. For example, I was very passionate about the use of figures to portray the barriers but had to let it go in order to make the project better suited for the group. While looking at all of the pieces that we discussed in class, it became apparent to me how relevant art is to documenting history while also invoking future change. It takes a true leader to recognize an issue and take a stand through their art. Leadership through activism can be challenging, but I think the strong examples we saw in class, such as Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Homeless Projection: A Proposal for Union Square, it was easier to be inspired by our issues and create the final project.

My personal opinion about collaboration before this class was that the easiest way is to appoint people roles, often with one or two sole leaders. However, this course has caused me to expand my perspectives on collaboration. Realizing that my leadership style may have been close-minded, I have since been to workshops on developing leadership styles, and am trying to make a more conscious effort to expand my collaboration skills. The discussion format of some of our classes has opened my mind to the perspectives of others, which became useful in the group meetings in which we spent a majority of the time discussing and debating opinions. Heather’s presentation on Defining and Interrogating Collaboration started my thinking on how I should prepare for the final project, making sure to do my Passions Paper well and to always do my work for the group on time, in order to be prepared and considerate of them. The course led me to think of collaboration, not as a focus on just the final product, the project, but the importance of the processes and interactions that led up to it.

Heather’s other presentation on the benefits and pitfalls of collaboration prepared me further for the process of collaboration to achieve the final project. Acknowledging that there are pitfalls was necessary to avoid frustration in the group discussions. At one point, a group member became extremely upset when we began discussing the topic of technology, leading others to become passionate as well. This is a situation in which a pitfall of collaboration became sacrificing a part of our project in order to give another group member what they are passionate about. However, there were many benefits, one of which was the input of a variety of original ideas that one person could have never come up with on their own. In the end, because of the collaborative nature of our project, it was entirely unique.

Journeys: New York Final Reflection

I feel that I learned a lot more than I had expected to in fulfilling my Global Citizenship goals. I wanted to focus on the first learning goal: evaluating social issues and identifying instances and examples of global injustice and disparity. I thought that I was going to have to search for and interpret works that were subtly suggesting social change or injustice, but instead, I discovered entire collections and exhibits dedicated to strong comments on social injustice, such as Agitprop! in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It was very interesting to see how each issue was represented, not just in a painting or sculpture, but through multimedia efforts, utilizing videos, posters, papers, and handouts. In viewing, analyzing, and discussing these exhibits with my peers, I also engaged in another learning goal: to discuss and interpret world issues and events. For this goal, it was very easy to act on all of my methods because I enjoyed staying in front of the pieces and absorbing them, as well as revisiting them later and posting about them on Instagram or my WordPress. In the museums, I made an effort to seek out these exhibits for the purpose of my project, going to them first before another piece or collection I was interested in. This made me realize how self-motivated activism really is because even though it is available to us, we must realize it and seek it out, despite other things we could be doing that are easier or less rewarding. Continue reading

Introduction

This project, completed as the final assignment of an Introduction to World History course, consists of 6 “episodes” meant to mimic the journalistic style of the podcast series, SERIAL. The episodes seek to explore the complexities of the events and issues surrounding the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. This series does not draw conclusions on fault or wrongdoing of the actors involved, but rather, seeks to deliver the facts of an event that is a vital piece of America’s modern history. 

As you advance through the episodes, the events surrounding the attack and its tremendous fallout should unfold before you.

css.php