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.