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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'oA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Ngũgĩ devotes this part of the book to describing the forced closures of schools and their repurposing under colonial rule. He describes the closure of Kenya Teachers’ College as “a practical and psychological assault on the African initiative for self-reliance” (166). The college is now a notorious prison camp where officials execute dissidents. Ngũgĩ also notes changes to his school’s curriculum when it reopens in 1953 under government oversight. Manguo no longer is a center of music, performance, and communal festivities. Its curriculum focuses on the accomplishments of white people who, according to the new history textbooks, settled on “uninhabited” lands and brought “medicine, progress, and peace” to Africans (168).
Mr. Doran is a figure of this colonial oppression. He is a European inspector who visits Manguo to make sure teachers are following government orders. He expects the teachers to treat him like a superior and corrects their English grammatical mistakes in front of students, shaming them. One day a teacher, Josephat Karanja from Makerere University College in Uganda, arrives at Manguo. The students dislike him initially, but their feelings change when he refuses to defer to Mr. Doran. They regard him as a hero: “He had restored something we had lost, pride in our teachers, pride in ourselves” (170).
By Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
A Grain of Wheat
A Grain of Wheat
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A Meeting In The Dark
A Meeting In The Dark
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Decolonising the Mind
Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature
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Devil on the Cross
Devil on the Cross
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I Will Marry When I Want
I Will Marry When I Want
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Matigari
Matigari
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Petals of Blood
Petals of Blood
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The River Between
The River Between
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Weep Not, Child
Weep Not, Child
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Wizard of the Crow
Wizard of the Crow
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