How Some Books Boldly Challenge and Attempt to Alter the Structure of Our Reality - Njuki Githethwa скачать в хорошем качестве

How Some Books Boldly Challenge and Attempt to Alter the Structure of Our Reality - Njuki Githethwa

In the sixties, as African countries emerged from decades of colonial subjugation, our writers were inspired to dip their quills in the collective suffering and aspirations of the people. The writers who emerged were bold, political, and ideologically committed. Many of them held the world's attention for the rest of their lives. But the end of colonisation did not usher in the fruits of freedom as expected by the people. The postcolonial experience introduced poverty. While poverty in the colonial era was seen as a consequence of apartheid and land disposession, poverty in a free Kenya was a humiliation that tasted like betrayal. This prompted the soon-to-be-assassinated politician J.M. Kariuki to famously quip that Kenya was turning into a land of ten millionaires and ten million paupers. While Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a writer who dedicated his work to protest, had started out writing about the evils of the colonial period, he soon had reason to be inspired by postcolonial leadership in Kenya. His novel "Petals of Blood" was the mark of that political awakening. It was preceded during the seventies decade by works like "Kill Me Quick" and "Going Down River Road" by Meja Mwangi which captured (without pointing fingers) the bitterness of the fruits of Uhuru: poverty, humiliation, despondency, crime, despair, joblessness, decadence ... Where Meja had described the conditions of hell without naming the culprits who were to blame for the people's suffering, Ngugi boldly named the oppressors, the creators of this hell hole, and was paid for his trouble with incarceration and later exile. Paulo Freire writes about the importance of raising the political consciousness of the people, to transform them into subjects of history rather than objects of history. This is the role played by protest literature. This recently manifested in Kenya during the finance bill protests when the play 'Parliament of Owls" was cited in the National Assembly as responsible for radicalising the young minds to rise up politically. In this episode of Conversations in Literature, Njuki Githethwa of Ukombozi Library reflects that the recent protests are a consequence of a generation awakening to the political responsibilities demanded by the historical moment, and he unpacks in detail why protest literature is important and enduring. Show: Conversations in Literature Host: Eric Rugara Production: Roaring Simba Network Sponsor: Nairobi Academic Press