Summary
Kenyan novelist whose The River Between (as James Ngugi) redoes Heart of Darkness and whose Decolonising the Mind (1986) symbolizes the cultural debate at the heart of decolonization in Chapter Three, II of Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism (Culture and Imperialism, PDF p.238 / printed p.211; PDF p.240-241 / printed p.213-214).
Details
- The River Between induces life into Conrad’s river on its first page — the river Honia, meaning cure, or bring-back-to-life, which never dried — while the white man recedes into a single missionary figure emblematically called Livingstone, his influence felt in the divisions separating villages, riverbanks and people (PDF p.238 / printed p.211).
- In the internal conflict ravaging Waiyaki’s life, Ngugi conveys unresolved tensions the novel makes no effort to contain, generating a new mythos whose tenuous course and final obscurity suggest a return to an African Africa (PDF p.238 / printed p.211).
- Decolonising the Mind records Ngugi’s farewell to English and his attempt to further liberation by exploring African language and literature more deeply (PDF p.240-241 / printed p.213-214).
- With Tayeb Salih, Ngugi appropriated the quest and the voyage for post-colonial purposes, against Conrad (PDF p.56-57 / printed p.29-30).
Related pages
Culture and Imperialism, Heart of Darkness, Tayeb Salih, Joseph Conrad