Uhuru: a Postcolonialist Reading of Kenya’s Independence in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Selected Fiction

Abstract

This study offers a postcolonialist reading of Kenya’s independence, i.e., Uhuru, in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s fictional trilogy A Grain of Wheat (1967), Petals of Blood (1977), and Devil on the Cross (1982). The study postulates that in spite of independence, the liberated nation will still face many challenges and various forms of colonialism in what postcolonialist critics have agreed to term “neocolonialism.” Moreover, it explores the nature of the political freedom achieved to prove its forged essence. The study traces Ngugi wa Thiongo’s complex definition of absolute freedom by discerning a specific pattern of liberation throughout the trilogy. In A Grain of Wheat, the pattern starts at the “psychological” factor of the decolonized people. Petals of Blood rehabilitates the decolonized by offering them a redefinition of their “culture.” Finally, the significance of and the means to “economic reform” constitute the major concern of Devil on the Cross. The study concludes that Ngugi offers a definition of independence by virtue of the negative, i.e., of what independence is not. While the characters in A Grain of Wheat commit the mistake of radically resisting the colonial past, the characters in Petals of Blood commit the equally serious mistake of radically reviving a pre-colonial culture (past) that, as it turns out, can no longer explain the neocolonial attendant maladies. In Devil on the Cross, it has been concluded, the characters try to solve neocolonial economic injustices by using the wrong “moral” logic and out of wrong “moral” premises.