My Ngugi seminar is already underway, having started on September 9. On that day, I introduced myself, the course, and my teaching philosophy. Today I started with an overview of Africa, the cradle of the human race, language and story telling, concluding with the evolution of modern African writing. At the very end, I talked about Ngugi.
Our first text will be The River Between. Just thinking about this novel brings back memories of my days as a secondary school student in southern Tanzania, when we used to read this and other works by Ngugi, Chinua Achebe, David Rubadiri, Legson Kayira, and other African writers. We also read such writers as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Daniel Defoe. We had, thereby, a rich and varied context for appreciating African literature.
Now, many years later, I look forward to revisiting The River Between and other works by Ngugi.
I am particularly keen on Wizard of the Crow, which I have not read before, and equally keen on exploring the intersection of African literature and politics that Ngugi exemplies so well.
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