Rewriting History of the Kenyan Nation in Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir

Abstract

Literary works offer platforms where society can engage in discourse with itself. It is in this sense that the study examined how Ngugi wa Thiong’o provides a re-write of history of the Kenyan nation in his novel Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir. The study was qualitative in nature, employing discourse data obtained from a close reading of the text. This paper examines how Ngugi wa Thiong’o narrates his life experiences and how he weaves his story to accommodate the history of the Kenyan nation. wa Thiong’o survived traumatic moments and he tends to write depending on story lines on which the traumas is given prominence. This renders the study of his episodes in Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir appear as a diary entries whereby he records historical events steadily. The paper argues that wa Thiong’o dwells so much on history to make a significant contribution to the lives of Kenyans by persuading and convincing people that colonialism had an adverse effects on the lives of the Kenyan people. Through history, he is able to raise the consciousness of society to reflect back at its history. He brings out the cruelty, the humiliation people went through in order to gain independence. He foregrounds Mau Mau wars, Second World War at the backdrop of his struggle to attain the white man’s education therefore creating the irony of goodness verses badness of colonialism. The paper then comes to a conclusion that Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir gives more fundamental historical issues and events that helped shape Kenya as a nation. Therefore, it is actually a book that helps rewrite history of Kenya.