Reflections on Kenya's Economic Impasses: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Matigari and Wizard of the Crow

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Departing from the regularly made references to Kenya's economy in the post-independence period by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o in his works Matigari (1989) and Wizard of the Crow (2006), this essay argues that Ngũgĩ, under the influence of Marxist aesthetics and Walter Rodney's dependency theory, has both chastised and offered strategies/suggestions to counter the persistent economic problems of Kenya and, to a broader scale, of Africa. Considering the developments in the Kenyan economy in the 20th century onward, this paper comparatively sketches Ngũgĩ's treatment of economy-related problems in their evolving process in Matigari and Wizard of the Crow for Kenyans and syncretizes the changing economic conditions in Kenya with the Ngũgĩ's literary criticisms and approaches to the issue.