Imperialism In Weep Not Child

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Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not, Child is a beautiful yet somber vision of life in colonized Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising. Ngotho, a farmer who tends to a white man’s crops, and his family reveal the colonial strategies at work to secure the white occupation and ensure the colonized Africans’ inferiority, or rather to maintain the false stereotype. Through Ngũgĩ’s essay, “Writers in Politics: A Re-Engagement with Issues of Literature & Society,” one is able to understand Ngũgĩ’s own thoughts on colonization, of the land and of the mind, and its effects on Africa as a whole. In keeping with his own theories on literature’s subjectivity, it is evident that Weep Not, Child is infiltrated with Ngũgĩ’s own experience and ideas. The author advocates that the presence of cultural imperialism is vital and strikingly real. Ngũgĩ’ also initiates a discussion of racism’s deeper effects through his essay as his novel expresses them with names and faces. His idea of literature’s partisanship is clearly expressed through Weep Not, Child’s semi-autobiographical lens. Ngũgĩ’s essay serves to express his theories, while his novel brings them to life.
One of the principle concepts of Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o’s “Writers in Politics: A Re-Engagement with Issues of Literature & Society” lies in the idea of cultural imperialism. This strategy of mind control through culture serves to secure economic and political occupation, and, specifically in the case of colonial Kenya, force a people to see the world through the eyes of the West rather than experiencing an original interpretation more focused on one’s own social conditions. Ngũgĩ’s theory is clearly put to work by the colonizers in his own novel, Weep Not, Child. Njoroge’s schooling acquaints...

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...a part of the unique style that is the epistolary novel. This aspect of simple storytelling proves it is possible to write colorfully and expressively without complex language and burdening literary devices. Through casual, everyday storytelling the reader is able to see not only the simple nuances of a text, but truly the subtle lessons of everyday life.
The epistolary form can be noted as the most personal form of documentation other than direct thoughts themselves. They are often a raw expression of a writer’s own unburdening. They offer little prior context, initiating a relationship with the reader quickly and dramatically through feeling and story. This form embeds trust and easily relates a reader to a writer’s topics. Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter and J. Nozipo Maraire’s Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter are exemplary texts in the epistolary tradition.

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