Ifeoma Catherine Onwugbufor
Department of English,
Nasarawa State University,
Keffi-Nigeria
Title of the Book: Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir
Author: Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Publishers: Vintage, US
Year: 2018
Pages: 248
Genre: Creative Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781784702243
Abstract:
The enigma of Ngugi’s mind burrows through a transnational path demonstrated by the relationship between his imaginary and unnamed settings and his real settings. Ngugi’s acknowledgment of Njoki, Wariinga, Wanjiku, Nyambura, and MeKatilili as strengtheners in his prison world depicted in Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir denotes an emotional valency that is typically African and championed by the female gender. Despite all impediments, the female gender launches a fierce revolution which raises superior gender aesthetics beyond basic feminist theories and ideologies. This fierce revolution enables them to chase devils (demons) that torment citizens using fear and silence – a colonial affair which leans desperately on capitalist policies, an extortionist government and Kenyan aristocrats.
Keywords: Afrovalency, Femalehood, Colonial Affair, Revolution, Demons
Wariinga and Njoki also keep reminding me that my imprisonment without trial is not a personal affair. It’s part of the wider history of attempts to bring up the Kenyan people in a reactionary culture of silence, and fear, and of the Kenyan people’s fierce struggle against them to create a people’s revolutionary culture of outspoken courage and heroism. Despite Independence, our status was still colonial. … a colonial affair. (Ngugi 41)
At the time of Ngugi’s coming, the colonial affair which began between 1920 and 1940 had been accepted as the new normal in Kenya. Strongly linked with a period referred to as ‘the Happy Valley Period’, the colonial affair denoted a sexual question which haunted many Kenyans, including Ngugi even after independence. “… a colonial affair in an independent Kenya … It is as if the phrase has followed me inside Kamiti prison to mock me.” (Ngugi 43)
As much as the ongoing metamorphoses of feminist discourses are unable to address the cataclysmic fate of the African woman, Ngugi illuminates a new trend of female revolution spreading through Africa; beginning from Kenya. Ngugi’s heroines within the orbit of this paradigm shift represent a dismantling force that unsettles the foundations of the capitalist government. They become models of female authority set to consume Africa positively, different from “… allegorical representations of first-generation women that suffer rape, circumcision, terror, and other forms of physical and psychological abuse.” (Iyere 407) The urgency of a novel narrative that surmounts the polemics projected by foregoing African feminist ideologies is a given.
Ngugi’s subject of fear and silence in his 2018 creative nonfiction, Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir, speaks to the universality of the experiences of his heroines. While Ngugi mulls over Wasonga Sijeyo’s timely counsel to him ‘about my not letting them break me’ (Ngugi 39), he creates in his mind, a feisty female gender determined to disrupt the colonial affair instead, being the ‘heroine of the soil’ walking ‘haughtily carrying her freedom in her hands’. (237)
It is noteworthy that the enigma of Ngugi’s mind burrows through a transnational path; despite the recognition of the March to Heaven Building Committee that “…Women had always been the thorn in the flesh of the human race …” (Ngugi 225) The personalities of Ngugi’s heroines conform to the new ideology which Ngugi sells in his late works: “… Women are the ones who uphold the flame of continuity and change in the homestead… (Ngugi 27) One of such women is Me Katilili who led the Girama resistance to the British, (Ngugi 70) denouncing, “… the colonial culture of fear, and the enslaved consciousness it sought to instil in Kenyans…” (72) Despite the ruggedness of Ngugi’s older female generation, Ngugi exposes a tender part which establishes her humanity as a symbol of strength. About Wanjiku his mother during his formative years, he observes “… My mother’s roast had come to symbolize continuity …” (Ngugi 117); added to his nostalgia as she feeds Ngugi’s estranged father. (97-99)
The female gender, despite all impediments, sustains fierce transformations that raise superior gender aesthetics which go beyond feminist theories and basic ideologies. This empowers her to sanitize the society and chase demons – the government leaders and the aristocratic class, tormenting the citizens. Wariinga’s awakening is a marked departure from the working-class woman the Rich Old man from Ngorika once knew, to the one who is wholly confrontational, “… Did you imagine that a day might come when the hunted would become the hunter?” (Ngugi 253)
Ngugi validates the concept of the ‘new woman’ in the presentation of the triumph of his personal heroines who are the real fighters, “… and I feel certain that at home my mother, Wanjiku, my wife, Nyambura …. Are gazing at the same stars.” (140) Through them, Ngugi establishes a women-driven orientation through which the society is emancipated; thereby obliterating social injustice in the African society by seeking independence from the societal imbroglio that has as its major victims, women and children. Ngugi attempts to redefine revolution from the perspective of an avant-garde approach that comes to term with the fact that women champion not only, political independence but also, mental and emotional emancipation. This study explores the growing female revolutionary tendencies in the African women spreading from Kenya precisely. This is figuratively associated with valency, succinctly energized by Guthera’s summation: “So deep a darkness is always closely followed by dawn” (Ngugi 171)
Ngugi acknowledges Njoki and Wariinga as strengtheners in his world who destroyed the grip of the colonial affair of fear and silence (239), while recognizing his mother’s strength when she “… had to bear three months of torture at a Kamirithu Home Guard Post because of my elder brother who had joined the Kenyan Land and Freedom Arm guerrillas.” in 1955. (147) Without recourse to condescension, Ngugi through his 2018 nonfiction unravels the ‘War-ladies’, Warlords, and Shadows instrumental to the realization of the Afro-Kenyan revolutionary vision.
Works Cited
Iyere, M. J. “Patriarchy, Power, and the Position of Women in Selected Works of
Chinua Achebe.” Chinua Achebe and the Convolutions of Immortality. Reassessing the Writer in Relation to New Realities, edited by Emeka Nwabuze, CNC Publications, 2018, pp. 405-408.
Ngugi, wa Thiong’o. Devil on the Cross. Heinemann Educational Books, 1982.
________________. In the House of the Interpreter. Vintage, 2013.
________________. Matigari. Digitalized by RevSocialist for Socialist Stories, 1987.
________________. Wizard of the Crow. First Anchor Books, 2007.
________________. Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir. Vintage, 2018.
Ifeoma Catherine Onwugbufor has interests in Technical Communication, Cinematography, Screenwriting and the Marvelous Real. She has authored eight books under the pen name, Ifedimma Onwugbufor. A doctoral student at Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Onwugbufor is the erstwhile Acting Director of the School of General Studies at Kwararafa University, Wukari where she was teaching English. She plans to pursue two doctorate degrees in Communication, Media and Film; and Technical Communication and Rhetoric.
