Epidemic of Postcolonial Woes: Meja Mwangi's Striving for the wind and the trouble with Africa
2004; eScholarship Publishing, University of California; Volume: 30; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5070/f7302-3016532
ISSN2150-5802
Autores Tópico(s)Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
ResumoAfrican literature has an innate and functional quality ofreflecting and refracting socia-political issues. This commitment has been negotiated through various artistic means. In this paper, an attempt is made to examine the depiction of neocolonial woes in the contemporaryAfrican novel. Meja Mwangi's Striving for the Wind is used as the launchingpad ofthe discussion. The paper critically investigates Mwangi's uerisimilar portrayaL of man's plight in neocolonial Kenya, in particular, and the entire postcolonialAfrica, in geTU!ral. It is established that Mwangi, in the novel, patronizes the aesthetics ofhumanismand depicts, with harrowing contemptand witheringderision, the existing expLoitative reality and its structure ofvalues in postcolonial Kenya. The novel also reveals that Mwangihas an acute sense of social responsibility and makes a pungent exposition of the brutality of a menacing social order. Besides, it is discovered that, in the novel. Mwangi shifts his thematic focus to rural poverty as a respite from the urbanpoverty discussed in his earlier novels. In conclusion, the paper observes that the uniqueness of Mwangi's discourse of postcolonial woes lies on the adroit blend of thematic preoccupations and narrative techniques.
Referência(s)