Ngugi wa Thiong'o*

I think of everything we’ve read so far, Ngugi’s two short stories have probably been my favorite. Of course, that is balanced out with the two non-fiction pieces we read, which I did not enjoy as much, but I’m not really a fan of non-fiction literature in general, so that makes sense. I did really enjoy both Wedding at the Cross and Minutes of Glory. I think I liked Wedding at the Cross a little more, but I think I related more to Beatrice from Minutes of Glory (which is just a little depressing to admit to), but I think that makes sense since Beatrice is pretty much every stereotypical teenage girl ever, just with slightly more prostitution. She just gives off serious Eponine (musical version, not book version) vibes, only instead of being obsessed with one random guy, she needs validation from as many as possible. That was one of the questions I was wondering as I read Minutes of Glory: how old is Beatrice? Like I said, to me, she seems like a needy teenage girl, though I guess that the concept of being a “teenager” (in the way it is understood in America today) is not really applicable to the time period/culture. Still, the whole thing did remind me a lot of myself and my friends and the stupid things we do or have done in order to get people to pay attention to us. That’s probably not a good thing. That also probably isn’t really what Ngugi was hoping readers would take away from the story. But still, that’s what I got from it. In addition to the whole “colonization** of the mind” thing.

Beatrice is an annoying character to me, because honestly, I look at her, and I kind of cringe because she reminds me of me in some ways. Miriamu, on the other hand, is an annoying character because she’s just annoying. She’s such a Mary Sue (which, for people who don’t spend copious amounts of time on the internet, is a character who is just too perfect). I mean, she’s just too wonderful- she is like, the perfect, long suffering wife and mother. She is kind and caring and just oh so sweet to the poor workers, not to mention her absurd amounts of patience. Does she have any flaws? At all? I mean, her flaw seems to be “she stuck by her man for too long”, or “she was foolishly hopeful that he would return to his former self.” Those aren’t really flaws… at all. Am I missing something? Personally, I found Livingstone to be a more intriguing character. He is clearly a guy who has hamartia in spades. Which is why, even though I believe the ending to be technically a happy one, in that Miriamu- who is pretty clearly supposed to be the one we sympathize with by the end- leaves her sham of a marriage, I still think it’s pretty sad. Because poor Livingstone! He was totally blindsided! Especially considering Miriamu pretty much never gave any indication she had any problems with their marriage in all the years they were together. That is probably too literal of a look at the whole situation, but still. I feel bad for the poor guy. Still a really good story though.

*This is semi-unrelated, but I meant to ask this in class and kept forgetting. Is Ngugi his last name or his first name? Because we’re supposed to refer to authors by last name, and in his English name, it’s his last name (James Ngugi) and we seem to refer to him as “Ngugi” in class, but in his Gikuyu name (which is what he goes by from everything I can find), wouldn’t Thiong’o be his surname (and wasn’t that a ridiculously run on sentence?)? Or do family names/ patro/matronymics come first in Gikuyu? I was just wondering…

** Another side bar, in addition to the whole “we’re obsessed with British royalty” thing, would spelling be another example of America still being semi “colonized” by the British? In that, in many cases, Americans lament the way we spell things like “colonized” (instead of “colonised”) or “flavor” (instead of “flavor”). I’ve noticed this disdain for Americanized spelling is especially prevalent amongst “well educated” Americans, similar to the disdain shown by many of the “upper class” black Africans, like Livingstone, towards non-colonial things.