Most Kenyans I’ve met seem to harbour fond memories of their high school days – especially the set books they studied for their final-year exams. Whether at the local pub, in Parliament, in courtrooms or other public spaces, we often light up when an opportunity arises to relive the events or quote the fictional characters we encountered during our initiation into literary appreciation. I am no exception. Many years later, I still find myself and my agemates likening people in our lives to those memorable characters from back in the day. It was in high school that I first encountered…
Author: By Henry Munene
Dan Aceda during an interview at the SEMA BOX podcast studio on July 19 2022. [Esther Jeruto, standard] It is said that, in Africa, stories grow on trees. There could be a million interpretations for this aphorism, but for me it captures the centrality of stories in the African cosmos. It is well known that writing originated from Africa, and so did art. Or how could the cradle of mankind not claim the honour of being the first-ever home of stories, music and the artistic kit and caboodle that comes with life? That said, it is a settled matter of…
Late author Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o. [File] As a young university student slightly more than two decades ago, I wrote in an earlier incarnation of this page what I thought was a stinging criticism of the then fixation with Ngugi wa Thiong’o and other older writers back then. I touched several raw nerves at a time when critics were outdoing themselves in condemning publishers, panels that selected set books for high school and just about everybody for according preference to older, well-known writers at the expense of new ones. While today I strongly believe we are not doing enough to…