Description
Book SynopsisHenry Muoria (1914-97), self-taught journalist and pamphleteer, helped to inspire Kenya's nationalisms before Mau Mau. The pamphlets reproduced here, in Gikuyu and English, contrast his own originality with the conservatism of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first President. The contributing editors introduce Muoria's political context, tell how three remarkable women sustained his families' life; and remember him as father. Courageous intellectual, political, and domestic life here intertwine.
Trade ReviewThroughout his extraordinary career at home and in exile, Henry Muoria recognized the hard toil of Muoria’s writings, and the layered, sensitive, and intimate commentaries on them by the editors, convey a critical era of political and moral imagination almost lost to view — an era, in recent decades, almost unspoken and now, with this volume, so evocatively spoken. Writing for Kenya invites scholars to visit and revisit the intellectual, moral, and social worlds in which Africans lived and worked as the more visible struggles against empire unfolded. Professor David William Cohen University of Michigan This is a jewel in the crown of Brill’s imaginative African Sources for African History series, showing yet again what a wealth of African local intellectual production remains to be recovered and made available to new audiences. Professor Karin Barber FBA University of Birmingham Writing for Kenya: the life and works of Henry Muoria, by Wangari Muoria-Sal et al. Brill, 2009. 409p bibl index afp (African sources for African history, 10); ISBN 9789004174047. Reviewed in 2010 apr CHOICE. 'This labor of great respect introduces readers to the life and works of Henry Muoria (1914-97), a homegrown, self-taught, Kenyan public intellectual. An erudite essay by John Lonsdale (Cambridge) introduces the text, which puts Muoria in historical and political context. This is followed with a biography by Bodil Frederiksen (Roskilde Univ., Denmark) and then a final personal memoir by Muoria's daughter Wangari Muoria-Sal, who grew up in London while her father was there in exile during the Mau Mau insurgency against British colonial rule. The second half of the book reproduces three of Muoria's pamphlets written in the mid 1940s, edited by Lonsdale and Derek Peterson (Cambridge). What Should We Do, Our People?, The Home Coming of Our Great Hero Jomo Kenyatta, and Kenyatta Is Our Reconciler, originally written in Gikuyu, are reproduced here, with English translations on alternate pages. In addition to the biographical sketches, the reproductions and translations make the book an important historical document that belongs in every serious African studies collection. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.' -- W. Arens, Stony Brook University
Table of ContentsCONTENTS List of Figures and Photographs ..................................................... vii Preface .................................................................................................. ix SECTION I LIFE Chapter 1 Henry Muoria, Public Moralist ................................. 3 John Lonsdale Chapter 2 The Muorias in Kenya: ‘A very long chain’. An Essay in Family Biography .................................................... 59 Bodil Folke Frederiksen Chapter 3 The Muoria Family in London—A Memory ........... 105 Wangari Muoria-Sal (with Bodil Folke Frederiksen) SECTION II WORKS Editorial note on Henry Muoria’s three political pamphlets ...... 131 Chapter 4 What Should We Do, Our People? ........................... 137 Chapter 5 The Home Coming of Our Great Hero Jomo Kenyatta ........................................................................................... 253 Chapter 6 Kenyatta Is Our Reconciler ........................................ 317 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 393 Index .................................................................................................... 403
