Forging a Nexus between African and European Cultures through a Decolonial Anatomisation of Ngugi’s Early Novels

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to anatomise Ngugi’s early novels, namely, The River Between (TRB) and Weep Not Child (WNC), with the aim of forging a transformed modern African culture. Waiyaki and Muthoni in The River Between, and Njoroge in Weep Not Child, are delineated as culturally polarised characters for a new African cultural regeneration. This is an exploratory qualitative article which is underpinned by the Decolonial theory because it draws best practices from the two diametrically opposed cultures in order to construct a fresh progressive African culture. Critical textual analysis was employed to probe the novels, which were purposively sampled from African literary novels which deal with a clash of cultures. Ngugi concludes both novels by suggesting cultural synergy between the two cultures as a decolonial and transformed panacea to expansionism. The reason is that cultures need each other for their developmental survival hence their inter-dependent nature.