The power of personal experience

Thiongu outlines in his autobiography how historical events from long before he was born shaped his life. He shows that after the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885, European powers, particularly the Germans and the British, began competing for influence through the colonisation of east African regions.

This competition for control could be seen between Carl Peters, founder of the German East Africa Company in 1885, and Frederick Lugard of the British East Africa Company, which was founded by Sir William MacKinnon in 1888.

In his other book, Decolonisation of the Mind, the Kenyan writer talked about the condition of colonised people at the time, their influence on their colonisers, and their attempts to identify with them. As he put it then, if the mother colonial state coughed, the colonised child would contract a virulent flu.

That is why — when war broke out in Europe after Serbian student Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Ferdinand — Kenya and Tanganyika, fought on the side of their colonial mothers from June 1914. German forces there were led by General von Lettow-Vorbeck, against the British forces under General Jan Smuts.

Thiongu reveals that the complexities of war eluded him. But bits and pieces of the stories and gossip about the surrender of Mussolini's soldiers were put together to form a picture of what had happened.

For him, things were simple; the heroes had defeated the ghouls, at least those mobilising towards him, his brother, and cousin who took part in the war and the victory. Not only could war then be seen in the stories told, but all around them, he said.

Ownership transferred and Churchill's betrayal

The author of Blood Petals notes that after Kenya was transferred from the ownership of a British company to a colonial country in 1895, the colonial state left education in the hands of the Protestant and Roman Catholic missions, including the Missionary Church Association, established in 1799.

Thiongu wrote:

 "Every ruler, from Eliot in 1902 to Mitchel in 1944, committed many crimes against us. But this is the first time that someone has declared war on the Kenyan people within days of his arrival. Of course, Governor Baring received orders from his commander in London, Churchill himself, who after all, was prime minister. Do you see the irony? Our men helped him fight Hitler and that's how he repays us?"

The Kenyan writer saw the irony in this throughout his education.

After he escaped the Roman Catholic Church, he joined the sect of the Missionary Church of Scotland while attending a public school. Before that, he attended one of the Karenga schools, associated with the African Orthodox Church, also banned at the time. The Missionary Church during this time changed its name to the East African Presbyterian Church. 

The writer recounted bitter memories, including his expulsion with his mother and siblings from his father's house. He said that the expulsion, even though it was not from paradise, confused him more than pained him, as he was expelled from the only place he knew.

A father's rejection

His mother was always the head of the family after that, and home became wherever she would be. But his father's rejection was no small feat. It compounded his feelings of alienation, which he suppressed for a long time.

Thiongu recalled the time he wrote under his baptised name James Ngugi. It was under that name that he published his first newspaper articles and literary texts until 1969 when he returned to his original name.

He said that, years later, he attempted in his novel Don't Cry, My Boy to give the fictional character, young Ngorgo, an aura of both reality and fantasy, doubt and certainty, hope and despair.  But he was not sure of his ability to truly capture everyday life in a war-torn country, in all its vulgarity, drama, and surrealism. He said it was the myths, as much as reality, that kept dreams alive during that difficult time.

Adichie: A biography on coping with the loss of her father

In Notes on Grief, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie focuses on an experience that redefined her sense of self and her whole world: the death of her father during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Nigerian writer uses her own diary entries biographical detail about her father to explore grief and sorrow. She compares her father's stories to her own and through both contemplates her own existence, its place in wider reality and the future. 

She recalls a traditional Sunday ritual in the form of a Zoom call her brother used to make from England. Two of her brothers would join from Lagos, three from the United States, and her father from Aba in southern Nigeria.

Adichie describes how weak her father looked on the calls, and how he could not sleep well. But she and her siblings did not worry about him. She remembers his last words, and how devastated she felt after hearing the news of his death.

For her, this call was beyond surreal, with her and her siblings crying from different parts of the world. "We all looked with uncertainty at the father we love, lying at his hospital bed. I stared at him for a long time, trying to catch my breath. Is this what shock looks like? The air becomes glue?"

The author recalls tearing off her clothes in a bit of rage. This provided a  a moment of relative levity that broke her spate of depression and overwhelming grief. Her brother joked that if that was her reaction to shocking news, she should make sure in future that she was not in public when she received it.

Grief as a brutal teacher

Adichie portrays grief as the most cruel method of education– people must learn that mourning is cruel and exudes rage. They also learn to listen to condolences with ease. 

Her writing shows that grief is about language, its failures and attempts to understand it and our limitations in explaining it. She notes that before being struck with it, she did not know that we cried with our muscles.

She was not shocked by the emotional pain she felt, but with the physical sensation of grief, down to how her body actually felt, including the bitterness she felt in her mouth as if she had forgotten to brush her teeth after a bad meal. Adichie also outlines an awful heaviness in her chest and a feeling of external dissolution.

She felt as though her heart had been pulled away from her. "This ordeal does not only impact the soul, but the body too," Adichie said.

"Sadness is not transparent, but physical, tyrannical… something opaque," Adichie wrote, adding that her father's death forced her to wear a new skin, and scrape off the scales that covered her eyes.

She voiced regret at the person she was before bereavement, describing herself as arrogant without the experience of such deep grief. She had grieved in the past, but not on the same level. Only now did she learn, by feeling its sharp edges, that there's no way to beat it.

"Grace in denial" and then the birth of doubt

When in struck after the death of her father Adichie first resorted to denial, admitting that "there is grace in denial." She saw it as a refuge that protected her from seeing what had truly happened.

But the effort toward denial brings about a special kind of sadness. It was not easy, and she had to face her reality, and seek answers for how people lived their lives after the loss of their beloved father.

She recalled how when her grandfather died in a refugee camp during the Biafra war, he was buried in an unmarked grave. The first thing his son and her father did after the war ended was to organise a late funeral.

This reminds her that her father knew that marking occasions of sadness made it easier for life to go on, which is what he would have wanted.

Adichie shows how it does not matter if she wants to change, because she already has. The closeness she now feels to death has revealed a new voice in her writing. Awareness of her own mortality has brought with it a voice so delicately clear and yet so sharp.

A terrible result of grief is the birth of doubt, Adichie concluded. She still can't believe she is writing about her father in the past tense.