Petals of Blood (edition 2005)

Having read Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross for my Post-Colonial Lit unit at Uni (my favourite unit), I remembered that he was pretty heavy going, but as I'm trying to reread old books/read ones that have sat there unread for years I really wanted to give Petals of Blood a go. (Plus my copy is signed by the author for myself and my housemate, so there's some sentimental reasons.)

I'm interested in African literature and have read (and loved) works by a number of authors, Amos Tutuola and Bessie Head leaping immediately to mind, but Petals of Blood is not up there with my favourites unfortunately. The beginning seemed promising, with interesting characters and a social/historical situation fraught with tension and ambiguity. Sadly my enthusiasm began to wane about a quarter of the way in. Perhaps the main reason for this is that I am not a fan of complicated symbolism and analogy. I also did 19th Century American Lit and 19th Century French Lit at Uni, both of which units I detested because the authors in those periods churned out overly-complicated, social commentary-type analogies by the dozen. This is very, very similar to those books I was so glad to see the back of.

The characters are basically symbols of different aspects of Kenyan society and so they fail, in the end, to really come across as actual human beings. I am not opposed in any way to social commentary, but I DO need characters that I can feel SOME emotion towards. It doesn't have to be a positive emotion; it could be disdain or irritation, but I have to feel something. I wasn't able find any connection with these endlessly-philosophising puppets.

Another thing that probably turned me off was the connections I perceived with Camus' L'Étranger (which I also hated.) Munira, the main character in Petals of Blood, constantly sees himself as "an outsider" (the English translation of the title of Camus' excruciating existential "masterpiece") and spends much of the looooong novel taking no positive action in his life, making no definitive decisions but rather being washed along by surrounding events. L'Étranger all over, but at least L'Étranger was shorter!

I'll be trying wa Thiong'o again, at some time in the future, as I have read others' opinions that his later works "work" better. I'd be happy to find that to be the case. ( )

1977. This sounds heartwarming.

This is the first book I have read by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and I was swept away by it. Written in 1977, Petals of Blood recreates many of the tensions in Kenya at the time. Although the book is anchored by investigation into the murder of three highly placed Kenyan officials, it is at heart a sweeping exploration of the tensions tearing apart Kenyan society: misplaced quest for wealth, modernity, and power; the continued stranglehold of Western imperialism on Kenyan society; the questions of the responsibility of the state for the community and the individual within the community; and the tensions between modern tensions and an aching for traditions, myths, history.

I found Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's central characters to be well-developed, layered, and moving. The novel can be read on many levels: an indictment of Western imperialism, including through Christianity; an anxious statement of concern over the political and economic path taken by Kenya at the time; an exploration of the wide gap between the faux authenticity of Kenya's past as depicted in tourism and the richness of Kenya's true history, as shown in oral history and myth. Throughout, though, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's focus remains on individuals - the decisions they make; their dreams and aspirations set against their realities; the different paths taken by Kenyans as they negotiate the treacherous landscape of modern West Africa. It's a wonderfully written novel, highly recommended. ( )

“Ng’enda thi ndiagaga mutegi: that which is created by men can also be changed by men.” This sentence is one of many that stuck out for me in this amazing book by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. For me the sentence offers hope in the endless struggle of the poor majority against the rich minority, a theme with permeates Petals of Blood. It’s a theme that resonates with some of the things going on in the United States of America right now.

In the Kenya depicted here, the polarization and economic disparity are a direct result of European colonization. Even when Kenya became independent, for the poor and landless it seemed the same old story. As Thiong’o writes:

“This was the society they were building: this was the society they had been building since Independence, a society in which a black few, allied to other interests from Europe, would continue the colonial game of robbing others of their sweat, denying them the right to grow to full flowers in air and sunlight.”

And again:

“…all ways for the poor go one way. One-way traffic: to more poverty and misery. Poverty is sin. But imagine. It is the poor who are held responsible for the sin that is poverty and so they are punished for it by being sent to hell.”

I guess it was the expression of sentiments like this, however true, that led to the “liberal” government of Kenya taking the author into custody and holding him without charges or trial. He definitely paints a bleak picture of the effect of colonization and missionaries on the African people, as well as the repeated failures of their post-independence leaders to improve their lives.

The story follows four characters whose lives are intertwined in multiple ways that unfold layer after layer as the dialogue goes on. All four have been taken into custody for a triple murder, and it is the recollections and statements of the four that form the basis of the story.

We first meet the school teacher Munira, who comes to the sleepy rural town of Ilmorog to hide from life. Although he does seem to genuinely believe in educations at times, he also seems to just want to fly under the radar and not think to much. At one point he ponders his teaching:

“He now put the question to himself: what did the children really think of him? Then he dismissed it with another: what did it matter one way or the other? He had taught for so many years now—teaching ready-made stuff must be in his blood—and one did all right as long as one was careful not to be dragged into…into…an area of darkness…Yes…darkness unknown, unknowable…like the flowers with petals of blood and questions about God, law…things like that. He could not teach now: he dismissed the class a few minutes before time and went back to the house.”

Then we have the shopkeeper and (we later find out) Mau mau guerilla Abdulla who has also limped into Ilmorog with his one good leg, his donkey, and his son to try and forget his disillusionment with the bitter fruits harvested after their sacrifice in the fight.

Karega is the youngest and is still full of the fire of activism and outrage that Abdulla still possesses under the surface and even Munira possessed a small amount of at one time in his life. At first he is fired up and lectures the older men, telling them that

“The trouble with slogans or any saying without a real foundation is that it can be used for anything. Phrases like Democracy, the Free World, for instance, are used to mean their opposite. It depends, of course, on who is saying where, when and to whom.”

He hits one of the many lows in his rollercoaster of activism while sitting in the cell between his sometimes rough interrogations. Having plenty of time to think, he asks himself:

“What had he really expected from the struggle? His expectation had always taken the form of a beautiful dream, a hazy softness of promises, a kind of call to something higher, nobler, holier, something for which he could have given his life over and over again. It had fizzled out now and toward the end, in Ilmorog, the bright flames of his dreams had died and only ashes had remained.”

And finally, we have the beautiful and seductively magnetic Wanja, who has her own shameful secrets buried in her past. She brings the plight of African women fully into the frame of the story as she tries to find a create a new life for herself in Ilmorog. She is irresistible to the men of the story and is fully aware of her power over them but goes back and forth on whether she should use that power or not. She sums up the bleak options of women in this telling statement:

“Eat or you are eaten. If you have a cunt—excuse my language, but it seems the curse of Adam’s Eve on those who are born with it—if you are born with this hole, instead of it being a source of pride, you are doomed to either marrying someone or being a whore. You eat or you are eaten.”

All in all, Thiong’o does a great job of slowly but surely developing these four tormented characters as the story draws to it’s dramatic close. I found myself really wanting them to find a way to make life better for them and for Kenyans in general. Reading this and Thiong’o’s other book, Wizard of the Crow, has definitely added to my understanding of Africa and the African peoples. It’s very interesting to compare it to literature written from the white colonial perspective, like much of what you see in history books or in authors Elspeth Joscelin Huxley. But much of this story applies to other countries and other struggles. I saw many parallels with the situation here in the United States as well. I highly recommend you get to know this amazing author. ( )

Set in Kenya immediately following independence from the British empire, Petals of Blood takes place primarily in the village of Ilmarog. It's the story of four people, each suspected of some involvement in the dramatic murder of three owners of a local Brewery. As the narrative moves among these four, we learn the story of the village and, indeed, of Kenya, over the course of a dozen years. Munira is a teacher, motivated by a desire to avoid conflict and also for his desire for the beautiful and haunting Wanja. Of course, the other two main male characters, Karega and Abdulla, also desire Wanja each in his own way. Karega is an idealist with big dreams of changing his beloved Kenya. Abdulla is a shopkeeper and owner of a donkey which plays an important role in village life and in the series of events that lead to the ultimate murder and then the imprisonment of our protagonists (actually, Wanja ends up in hospital, but it serves the same end). Wanja, herself, is a beautiful metaphor for the country: she longs to feel a sense of belonging and wants desperately to be loved, but not ever at the cost of her whole self. Her sense of integrity is entirely wrapped up in her refusal to be overpowered by another - she may suffer but *she* will choose the path of her suffering - and we can't help but admire this strength.

It took me a while to "get into" this novel but as I got to know the four main characters and, to a lesser degree, the villagers around them, I began to care deeply about their stories. Different parts of the story are told from a different character's perspective -- and a few important parts are told from more than one perspective. This fluid unfolding of twelve years of human striving against oppression and poverty is powerful. Ngũgĩ occasionally lapses into a little sermon, unnecessary given the power of the story he is telling, but these sermons are only a bit distracting. In turn, he addresses the three-pronged monster that continues to own and oppress Kenya and her people, even after "independence" from the British colonial power: the Gun, the Bible, and the Coin. The themes of eternal struggle and the determination to define one's own identity emerge again and again, differently for Munira, Wanja, Karega, and Abdulla. Ngũgĩ tells us that, once a path is chosen, nothing will ever be the same. Karega explores it thus: "Karega glanced at her figure, bent so, and repeated to himself: no longer the same. He turned the phrase over and over again in his mind as if this alone explained all the agony, all the hidden meanings in her unfinished - well, in their unfinished - story." {and at the end of that paragraph, several sentences later}: "...Africa, after all, did not have one but several pasts which were in perpetual struggle." The thing is, we *know* he's not just talking about Wanja in the first part of the paragraph. We *know* he means Kenya, and Africa. He could leave out the clarification.

Despite my quibbles with Ngũgĩ's reluctance to allow his metaphors to work their capable magic, I think this is an important and worthwhile novel. As I look back at sections I marked, I can't weave them into this review because the novel is so dense that I can't "briefly" summarize Ngũgĩ's many lessons. The characters are richly and compassionately developed and this period in Kenya's history is portrayed unflinchingly. This is no romanticized version of postcolonial Africa. Yet, the backdrop of drought (and its clear connection to the brutal land-use practices of the capitalists), violence, and political chaos never really overrides the personal individual stories about which I came to care. And while the deprivation and grief is pervasive, so is the incredible striving for self-definition, for true freedom, for connection without betrayal.

Oh, and the murder? We do, indeed, find out who did it. But that culpability is pretty irrelevant to the real story. ( )