Identity Gender and Politics in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow

Abstract

This paper provides a critical overview of the treatment of the questions of identity, politics and gender in Kenyan novelist Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s work, The Wizard of the Crow. The issue of identity is explored against the backdrop of the experiences of slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism and globalization in Africa. The critical question raised in the novel is why the disease of contradicting identities continues to afflict the African.. The novel suggests that unless the African recaptures his identity, he/she would continue to exist in unredeemed state of alienation. The paper further discussed The Wizard of the Crow as a political Novel. We interrogate the political dispensation of Aburiria, a prototype African country immersed in a dictatorship that controls all aspects of the lives of the people. The paper discusses the authors emerging consciousness that indicate the new multi-party political dispensations as nothing but despotic mutations. Finally the paper explores the maturity of the novelist’s feminist vision. In the presentation of the character of Nyawira, we have an articulate woman ready to confront the social, cultural and political challenges of postcolonial Africa in the 21st Century. The paper concludes that this novel, does not offer any explicit solutions to the problems facing Africa. Nevertheless, it suggests that the African renaissance can never be achieved under a condition of alienation. Africa should reach out to other countries in the East like India and China and learn about the possibilities of resisting domination and minimizing the effects of globalization.