Muchira Gachenge

a song for agency

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This year, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Ngugi Wa Mirii’s co-authored play, I Will Marry When I Want, returned to Kenyan theaters after an unintended 32-year hiatus. First produced in 1977, the powerful postcolonial play was banned six weeks after staging for the first time by Daniel Moi, then Jomo Kenyatta’s vice president, followed by his […]

[Review] Baingana’s Memories of War

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“Lucky,” by Doreen Baingana, is a historical-memoir short story that addresses the subject of war and its devastating effects on human society. The immediate allusion to “Gulu District, West Nile” paints in the reader’s mind the impression of the 1980 insurgency⎯which occurred after Idi Amin was toppled a year earlier⎯and places the story perfectly to […]