Mau Mau"s Children: The Making of Kenya"s Postcolonial Elite (Africa and the Diaspora)

Price 24.26 - 26.95 USD

EAN/UPC/ISBN Code 9780299287849

In 1963 David Sandgren went to Kenya to teach in a small, rural school for boys, where he remained for the next four years. These were heady times for Kenyans, as the nation gained its independence, approved a new constitution, and held its first elections. In the school where Sandgren taught, the sons of Gikuyu farmers rose to the challenges of this post colonial era and, in time, entered Kenyan society as adults, joining Kenya"s first generation of post colonial elites. Â Â Â In Mau Mau"s Children, Sandgren has reconnected with these former students. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews, he provides readers with a collective biography of the lives of Kenya"s first post colonial elite, stretching from their 1940s childhood to the peak of their careers in the 1990s. Through these interviews, Mau Mau"s Children shows the trauma of growing up during the Mau Mau Rebellion, the nature of nationalism in Kenya, the new generational conflicts arising, and the significance for Sandgren"s former students of their education and Gikuyu ethnicity on their path to success.