SOURCE: Sicherman, Carol M. “Ngugi wa Thiong'o and the Writing of Kenyan History.” Research in African Literatures 20, no. 3 (fall 1989): 347-70.

In the following essay, Sicherman asserts that Ngugi's additions to the 1986 revised edition of A Grain of Wheat reveal the author's “understanding of the role of history and in African literature and of his own role in the rewriting of Kenyan history.”

When Heinemann decided to reissue some of the most successful titles of its African Writers Series in a new format, Ngugi wa Thiong'o took advantage of the opportunity to revise certain details and to add significantly new passages in A Grain of Wheat.¹ Two of the revisions, a change in political terminology and a correction of a historical detail, hint suggestively at my topic: the emergence of Ngugi's mature understanding of the role of history in African literature and of his own role in the rewriting...