The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. Minutes of Glory. The New Press. New York, NY. Hardcover Revised Edition, 2019. The book consists of a collection of short stories focused on experiences of black Kenyans living under various degrees (and periods) of white colonial influence.

The collection begins with a pair of prefaces. The first is to the current, 2019 edition of the collection, and focuses on the creation of two stories appearing in publication for the first time. The second is the preface to the original 1975 edition, and focuses on the author’s contemplation of how his writing craft and perspectives developed over the course of his career to date.

The collection itself is divided into four parts, each with its own title and common points of narrative focus. Part I is subtitled “Of Mothers and Children,” and contains three stories. Each of those stories is built around an experience of motherhood and considers the experiences of women who are living what might be described as pre-colonial lives. The first is the story of a young woman who despairs because she has not provided her husband with a son. The second story is about a childless older woman who rescues a child from a storm. The third story is about an older woman whose children died before her.

Part II is subtitled “Fighters and Martyrs,” and contains six stories, the most of any of the collection’s four parts. “The Village Priest” is the story of a young, Christianized black man struggling to deal with echoes of his pre-colonial faith. “The Black Bird” is the story of a young black man haunted by visions associated with his family’s past. “The Return” focuses on the lost hopes of a black Kenyan returning home from his years-long stay in a detention camp. “A Meeting in the Dark” tells the tragic story of a pair of young black Kenyans whose love and whose future are destroyed by beliefs, values, and attitudes imposed upon them by colonialist Christianity.

Part II also contains the only stories in the collection to focus on white protagonists. Both “The Martyr” and “Goodbye Africa” are built around the experiences of white settlers who were, at one time, part of the Christian, British culture that moved into, dominated, and controlled black Kenyan culture for decades. “The Martyr” describes how one of those white colonists gives in to rumor and prejudice, killing a once-trusted black servant; “Goodbye Africa” describes how a white woman’s affair with a black Kenyan essentially destroys the woman’s marriage just as she and her husband are looking forward to a return home.

The four stories in Part III are collected under the sub-title “Secret Lives.” Each of the black Kenyan protagonists in these stories struggle to make productive lives for themselves in the aftermath of, or the midst of, colonialist domination. The story that gives the collection its title, “Minutes of Glory,” focuses on the struggle and the fury of a black Kenyan woman who prefers to go by the name given to her by whites, and who finds herself struggling to live the kind of life she believes she wants. In “Wedding at the Cross,” another female black Kenyan struggles to live her own life, facing opposition that is perhaps the most vividly developed metaphor, in the collection, for the anti-colonialist struggle of black Kenyans in general. “A Mercedes Funeral” is a parable about the dangers of capitalism and politics, and how both play games with the life (and death) of one particular black Kenyan. “The Mubenzi Tribesman,” like “The Return,” focuses on the disappointments faced by a black Kenyan man coming home after a period of forced exile in a detention camp.

The collection concludes with the two stories in Part IV, which is subtitled “Shadows and Priests.” “Without a Shadow of a Doubt” has a very clear memoir-like feel to it, as it explores the relationship between two brothers, one of whom has the same name as the author’s brother, who was referenced in the first preface. The second story, “The Ghost of Michael Jackson,” is a lengthy, somewhat satirical, but nevertheless pointed commentary on the hypocrisy of the Christian religion that puts an almost humorous spin on the same sort of metaphorical consideration of the relationship between black Kenyans and colonizing attitudes as was explored in “Waiting at the Cross.”