Black Kenyans

Although each of the stories in the collection focuses on a different central character or protagonist, all but two of the stories focus on characters who have certain identifying characteristics in common. More specifically, with the exceptions of the protagonists in “The Martyr” and “Goodbye Africa,” who are white, the protagonists in all the other stories are either explicitly black Kenyan or strongly implied to be black Kenyan. As such, these characters also all share the thematically significant context of living lives defined by experiences of colonialism – its racist attitudes, its religious practices, and the racial tensions it was founded upon and maintained. These characters, and the narratives they enact, are connected to colonialism in different ways and to different degrees, but in each story – even those with white protagonists, stories that also contain black Kenyan characters - there is a sense of colonialism as having defined...