Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: A Product of Western Education and a Producer of the African Bildungsroman

The Bildungsroman genre has always been an ideal platform for underrepresented groups such as Black people, women, people from former European colonies, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and other marginalized and/or minority groups to share their coming-of-age experiences and grievances. In this paper, I will explore how postcolonial writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o utilizes this genre. My argument in this paper is twofold: First, I propose that a logical parallelism exists between Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s writing aesthetics – characterized by class consciousness – and the development of his protagonists; second, aligning with his pro-African, pro-Asian, and pro-Global South ideological and political views, Ngũgĩ places his young African protagonists in Africa and Asia for education and growth on the assumption that education at home or in the Global South would support Africa and Africans far better than education at mission schools or in the West. This shift in perspective towards education in the West/ern institutions signifies a departure from the postcolonial Bildungsroman narratives, inviting the upcoming generation of Kenyan and African writers to craft their Bildungs-heroes, free from Western educational systems and influences in their pursuit of African modernity.