Petals of Blood | Nationality — Chauvinism Must Burn!: Utopian Visions in Petals of Blood and Marigari
In the following essay on Ngugi's Petals of Blood, K.L. Godwin examines the genre of Commonwealth literature and the politicization of fiction in the quest for a balance between ‘‘national affection and intellectual pan-Africanism''.
Commonwealth literature is not everyone's notion of a viable or useful category, and some may think that it smacks of post-colonial cultural imperialism, but it is a wider (if less precise) category than "world literature written in English" and has the advantage of admitting regional and national literatures that would otherwise have to find shelter under the not-necessarily appropriate umbrellas of the "third world," "black," "Asian," or "Pacific" writing. One does not have to approve of British (or Australian, New Zealand, or United States) colonial rule to recognise that its effects...
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