petals of blood by ngugi wa thiongo

ngugi wa thiongo’s “petals of blood” reminds me of “the grapes of wrath” on account of its breathtaking scope, its poetry, and its impassioned love of humanity. the sheer magnitude of the book is mind-blowing. when i started reading it i thought that it embodied the story of africa, of an entire continent, but by the time i reached the end of the book, i could say with certitude that it tells the story of all colonized people, of the oppressed all over the world. the idea of creating a “new world” because the old world is simply inadequate and can never be fixed, is a kind of epiphany which precipitates the book’s inexorable end.

“The true lesson of history was this: that the so-called victims, the poor, the downtrodden, the masses, had always struggled with spears and arrows, with their hands and songs of courage and hope, to end their oppression and exploitation: that they would continue struggling until a human kingdom came: a world in which goodness and beauty and strength and courage would be seen not in how cunning one can be, not in how much power to oppress one possessed, but only in one’s contribution in creating a more humane world in which the inherited inventive genius of man in culture and science from all ages and climes would be not the monopoly of a few, but for the use of all, so that all flowers in all their different colours would ripen and bear fruits and seeds. And the seeds would be put into the ground and they would once again sprout and flower in rain and sunshine.”

petals of blood by ngugi wa thiongo