SOURCE: Brown, Nicholas. “Revolution and Recidivism: The Problem of Kenyan History in the Plays of Ngugi wa Thiong'o.” Research in African Literatures 30, no. 4 (winter 1999): 56-73.

In the following essay, Brown delineates the recurring subversive political themes in Ngugi's plays, commenting that the author's theatrical works allow “us to take seriously the possibility that art can be at war—in more than a metaphorical sense—with the state.”

Given the immense power of the regime . … One would think they wouldn't have to Fear an open word from a simple man. 

—Bertolt Brecht

In a recent essay, [“Art War with the State: Writers and Guardians of Post-Colonial Society,”] Ngugi wa Thiong'o engages in a dialogue with Brecht's “The Anxieties of the Régime,” the poem from which the above fragment is taken. Ngugi, who has been censored, imprisoned, and finally exiled by the Kenyan government, has more right than anybody...