Dreams in a Time of War

"Thiong'o provides insight into the social structure of Kenya in the mid twentieth century. I was surprised by the similarity between the family structure he describes and that which Achebe describes in <i>Things Fall Apart</i>, despite the considerable geographic and temporal separation between the two books. Both feature compounds in which a patriarchal male lives in a central hut with the huts of his wives arrayed around him. Thiong'o's mother, much like Achebe's Okonkwo, is able easily to relocate to live with extended family in another compound. Finding the same system of social organization in the two books has led me to wonder how widespread the system may be (or may have been). Does anyone know?<br/><br/>I was also struck by Thiong'o's description of circumcision as a cultural practice which heralded the progression of a child to adulthood. Children of both genders were circumcized, and female circumcision became a strong point of contention between colonizers and colonized. Coming from a modern western perspective, I had only encountered a demonized representation of female circumcision (owing largely to legitimate medical concerns), so I was surprised to see the flipside of the issue: that the practice had been embraced by the Kenyan independence movement as symbolic their native heritage. Rather than a form of violence against women, as I've traditionally seen it portrayed, Thiong'o represents female circumcision as a way to accord an equal rite of passage to members of both genders.<br/><br/>Despite gleaning the above worthwhile information from this book, I'm giving it only a two-star rating because of the Thiong'o's noisome tendencies randomly to shift between tenses and to mention many proper nouns only in passing. The narrative style served to remind me why I don't often read biographies. Too little continuity. Too many characters whom the author does not sufficiently bring to life for us because for him they are already alive."