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10 books every Kenyan should read to understand memory, resistance and democracy
The problem is not that young people have forgotten. It is that too few of us have been taught what came before. History and Government is treated as an elective in our schools, even though understanding a nation's past is as essential to citizenship as reading or writing. A society that leaves its history to choice should not be surprised when collective memory begins to fade.
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In many ways, the festival became a space where women’s contributions to liberation movements were repositioned from the margins to the centre. Rather than appearing as secondary figures within nationalist narratives, women were discussed as organisers, strategists, educators, and custodians of collective memory
From 7 to 9 May, the Alliance Française de Nairobi will host the fifth edition of Africa Forward Fest, now expanded into a pan-African platform that brings together writers, publishers, translators, and cultural thinkers from across the continent. Timed ahead of the Africa Forward Summit, the festival arrives with a clear sense of intent: To move beyond celebration and into the harder work of connection, circulation, and influence.
Last week, while writing about Joan Thatiah’s Mad Women, I returned again and again to Zawadi, a young woman whose life ends after a clandestine abortion in a residential apartment. This week, reality has caught up with literature. The Court of Appeal in Kenya has overturned the 2022 High Court decision that had recognised access to abortion under limited constitutional circumstances, holding instead that abortion is not a standalone fundamental right under the Constitution of Kenya 2010.
In a region where loss, resilience, and survival are tightly interwoven, stories such as Rough Silk carry a particular weight. They speak not only to personal journeys, but to collective histories shaped by adversity.
Published barely eleven years after Kenya’s independence, the novel entered a society that was undergoing rapid transformation. Women were beginning to occupy offices, secretarial pools, and professional spaces in greater numbers. Yet with that entry into the workforce came complicated negotiations of power—between ambition and vulnerability, between economic independence and social expectation.
Strangely, William Ruto, a political fox if there was one, missed the lesson. Against advice, he bypassed his Tom Hagen, Prof Kithure Kindiki, for Rigathi Gachagua – a Santino with a fist – as running mate.
