Environments of Resistance: The Forest as Site for Postcolonial Existential Quest in Mau Mau Fiction
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
Environments of Resistance: The Forest as Site for Post/Colonial Existential Quest in Mau Mau Fiction illuminates how Kenyan literature reimagines the forest landscape as a significant site of resistance. By examining the African forest’s literary, historical, and cultural significance to indigenous resistance against settler expansion and colonial violence, Environments of Resistance reinstates the relevance of environmentalism within contemporary Mau Mau discourses. I specifically focus on three Mau Mau novels by Meja Mwangi and Samuel Kahiga, demonstrating the transformative potential of a forest-centered postcolonial ecocritical theory grounded in geographical representations. Considering fictional portrayals of African ecological cosmologies, which encompass traditional spiritual beliefs, rituals, and mythologies, Environments of Resistance approaches the physical space of the forest as an existential realm where ontological and epistemological questions about human existence are raised and addressed. It thus revives a critically powerful Mau Mau environmental ethos with immense potential for anticolonial and postcolonial interpretations of African literature.
This dissertation is structured into three sections. The first section presents an introduction that theorizes a forest-focused postcolonial ecocriticism in Mau Mau fiction. The second part comprises three chapters, each analyzing a Mau Mau novel and demonstrating how these texts utilize the forest trope to narrate ecological, ethno-racial, and gender violence. In doing so, the study reveals that representations of the forest within the Mau Mau novel genre depict a unique and intricate African indigenous environmental consciousness, wherein an ethical and locally rooted environmentalism can effectively navigate the challenges of coloniality.
In chapter one, I apply postcolonial ecocriticism to explore how Meja Mwangi depicts the forest as a symbol of indigenous dispossession and displacement in The Mzungu Boy (2005). I argue that The Mzungu Boy’s representation of a declining forest ecosystem allegorizes the legacies of green imperialism on Kenya’s local environment and its people. This chapter illustrates that Mwangi’s depiction of a degraded forest ecosystem serves as a novelistic critique of green imperialism in Kenya.
Chapter two examines Meja Mwangi’s animacy of the Kenyan forest in Carcase for Hounds (1974) as an aspect of African cosmology. I argue that the novel’s animacy of the forest illustrates how colonialism annihilated the humanity of Mau Mau fighters, but the forest restores it through multispecies solidarity. Thus, the forest becomes a site of black liberation, enabling a human-nonhuman ontology that recuperates the identities of the black freedom fighters.
In the third chapter, I argue that Samuel Kahiga’s Dedan Kimathi: The Real Story (1990) fictionalizes the Kenyan forest as a symbolic space where ecological and gender politics intersect. The chapter employs ecofeminism to critique the erasure of women combatants in Mau Mau fiction, illustrating how Kahiga empowers female characters to challenge and subvert traditional and colonial male dominance in Mau Mau storytelling. Finally, the conclusion discusses the significance of this project to postcolonial studies from a global perspective.
Date
3-12-2026
Recommended Citation
Waswa, Denis, "Environments of Resistance: The Forest as Site for Postcolonial Existential Quest in Mau Mau Fiction" (2026). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 7011.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/7011
Committee Chair
Rastogi, Pallavi
LSU Acknowledgement
1
LSU Accessibility Acknowledgment
1
Included in
African American Studies Commons, Africana Studies Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons