Writing for Kenya

Henry Muoria (1914-1997), self-taught journalist, pamphleteer and newspaper proprietor, was one of the most influential voices in the first era of Kenyan nationalism after the Second World War. His pamphlets, a selection of which is reproduced here in both English and Gikuyu, show both his own originality of thought and the more conservative views of Jomo Kenyatta (later to become the first President of Kenya), for whom Muoria acted as unofficial press officer. While one of the contributors' chapters provides the intellectual and political context of these texts from the almost-forgotten but formative 1940s, another studies Henry Muoria's family life, especially the courage and endurance of his three wives, while a third remembers him as father. Intellectual, political and domestic life here intertwine.

Wangari Muoria-Sal Diploma in Business Studies (RSA) 1974, North London College. For over 30 years an administrator for international aid organisations in Kenya, the Ivory Coast and Germany, and now Team Leader of the Student Support Office at London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Bodil Folke Frederiksen is Associate Professor of International Development Studies at Roskilde University with a special interest in the cultural history of Kenya. She has published articles on colonial and present-day media, urban leisure, youth culture and the localisation of global popular culture in East Africa. John M. Lonsdale PhD (1964) in African History, University of Cambridge, has taught African history for 40 years and published on the social, religious and political history of Kenya, East Africa, and Africa. Derek R. Peterson is Senior Lecturer in African History at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya (Heinemann, 2004).