These essays were written between 1970 and 1980 and they reflect some of the issues that dominated my mind in the seventies, but which can be summed up in the question: what’s the relevance of literature to life? The search for relevance immersed me in many ideological debates ranging from questions of culture and education to those of language, literature and politics. This search also saw me move from an intense involvement in the Department of Literature and its many lively debates and activities at the University of Nairobi to an equally intense involvement in the cultural life of peasants and workers in Limuru. For me, it was a decade of tremendous change: towards the end, I had ceased being a teacher and had become a student at the feet of the Kenyan peasant and worker. The result was my departure from Afro-Saxon literature in order to reconnect myself to the patriotic traditions of a national literature and culture rooted among the people. This change was reflected in my writing of the decade; at the beginning of the seventies I had started Petals of Blood, in English, but towards the end of the seventies I had completed Caitaani Mũtharabainĩ in Gĩkũyũ. In the field of theatre, the period saw my collaboration with Mĩcere Githae Mũgo in the writing of The Trial of Dedan Kĩmathi in English, to my collaboration with Ngũgĩ wa MiriI in the scripting of Ngaahika Ndeenda in Gĩkũyũ. The period also saw my being hauled from professional heights at the University of Nairobi to a dungeon in KamitI Maximum Security prison.

The search for relevance was given impetus by three programmes in the Department of Literature: its quest for a relevant literature in Kenyan schools; its popular public lectures series on literature and society; and its struggle for a people-based theatre through its annual project of a free Travelling Theatre.

Thus, the essay on literature and society was written for teachers at a literature conference organized at the Department’s initiative, at Nairobi School in 1973, on the teaching of literature in Kenyan schools. The paper on ‘Writers in Politics’ was given in the Department’s programme of public lectures. And if the essays are dominated by issues of language and theatre, it is only because the great ideological battle between a pro-imperialist culture and Kenyan national, patriotic culture has been fought out particularly in the theatre.