Mau Mau's children : the making of Kenya's postcolonial elite /

A foreword by Thomas Spear, co-editor of the "Africa and the Diaspora" series, elegantly contextualizes the place--Kenya--and time--the mid-20th century. Sandgren (Concordia College, Moorhead, MN) begins with a brief commentary on the Kenyan Mau Mau rebellion against British colonialism. This event overshadowed and, in some cases, traumatized, the early years of the schoolboys who are the subject of this collective biography. Later, during the early 1960s, Sandgren was their teacher in a rural secondary school just before and after independence. He then returned in 1995 to interview almost all these students, now adults, to provide this longitudinal portrait of Kenya's first postcolonial elite. The result explores the economic situation of "Mau Mau's children" as well as their life cycles and lifestyles. The commentary is fascinating and lucid, and the overall result is original and highly informative. The failure to make more of the fact that all these "children" were boys detracts somewhat from an otherwise valuable contribution to contemporary African studies. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. W. Arens Stony Brook University