Essay
Facing Mount Kenya
Jomo Kenyatta · 1938
Synopsis
A study of the Kikuyu society of central Kenya, conducted from the inside by a Kikuyu trained in anthropology. Chapter after chapter, the author describes kinship, land tenure, economic life and crafts, the education of children, initiation rites and age sets, marriage, government, religion and magic, to show how these institutions form a whole. Land is its key, and the book denounces the effects of colonial dispossession and of the missions.
Context
The book appeared in London in 1938 from Secker and Warburg, with an introduction by Bronisław Malinowski, whose seminar the author had attended in London. It is regarded as one of the first modern ethnographies written by an African, and critics also read in it a political manifesto against the idea of a civilising colonisation. Reprinted in 1953, it appeared in French from Maspero in 1960, with a preface by Georges Balandier.
Who it is for
For reading a classic of African anthropology written from the inside, available in French and in paperback.
Prizes and reception
Malinowski sees in it a pioneering contribution to African ethnography, and C. L. R. James concludes: here, Africa speaks.
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