Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading

This is the first comprehensive book-length study of gender politics in Ngugi wa Thiong's fiction. Brendon Nicholls argues that the mechanisms of gender subordination are strategically crucial to Ngugi's ideological project, but that his fiction also creates transgressive spaces for women. Nicholls proposes a strategy of 'performative reading' that offers an ethical basis for analyzing cultural difference and critiquing cultural practices, while avoiding both cultural imperialism and cultural relativism.