Mau Mau’s Children

The Making of Kenya’s Postcolonial Elite

David P. Sandgren

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780299287849
• eBook ISBN:
  9780299287832
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

In 1963 David P. Sandgren went to Kenya to teach in a small, rural school for boys, where he remained for the next four years. These were heady times for Kenyans, as the nation gained its independence, approved a new constitution, and held its first elections. In the school where Sandgren taught, the sons of Gikuyu farmers rose to the challenges of this post colonial era and, in time, entered Kenyan society as adults, joining Kenya's first generation of post colonial elites.
    In Mau Mau's Children, Sandgren has reconnects with these former students. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews, he provides readers with a collective biography of the lives of Kenya's first postcolonial elite, stretching from their 1940s childhood to the peak of their careers in the 1990s. Through these interviews, Mau Mau's Children shows the trauma of growing up during the Mau Mau Rebellion, the nature of nationalism in Kenya, the new generational conflicts arising, and the significance of education and Gikuyu ethnicity on his students' path to success.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword - Thomas Spear
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Late Colonial Childhoods
• 2. Entering Secondary Education
• 3. Confronting the Cambridge Exams
• 4. Making a Career
• 5. Entering an Economic Elite
• 6. Personal Life in Elite Circles
• 7. Reflections on the Next Generation
• Appendix: Cohort Profiles
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index