ABSTRACT

Ngugi’s classic novel, A Grain of Wheat, is usually read as an account of the betrayal of the hopes of the independence movement in Kenya and as an expression of the disillusionment that resulted. It may also be profitably read as a trauma narrative. Reading this novel through the lens of trauma reveals characters with clearly traumatic symptoms, and the narrative itself displays aesthetic and ideological tensions that describe a kind of crisis of representation. This chapter focuses on two separate scenes depicting footraces that invoke a form of repetition compulsion that seeks to work through the double traumas of colonial injustices and their recapitulation in neocolonial structures.