READINGS INTO THE GRIFFIN BOOK REVIEW

I apologize for my error on Mwandawiro's expulsion date. It was February

1985, not February 1984. I corrected it via twitter.

I spent the weekend following the heated reactions of Starehians to my
review of King'ala's book - what you described as the ease with which they
would rubbish my review.
I have ignored the hate from all of you because it doesn't educate anyone
but here is the sum total of what I have learned from their frenzied social
media commentary:

1. Once again, our elliptical ways of reading are glaring. This tweet
below says it all. We read comments, we don't read articles, not even their
bylines for long enough to determine the sex of the author! How could I
possibly have attended Starehe Boys Centre? (And no, I will not accord
this tweep the generosity of a Freudian reading into his use of gender. He
just didnt read the article or byline. Period.)

Kimani Njoroge (@pkimani)
6/28/14, 19:39
@dailynation @jnyairo Why so much negativity man? You must have been denied a chance to attend the
school. #PureDross


2. The work of the cultural critic is thoroughly misunderstood. Deliberately?
I wasn't Griffin's biographer, King'ala was. King'ala wrote that Epilogue, not
I. I wasn't writing because I knew Griffin, I was writing because I had read
King'ala's book. My job wasn't to research Griffin's life. My role was
analyzing King'ala's technique as a biographer. Why did he find it
necessary to comment on his subject outside of the main story? And in
that aside, what did he say; what image of Griffin did he create and how
did it contrast with what Griffin had said about himself?

3. We have a generational divide between those who knew Griffin the
doting grandfather and those who experienced Griffin the whipping
headmaster. The experiences of Starehians of the 1990s are markedly
different from those of Starehians of the 1960s and 1970s. The tragedy is
that the latter-day Starehians do not want to hear the experiences of others
before them. Our intolerance is staggering; alarming even. What makes
Starehians of the 1990s imagine that their experience of Griffin is more
valid than that of King'ala?

4. Far too many of us are still very reluctant to interrogate the colonial
project, to ask the hard questions about the effects of colonial violence on
the colonizer. In the immortal words of Bill Cosby, "not every eye that is
closed is sleeping and not every eye that is open is seeing". ....or is willing
to see. The Starehians of the 1970s who have contacted me demonstrate
a very clear suspicion of liberal whites, particularly those liberals who had
served the colonial administration and worse, it's army. The ghosts of
war, the cries of the wounded and dying and the tears of displaced
persons haunt the warring parties in ways we can not imagine. And when
peace returns, people find all sorts of analgesics to dull their pain and lull
them to a sleep devoid of nightmares.
So what is the connection with Lamu? Simple. Mau Mau aggressors like
Griffin (by his own admission about his role as an intelligence officer) found
ways to assuage their nightmares of creating Mau Mau orphans. What
cleansing, self-appeasing cause will the aggressors of Lamu find, in the
future?

5. How difficult is it really to read a 163-page book? Why comment and
persist in repeatedly hurling insults when you haven't read the book? Why
the reluctance to hear King'ala first-hand? Who will comment with direct
reference to a phrase, a page from King'ala? Wasn't there any other copy
of this book sold aside from the one I bought at Prestige in 2007 and the
one Patrick Shaw's, biographer, Mr David Smith, read? How could all the
other copies have disappeared? Mopped up?

6. If any of the comments flying around are an indication of the quality of
the teaching of English Literature at Starehe, we have a problem! An
urgent one. Honestly, how difficult was it to see the link between Griffin's
admission of torching Mau Mau fires and the Lamu madness?

Have a productive week.
Dr. Nyairo!.and for all of you offended about the Postscript on honorary
Ph.Ds. I didnt write the rules of that game. I just told you about them.