Cicero and His Friends: A Study of Roman Society in the Time of Caesar Book

Even when not reading it, I can hear the music. The choice and arrangements of the words, the cadence, I can't pick any one thing that makes it so beautiful and long-lived in my memory. I realize that even written words can carry the music I loved in stories, particularly the choric melody. And yet this is not a story; it is a descriptive statement. It does not carry an illustration. It is a picture in itself and yet more than a picture and a description. It is music. Written words can also sing.
They sing, they enchant, they teach, they tell stories. Even in memoir. Especially in memoir. It is as Vladimir Nabokov once said (Lectures on Literature) the writer must be an enchanter, teacher, and storyteller. Thiong'o is all of these things.

Penetrating details. In fact at times those details help distract you from the fact that there are numerous characters, too many characters that they are mostly forgettable, characters with intricate names like those of a Russian novel, characters who appear for one-liners or in a paragraph or two. These descriptive details distract you from the array of characters because the details become the major incidents, the characters only minor placements.

And this is why I love memoirs: historical and personal contexts combined. I find myself researching Harry Thuku, pondering India's ties to Kenya and the influence that leaders like Gandhi and Garvey had across the globe.

But back to Nabokov and the teacher, enchanter, storyteller statement.

The storytelling: A young boy who finds joy in books, but sometimes sees himself uprooted from his African schools because of British colonialism. A distinct family life within a small village. A boy abandoned by his father but brought to manhood through his village's customs. Then he learns that someone close to him is involved with the anti-colonial movement deemed illegal.

The education: Italian prisoners of war and builders in colonial Kenya (they surrendered during the East African campaign during 1941); the Indian community within Kenya, how this would later affect the landscape of tea-picking (tea seeds from India were introduced to his town in 1903); the link between Kenyan nationalism, Gandhian nationalism and Garveyite black nationalism; the rise of the famous activist and nationalist leader, Kenyatta'whose death Kenyan writer, Binyavanga Wainaina later mentions in his acclaimed memoir: One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir.

The enchantment:
Oh yes, such a day it was! The crop was in bloom, the entire field covered with pea flowers of different colors. I always remember the butterflies, so many; and I was not afraid of the bees that competed with the butterflies. He took out a bead necklace and said: Will you wear this for me? Well, I did not say yes or no, but I took it and wore it, she said with an audible sigh.