The important work of recording Kenyan voices is brought to bear in Huttenbach's excellent compilation: the General's retelling of the Mau Mau period is highly vivid and complex. * Focus on the Horn *
Those of us who teach African history are always looking for accessible and engaging books to assign our students. Africa is a vast unknown to most American college students. Most of us have developed strategies of easing them into the subject gently. Huttenbach's book will fit the bill.
Thambu's account of the Mau Mau conflict-the central focus of the book-is unique among all the memoirs written by former Mau Mau: it is the only one authored by a non- Kikuyu African. ...[It] has the potential to reshape the way we think about Mau Mau in Meru, and more broadly, outside Kikuyuland. * International Journal of African Historical Studies *
Laura Lee did what every one of us in the African history field has always wanted to do. She actually lived with the family of her subject. They ate together, worked together (picking tea), stayed together. There is simply no better way for a White outsider to penetrate the core of Meru history.
This [is] a well-researched book that narrates the life history of a dignified freedom fighter without Western bias. * Diaspora Messenger *
[Huttenbach and Thambu's] touching and in the end profound relationship across age, geography, and gender formed the basis of this engaging book, a permanent record of the life and adventures of an African leader set down with grace, intelligence, affection, and style. A valuable contribution to anthropology, life history, and African studies and a recommended read for anyone interested in the modern transformation of African life.
Laura Lee Huttenbach's The Boy Is Gone is Japhlet Thambu's story of the brave Kenyans who went 'into the forest' as the Mau Mau to battle the colonial forces of oppression in the mid-twentieth century, and his unsparing tale, told with admirable restraint, puts us at the white-hot center of a people's struggle against economic repression and cultural abasement. Mr. Thambu speaks eloquently in a simple, clear, and unsentimental language that tells a powerful political story and a heartfelt personal story of a husband, father, and businessman motivated by peace, love, and reconciliation.
...The saga of the General's passage from boy to man is a tale of two civilizations caught in the creative and destructive form of contact we call colonialism.... Anyone wishing to broaden their understanding of what lies beneath the veil of stereotypes and Hollywood distortions of Africa, or who would enjoy meeting a character of uncommon intellect and grace, should read this book.
Laura Lee Huttenbach's debut, The Boy Is Gone: Conversations with a Mau Mau General, is a unique first-hand account of cultural lineage, revolutionary awakening and dogged perseverance told in the voice Japhlet Thambu, a man who seems to have fit several lifetimes into the span of one. It is an essential testimony to those seeking to understand modern-day Kenya.
The General's story ... will meet scholarly tests but will enchant a much wider audience ... and will inform and broaden the views of western readers about Kenya's important anti-colonial Mau Mau movement at a time when all Americans, through President Obama, have a need to know more about that country's history.
