June 2025: Weep Not, Child by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau, stand on a garbage heap and look into their futures: Njoroge is to attend school, while Kamau will train to be a carpenter. But this is Kenya, and the times are against them: In the forests, the Mau Mau is waging war against the white government, and the two brothers and their family need to decide where their loyalties lie. For the practical Kamau, the choice is simple, but for Njoroge the scholar, the dream of progress through learning is a hard one to give up.
The first East African novel published in English, Weep Not, Child explores the effects of the infamous Mau Mau uprising on the lives of ordinary men and women, and on one family in particular.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Suggested Indie Bookstores:
Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)
[words] Bookstore (Maplewood, NJ)
Malaprop’s Bookstore (Asheville, NC)
Eagle Harbor Book Co. (Bainbridge Island, WA)
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Favorite Quotes:
“He always thought that schooling was the very best that a boy could have. It was the end of all living. And he wanted everyone to go to school.”
“He had all his life lived under the belief that something big would happen.”
“In spite of the troubled time, people still retained a genuine interest in education. Whatever their differences, interest in knowledge and book learning was the one meeting point between people such as Boro, Jacobo, and Ngotho. Somehow the Gikuyu people always saw their deliverance as embodied in education.”
“The school itself was an abode of peace in a turbulent country. Here it was possible to met with God, not only in the cool shelter of the chapel, where he spent many hours, but also in the quietness of the library.”
“It’s strange how you do fear something because your heart is already prepared to fear because maybe you were brought up to fear that something, or simply because you found others fearing … That’s how it’s with me.”
“Njoroge still believed in the future. Hope of a better day was the only comfort he could give to a weeping child. He did not know that his faith in the future could be a form of escape from the reality of the present.”
“Njoroge had always been a dreamer, a visionary who consoled himself faced by the difficulties of the moment by a look at a better day to come.”
“She wanted to travel the road back to her childhood and grow up with him again.”
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Other Stuff I’m Into Right Now:
LL Bean tote bags
Wedge salad
Plunge pools
Naps
Baby elephants
