The second volume of the world renowned revolutionary writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s memoir picks up right where volume one left off. He enters into the “prestigious” colonial Alliance High School which he thinks will be a safe haven away from the colonial violence resulting from the Mau Mau waging a national liberation war against British imperialism. Ngũgĩ soon learns there is no safety under colonialism, and that the existence of colonialism means violence has already become a fact of life for the colonized. Ngũgĩ is able to learn from his encounters with hypocritical Christians, a brother who is a guerilla fighter in the Mau Mau, Pan-Africanism, the Haitian revolution, and many more experiences to determine that he would always tell the truth as a writer. It is this honesty and anti-colonial commitment which makes Ngũgĩ such a phenomenal peoples’ writer.
