In First Person(s): Individual Memory in the Context of Africa and in the Perspective of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Abstract

In the present article, we seek to problematize some findings that suggest the excessive use of the first person in contemporary literature as responsible for a possible crisis of fiction. We approach the intersections that the literary universe maintains with the memorialistic account, in order to highlight a kind of relationship that, with the traumatic experiences of the twentieth century, acquires a broader meaning, suggesting both a fundamental instance for the individuals who lived trauma, as well as for the cultures to which they belong. With the focus on the African experience, we bring the example of Dreams in a Time of War, the first volume of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s autobiographical trilogy, which affirms the literature as a space for reconstructing the fragmented self from an autobiographical but not narcissistic account.