Year of Small Museums

Author's name: Asmaa Azayzah

Asmaa also presents a mix of memoirs she wrote during that period, and an important documentary aspect of her rural father's life, one with few photographs or documentaries—unlike city dwellers. She also provides the reader with some of the audio recordings she made of him on various occasions, like someone chasing a ghost that will soon disappear. She then reviews from her dream diary some of the dreams she was careful to record as soon as she woke up, leaving it to the reader to analyze and delve into them. She raises an important question about the importance of documentation, and that a person's history is not based on what they experience, but on what they leave behind. How can an entire life be falsified if it lacks documentation from its people, from the closest to the closest?

Asmaa Azaiza concludes her book with a final dream, from which she understands that her father is releasing her and asking her to live her life free from the questions of death that haunt him. Then he leaves her with a final dream, the secret of which she shares with the reader, who understands that she is pregnant, and that the sex of her fetus is a male child, who may in some way inherit from her father, and that in all her search to bring her father back to life, she has actually brought him back with the birth of his grandson. However, she concludes the book before bringing the reader to this final conclusion, leaving room for endless expectations.

We learn with Thiong'o the value of knowledge, which colonialism withheld from the Kenyan people. He tells us about the emergence of formal education and independent, rebellious schools in Kenya. His dream, which he promised his mother he would spare no effort to achieve, was to learn. But how can a child cling to his dream amidst the shadows of World War II and his family crises? This childhood memoir serves as Thiong'o's testimony in defense of his right to dream, at least, despite all the difficulties, and of his mother's significant role in his life, which has led him to become one of Africa's greatest writers worldwide.