2026 IJRSE – Volume 15 Issue 14
Available Online: 2 June 2026
Author/s:
Gundow, Jacob Moisob*
St Louis College of Education, Kumasi, Ghana (gundow17@gmail.com)
Yaw-kan, Joseph Peter
Gambaga College of Education, Gambaga, Ghana (pjoseph340@gmail.com)
Abstract:
Although critical discussions of Ngugi’s Weep Not, Child (1964) have largely focused on themes of colonial domination, land dispossession, and political resistance, ecocritical conversations that foreground environmental violence and ecological alienation as central dimensions of colonial oppression remain underexplored. This paper examines how colonialism disrupts the spiritual, ecological, and cultural relationship between the Gikuyu people and their ancestral land in Weep Not, Child, from the theoretical perspective of postcolonial ecocriticism as proposed by Huggan and Tiffin (2010, 2015). With the aid of content analysis, the paper reveals that in Weep Not, Child, the African land is an emblem of spiritual and ancestral archives, a site for colonial exploitation, and an active participant in human-nature ecological preservation. It concludes that Weep Not, Child portrays the ecological wound caused by colonialism as one of the deepest forms of dispossession, thereby positioning environmental restoration and reconnection with land as necessary components of genuine decolonization. This contributes not only to the ecocritical scholarship on African writings but also portrays the pedagogical relevance of treating Weep Not, Child as an iterative decolonial text in the African classroom.
Keywords: ecocriticism, postcolonial ecocriticism, Weep Not, Child, land dispossession, ecology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2026.26216
Cite this article:
Gundow, J. M., & Yaw-kan, J. P. (2026). A postcolonial ecocritical analysis of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not, Child. International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 15(14), 31-43. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2026.26216
* Corresponding Author