The Mzungu Boy
About the Webinar
This Children's Africana Book Award Webinar, part of the Global Read Webinar Series, took place on May 17, 2018 at 7:00 pm EST with Meja Mwangi, author of The Mzungu Boy.
The webinar was moderated by Wambui Githiora-Updike, Ed.D., retired teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and author of Wanjira, a Novel.
About the Book
The novel explores the nature and brutality of British colonialism in Kenya during the "Mau-Mau" rebellion in the 1950s.
"The novel is set in the early 1950s as the MauMau movement was gathering strength in the "White" Highlands. When the boy Kariuki meets "mzungu" (white guy), the grandson of the plantation owner, the story takes off. As the boys become closer friends, their surrounding world becomes more fearful and violent. Still, the two boys try to have fun together and understand each other's strange ways. .... Readers will learn much about the nature and brutality of colonialism from this novel and its effect on ordinary people." (Barbara Brown)
“Mwangi’s work won the prestigious Deutscher Jugendliteraturepreis by winning the hearts and minds of both youth and adult jury members, no small accomplishment.” (Lori Walker)
Watch the Webinar
About the Global Read Webinar Series
Once a month, the World Area Book Awards (Américas Award, Children's Africana Book Award, Freeman Book Award, Middle East Book Award, and the South Asia Book Award) sponsor a 60 minute webinar on a book recognized by one of the awards. The series of webinars is called Global Read Webinar Series. Each webinar features a presentation by an award-winning author with discussion on how to incorporate multicultural literature into the classroom. All sessions are free and open to the public.
The Children's Africana Book Awards is sponsored by the Outreach Council of the African Studies Association. The Center for African Studies at Howard University is the institutional base for the Awards.