REVIEW ESSAY Using Language to Stereotype Kenya's National Character WahomeMutahi How to be a Kenyan Nairobi, Kenya, East African Educational Publishers Limited/Kenway 1996
Abstract
Best known for his popular humour column, "Whispers", which appears in a local Kenyan weekly,
Wahome Mutahi has distinguished himself as a prolific prose writer- with a number of novels to his
credit. To date, How to be Kenyan is probably his first critical work. On closer scrutiny, the work
under review, whichis reminiscent of Chinua Achebe's acclaimed political treatise, The Trouble
with Nigeria (1983), seems more of the writer's personal and subjective quarrel with his sociopolitical
environment.