Unbowed

Unbowed, written by Wangari Maathai, is a memoir of the Kenyan politician and environmental activist who founded the Green Belt Movement. In 2004, Maathai became the first African woman and environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize. 

First published in 2006, the memoir describes Maathai’s path to activism, which was fueled by a familiarity with and fondness for the Kenyan landscape of her childhood, as well as an early awareness of social injustice. Maathai was born in 1940, in the small Kenyan village of Ihithe. She was born into a polygamous family and a Kenya that was still under British colonial rule.

Maathai and her family later moved to the farm where her father worked, near the provincial town of Nakuru. She describes the social hierarchy of towns like these, with their British administrators, Indian store owners, and African subjects. She also discusses the oral storytelling culture of her own Kikuyu community, which she explains is “the most populous” ethnic group in Kenya (1). She writes about growing up helping her family on their farm, describing how peaceful and meditative she found this work: “Nothing is more beautiful than cultivating the land at dusk […] As you remove the weeds and press the earth around the crops you feel content, and wish the light would last longer so you could cultivate more” (47). 

As a young girl, Maathai was sent away to attend two Catholic boarding schools. Maathai acknowledges the cultural imperialism the European nuns taught; nevertheless, she became close to many of her teachers and converted to Catholicism. She also appreciated the opportunity to go to school at all, which was rare for Kenyan girls at that time. 

Maathai continued her studies in the United States, through an American scholarship program for African students sponsored by John F. Kennedy—then a senator—known as the Kennedy Airlift. She first attended Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas and then continued with graduate studies in biology at the University of Pittsburgh. 

The United States exposed Maathai to dramatic changes in weather and landscape, along with unfamiliar racial and religious tensions: “An African has to go to America to understand slavery and its impact on black people—not only in Africa but also in the diaspora” (78). While Maathai was in the States, her own country was impacted by the Mau Mau movement, an uprising of the Kenyan people against colonial rule. One key figure in the movement, Jomo Kenyatta, was to become Kenya’s first President. 

Maathai returned to an independent Kenya in 1966. Though thrilled about her country’s new status, she soon learned that Kenya was still far from being an open or democratic society. Maathai encountered sexism and tribalism both personally in her marriage and professionally in her career as a professor of zoology at the University of Nairobi. As a university professor, she had to fight to have the same health and housing benefits as her male co-workers; as a wife, she had to mute her own ambitions to further those of her husband, Mwangi Mathai, an executive and aspiring politician who later became a Parliamentary minister.

Maathai’s marriage ended in a painful divorce. After contesting the divorce in court and losing the court battle, Maathai publicly questioned the judge’s motives and was jailed (for three nights) for slander. This difficult period culminated in the loss of her teaching job; she quit so she could make a bid at a Parliamentary chair. Upon losing the election, she tried to go back to her job and was told that she had been immediately replaced. 

The final chapters of the memoir describe the Green Belt Movement, which began as a volunteer organization and has since become Maathai’s life’s work. In addition to empowering rural Kenyan women to plant trees and take back their own land, the movement has served to educate people about democracy, activism, and human rights. Maathai describes battles with an increasingly repressive Kenyan government and details her growing network of international sympathizers and fellow activists. Maathai helped to raise public awareness of the need for a multi-party system, and in November 2002 was elected as a minister to Parliament, this time winning 98% of the vote. Her election coincided with the election of President Kibaki, who succeeded the corrupt President Moi.