Name: Dance of the Jakaranda
ISBN: 9781617754968

Peter Kimani

Kimani reimagines the rise and fall of colonialism in Africa by telling the story of the birth of Kenya's railroad.

Dance of the Jakaranda

Stas

The walls that separated the different races were still up, just as they had been through the years of construction. The different racial groups, Master had written in one of his dispatches to London, remained separate like the rail tracks. Yet the rail was the product of their collective efforts-of black and brown and white hands.

The lavender lips were outside his experience. The idea that he 

 have kissed a white woman in the dark brought Rajan to a screeching halt, and his bladder released a drop or two in his pants. 

Those men, once white, now looked pink, like pigs. 

i get the point but what a horrible way to say it

McDonald recorded the events of that day, August 2, 1897, as the first organized labor protest in the British East Africa Protectorate.

Now there were three dungeons, with White at the top, Brown in the middle, and Black at the bottom. He decided to wait and gauge the Arabs' attitudes. If they were hostile to the British presence, he would lump them together with Africans in the Black section. But if they behaved properly, they would be categorized as Brown and grouped with the Indians.

An interesting and fantastical book on the intersections of race, class and colonialism. Kimani does a great job of (re)-imagining the Lunatic Express, however in moments the writing does get a little crass and unnecessary, with the ending also coming to conclusion rather abruptly. Still a wonderful book in many parts and elements. 

Dance of the Jakaranda

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