Colonialism and sexuality, in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North and Peter Kimani’s Dance of the Jakaranda

Abstract

The Sudanese author, Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North and the Kenyan author, Peter Kimani’s Dance of the Jakaranda both interrogate the connection between colonialism and sexuality in an African setting. While the protagonist in Salih’s novel, Mustafa Sa’eed is the epitome of the sexualized, colonized Sudanese subject, Kimani’s novel examines several sexual relationships, including those of Sally McDonald, the British wife of a colonial administrator in Kenya, Ian McDonald. In Kimani’s novel, Sally McDonald represents a counter image to the white woman in need of protection from the sexual appetites of colonized males. Though Salih’s narration exemplifies the colonial stereotype of the hypersexual black male through Sa’eed’s sexual exploitations of British women, it is also a critique of colonial rule and of responses to colonial rule in Africa. However, Kimani’s critique of colonial rule calls into question the notion of the colonized male without sexual control by making Sally McDonald, the image of sexual license. It is in this vein that this article explores the commonalities between the two novels and the way they use sexual exploitation by opposing figures within colonial settings to address different responses to colonial rule.