Resisting Ethnic and Nation - State Patriarchs as an Organizing Principle in Wangari Maathai’s Unbowed: One Woman’s Story

Abstract

Wangari Maathai wrote her autobiography after her coronation as Nobel Laureate. This had a consequence on the audience she chose to address and the content she would articulate. This paper employs the concept of the organizing principle to demonstrate how Maathai applies it in the autobiography to selectively construct a transcend persona who grows beyond her Gikuyu ethnic identity and her Kenyan identity to become a global cosmopolitan citizen.