Description
As Mutongi shows, matatus offer a window onto the socioeconomic and political conditions of late-twentieth-century Africa. In their diversity of idiosyncratic designs, they reflect more than one and divergent aspects of Kenyan life—including, as an example, rapid urbanization, organized crime, entrepreneurship, social lack of confidence, the transition to democracy, and popular culture—at once embodying Kenya’s staggering social problems in addition to the bright promises of its future. Offering a shining model of interdisciplinary analysis, Mutongi mixes historical, ethnographic, literary, linguistic, and economic approaches to tell the story of the matatu and explore the entrepreneurial aesthetics of the postcolonial world.