West with the Night

West With the Night explores colonial life in Africa from Markham’s perspective as a white English colonialist. In detailing her life in Kenya, Markham presents herself as someone with an insider’s perspective of the continent and its peoples. In doing so, Markham criticizes some colonialist assumptions while sometimes inadvertently mirroring those assumptions herself.

Markham consistently presents Africa as an exotic “other” that is mysterious and beyond the understanding of Europeans. She describes the diversity of the topography, which she claims is still mostly unknown to Europeans at the time of writing: There are places on maps of Africa, she notes, that are simply marked “unsurveyed” (35). Markham emphasizes her own knowledge by describing numerous lesser-known geographical elements, such as the razor-like sansevieria grass, the high plains around Molo, the 1,200 square miles of papyrus swamps near Sudd, and the 3,000 miles of desert. The author implies that the colonial nations that have claimed most of the continent have little idea of its diversity.

Markham frequently characterizes herself as an insider, contrasting her own knowledge with the ostensible ignorance of the other European colonialists. She often stresses her close bonds with Kenyan communities. She describes hunting with African tribesmen, grows up speaking