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2 days ago
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3 things Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o taught me: language matters, stories are universal, Africa can thrive
Celebrated Kenyan writer and decolonial scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o passed away on 28 May at the age of 87. Many tributes and obituaries have appeared across the world, but we wanted to know more about Thiong'o the man and his thought processes. So we asked Charles Cantalupo, a leading scholar of his work, to tell us more. When I heard that Ngũgĩ had died, one of my first thoughts was about how far he had come in his life. No African writer has as many major, lasting creative achievements in such a wide range of genres as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. His books include novels, plays, short stories, essays and scholarship, criticism, poetry, memoirs and children's books. Read more: His fiction, nonfiction and plays from the early 1960s until today are frequently reprinted. Furthermore, Ngũgĩ's monumental oeuvre is in two languages, English and Gĩkũyũ, and his works have been translated into many other languages. From a large family in rural Kenya and a son of his father's third wife, he was saved by his mother's pushing him to be educated. This included a British high school in Kenya and Makerere University in Uganda. When the brilliant young writer had his first big breakthrough at a 1962 meeting in Kampala, the Conference of African Writers of English Expression, he called himself 'James Ngũgi'. This was also the name on the cover his first three novels. He had achieved fame already as an African writer but, as is often said, the best was yet to come. Not until he co-wrote the play I Will Marry When I Want with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii was the name 'Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o' on the cover of his books, including on the first modern novel written in Gĩkũyũ, Devil on the Cross (Caitaani Mũtharaba-inĩ). I Will Marry When I Want was performed in 1977 in Gĩkũyũ in a local community centre. It was banned and Ngũgĩ was imprisoned for a year. And still so much more was to come: exile from Kenya, professorships in the UK and US, book after book, fiction and nonfiction, myriad invited lectures and conferences all over the world, a stunning collection of literary awards (with the notable exception of the Nobel Prize for Literature), honorary degrees, and the most distinguished academic appointments in the US, from the east coast to the west. Yet besides his mother's influence and no doubt his own aptitude and determination, if one factor could be said to have fuelled his intellectual and literary evolution – from the red clay of Kenya into the firmament of world literary history – it was the language of his birth: Gĩkũyũ. From the stories his mother told him as a child to his own writing in Gĩkũyũ for a local, pan-African and international readership. He provided every reason why he should choose this path in his books of criticism and theory. Ngũgĩ was also my friend for over three decades – through his US professorships, to Eritrea, to South Africa, to his finally moving to the US to live with his children. We had an ongoing conversation – in person, during many literary projects, over the phone and the internet. Our friendship started in 1993, when I first interviewed him. He was living in exile from Kenya in Orange, New Jersey, where I was born. We both felt at home at the start of our working together. We felt the same way together through the conferences, books, translations, interviews and the many more literary projects that followed. Since Ngũgĩ was such a voluminous and highly varied writer, he has many different important works. His earliest and historical novels like A Grain of Wheat and The River Between. His regime-shaking plays. His critical and controversial novels like Devil on the Cross and Petals of Blood. His more experimental and absolutely modern novels like Matigari and Wizard of the Crow. His epoch-making literary criticism like Decolonising the Mind. His informal and captivating three volumes of memoirs written later in life. His retelling in poetry of a Gĩkũyũ epic, The Perfect Nine, his last great book. A reader of Ngũgĩ can have many a heart's desire. My book, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: Texts and Contexts, was based on the three-day conference of the same name that I organised in the US. At the time, it was the largest conference ever held on an African writer anywhere in the world. What I learned back then applies now more than ever. There are no limits to the interest that Ngũgĩ's work can generate anytime anywhere and in any form. I saw it happen in 1994 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and I see it now 30 years later in the outpouring of interest and recognition all over the world at Ngũgĩ's death. In 1993, he had published a book of essays titled Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms. Focusing on Ngũgĩ's work, the conference and the book were 'moving the centre' in Ngũgĩ's words, 'to real creative centres among the working people in conditions of gender, racial, and religious equality'. First, African languages are the key to African development, including African literature. Ngũgĩ comprehensively explored and advocated this fundamental premise in over 40 years of teaching, lectures, interviews, conversations and throughout his many books of literary criticism and theory. Also, he epitomised it, writing his later novels in Gĩkũyũ, including his magnum opus, Wizard of the Crow. Moreover, he codified his declaration of African language independence in co-writing The Asmara Declaration, which has been widely translated. It advocates for the importance and recognition of African languages and literatures. Second, literature and writing are a world and not a country. Every single place and language can be omnicentric: translation can overcome any border, boundary, or geography and make understanding universal. Be it Shakespeare's English, Dante's Italian, Ngugi's Gĩkũyũ, the Bible's Hebrew and Aramaic, or anything else, big or small. Third, on a more personal level, when I first met Ngũgĩ, I was a European American literary scholar and a poet with little knowledge of Africa and its literature and languages, much less of Ngũgĩ himself. He was its favourite son. But this didn't stop him from giving me the idea and making me understand how African languages contained the seeds of an African Renaissance if only they were allowed to grow. I knew that the historical European Renaissance rooted, grew, flourished and blossomed through its writers in European vernacular languages. English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and more took the place of Latin in expressing the best that was being thought and said in their countries. Yet translation between and among these languages as well as from classical Latin and Greek culture, plus biblical texts and cultures, made them ever more widely shared and understood. Read more: From Ngũgĩ discussing African languages I took away a sense that African writers, storytellers, people, arts, and cultures could create a similar paradigm and overcome colonialism, colonial languages, neocolonialism and anything else that might prevent greatness. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Charles Cantalupo, Penn State Read more: Why auction of Buddha relics was called off and why it matters – an expert in Asian art explains Mbare Art Space: a colonial beer hall in Zimbabwe has become a vibrant arts centre Waiting for Godot has been translated into Afrikaans: what took so long Charles Cantalupo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Hindu
6 days ago
- General
- The Hindu
A life of defiance: the celebrated Kenyan author's views were not without controversy but he inspired generations of African writers
In 1962, a group of young men and women met at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, at the Conference of African Writers of English Expression. Decolonisation was in the air. Nigeria — represented by Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka — had gained independence two years earlier. Uganda — the host country — would become independent just a few months later. And Kenya — represented, among others, by Rebecca Njau and one James Ngugi — was one year away from its own transfer of power. The debates at Makerere included, among other things, the question of what constituted African literature, and whether literature in non-African languages (including English) could ever be truly African. The controversy exerted a formative influence over the youthful James Ngugi, who'd used the occasion of the conference to hand over to Achebe manuscripts of his first two novels, Weep Not, Child and The River Between. The novels were published in 1964 and 1965, respectively, but James Ngugi would keep neither his name, nor the language in which he wrote. By 1970, convinced that the English language was a tool of colonisation, and that real decolonisation was impossible without decolonising the mind (including the language), James Ngugi had changed his name to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Henceforth, Ngũgĩ would write in the language of his birth, Gikuyu. Ngũgĩ, who passed away on May 28 at the age of 87, has left behind a rich, varied, and sometimes complex legacy. Taught at the jewel of Kenya Colony's educational system, the Alliance High School, Ngũgĩ was trained to become either a member of the colonial elite, or of the neo-colonial comprador bourgeoisie that would take over Kenya after the transfer of power. Neither of these two things happened. Ngũgĩ was jerked out of his comfortable boarding school education when, at the height of the Mau Mau war for independence, his village was depopulated by the British as a form of collective punishment, his brother sent to a concentration camp, and Ngũgĩ himself briefly imprisoned before a fortuitous set of circumstances saw him freed. In his memoir, In the House of the Interpreter (2012), Ngũgĩ would paint a memorable — and at times, tragic — portrait of the English-speaking Kenyan intellectual elite, caught between two worlds, as the struggle for freedom intensified. Argument against English In the initial years after independence, this internal struggle continued, as Ngũgĩ achieved prominence as an African writer, writing in English, about distinctively African themes. The River Between, for example, examined the impact of colonialism on so-called 'traditional' practices, and the social havoc that that wreaks — in the mould of Achebe's Things Fall Apart(1958). However, after 1970, when Ngũgĩ resolved this struggle in his own mind, he faced a different — external — struggle. Writing in his native language, and with his explicitly left-wing and anti-colonial attitude, he soon drew the attention of President Jomo Kenyatta and his authoritarian regime. When Ngũgĩ staged a play called I Will Marry When I Want in 1977, he was arrested and imprisoned. In prison — in an act that has since become a part of legend — Ngũgĩ wrote his next novel, Devil on the Cross, in Gikuyu, and on toilet paper. Upon his release, Ngũgĩ went into exile, eventually settling into a teaching career in the United States. It was there that he developed his philosophy in greater detail, through books such as Decolonising the Mind (1986). Building upon arguments that had first been made in Makerere more than two-and-a-half decades ago, Decolonising the Mind made the case for abandoning English in order to achieve true decolonisation. Three decades later, in Secure the Base (2016), Ngũgĩ would develop this argument further, noting that 'each language, no matter how small, carries its memory of the world'. Suppressing language, thus, meant suppressing memory. However, in this, Ngũgĩ's views were not without controversy. His Kenyan compatriot, Binyavanga Wainaina, made gentle fun of Ngũgĩ puritanism in his own memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place (2011). The Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, whose own decision to write was inspired by Ngũgĩ, clashed bitterly with him over the question of writing in English. Ngũgĩ's views about decolonisation were powerful — but they were never uncontested. Troubled legacy Ngũgĩ's suffering at the hands of both the colonial and the post-colonial Kenyan regimes came together in what many people (including this writer) believe to be his masterpiece, Wizard of the Crow (2006). Set in an unnamed African country, the novel takes an unsparing, sarcastic, and darkly humorous scalpel to the cruelties, banalities, and venalities of the 'Independence' government, which masks its own failures and justifies its repression by blaming both colonialism and neo-colonialism — even as that same government is economically and militarily propped up by Western powers as a front against communism. To read Wizard of the Crow is to rage, to laugh, and to weep, all at the same time — a testament not just to Ngũgĩ's mastery as a writer, but to the life he lived and which informed his work, a life of defiance. In the twilight of his life, Ngũgĩ's legacy was marred by allegations of domestic abuse. In a context in which towering literary figures are often treated as moral authorities — and Ngũgĩ certainly was — an obituary would be incomplete without acknowledging this, and noting the culture of silence that surrounds debates on literary legacy. For an honest assessment, we must hold these contradictions in balance, even as we celebrate the rich corpus of work that Ngũgĩ has left to us. The writer and reviewer is an author, most recently of 'The Sentence'.
