Latest news with #Ngũgĩ
Indian Express
a day ago
- General
- Indian Express
When Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o met Tagore
The first thing that Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o — who passed away on May 28 in the United States — asked for when he met us in Kolkata in February 2018 was to visit the ancestral home of Rabindranath Tagore. Not an unusual request from a writer — but for him, it was deeply personal. I had worked as an editor on a collection of his essays which Seagull Books had published a few years earlier, so the honour of accompanying him to north Kolkata's Jorasanko Thakurbari fell to me. As we stepped into the compound of the house — a veritable 18th-century palace — Ngũgĩ's jaw dropped, quite literally. 'This is Tagore's house? So massive?' I still remember the blend of shock and amusement on the 80-year-old writer's face. During the car ride to north Kolkata, Ngũgĩ told me how he'd grown up outside a small Kenyan town under British colonial rule, in a hut made of mud, wood and straw. His early educational tools consisted of a single slate and some chalk, shared with his many siblings — a sharp contrast to Tagore's privileged upbringing. But Ngũgĩ's father believed in 'good' education, which, then as now, meant an English one. While some of his siblings got mired in Kenya's violent struggle for independence, Ngũgĩ enrolled in the British-run high school designed to shape Africans in the image of their colonisers. As East Africa threw off British rule in the early 1960s, Ngũgĩ began writing. His first novels, written in English, used the coloniser's language to tell the stories of the colonised — which seemed like a rebellion in itself. Novel after novel drew widespread acclaim and established Ngũgĩ as a leading African writer. But by the 1970s, a profound shift was taking root in him. As we wandered through the grand corridors of Jorasanko, moving slowly from one vast room to the next, Ngũgĩ explained why he had wanted to visit Tagore's house. Kenya had overthrown colonial rule only to fall under a homegrown dictatorship. In 1977, Ngũgĩ co-wrote a play whose bold critique of the regime angered the authorities, who responded by locking him up in a maximum-security prison. It was there, Ngũgĩ told me, that he stumbled upon a newspaper article that summed up a key idea of Tagore's: 'You may learn a lot of languages, but unless you speak and write in your mother tongue, nothing is of value'. That idea was a lightning bolt. It forged Ngũgĩ's commitment to uphold indigenous African languages. He began writing in his mother tongue Gikuyu, starting with a novel composed on prison-issued toilet paper, which he managed to smuggle out. He understood the reach of English, though, so he translated his own Gikuyu works, beginning with the prison novel later published as Devil on the Cross (1980) — a practice he continued for the rest of his life. Ngũgĩ became a language warrior, tirelessly championing indigenous African languages, advocating not only for their literatures but also for translations — not just into English or French so the wider world could listen, but also between African languages, too. Translation, he believed, allowed languages to speak to one another, breaking down the colonial hierarchy of tongues. In his book The Language of Languages (2023), Ngũgĩ writes: 'There are two ways by which different languages and cultures can relate to one another: As hierarchies of unequal power relationships (the imperial way), or as a network of equal give-and-take (the democratic way).' Unlike most of his contemporaries, Ngũgĩ rejected the idea that English could be considered an indigenous language by its non-native speakers: 'The colonised trying to claim the coloniser's language is the sign of the success of enslavement,' he said in a recent interview to The Guardian. But his critique of colonial systems was not limited to language. At an event at Seagull Books in Kolkata, when a delegation of Adivasi activists from Jharkhand came to meet him, his first question was: 'Scheduled Tribes they call you — what do you think of this word tribe?' In his book Secure the Base (2016), he notes: 'A group of 3,00,000 Icelanders constitutes a nation while 30 million Ibos make up a tribe. And yet… a tribe fulfils all the criteria of shared history, geography, economic life, language and culture that are used to define a nation.' That day, the Adivasi activists and Ngũgĩ reached a shared conclusion: India's indigenous people are nothing less than 'a non-sovereign nation'. Working in the English-language publishing world in India, I've had the honour of meeting countless authors. Too often, the conversations revolve around comparisons — who's published in London or New York, whose advance is bigger, who's invited to which festival, what kind of hotel rooms they're given — an eternal picnic of vanities. In this world so steeped in hierarchies, it is both comforting and reassuring to meet writers like Ngũgĩ, whose sole allegiance was to telling the good story, and the right story. Greatness and humility are uneasy companions. Will there be great writers in the future? Certainly. Will they be as humble as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o? That's a harder question. Samaddar is an editor at Seagull Books, Kolkata
Daily Maverick
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Weep Not, Child: A tribute to Africa's literary giant, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.
It was incredibly humbling standing in a congested gathering of people at the Wits Great Hall to hear 'greatness' lend its wisdom to receptive ears on the topic, Decolonising the Mind: Secure the Base, in March 2017. I had the privilege of attending the address when I was in my mid-twenties. The hairs on my arms stood on end and my internal voice said unto me, 'You are in the presence of greatness. Keep quiet and listen.' I attended with my mother and my uncle, her brother, both of whom self-identify as black in the broad Biko sense. I am racially ambiguous, though sometimes perceived as white. In that particular moment at his address, aware of being in the presence of greatness that stood on the shoulders of the deceased legends Aimé Cesaire and Franz Fanon, I really had no other response but to stand in awe and listen to a hero who (at the time) was very much alive. Greatness, the man who was Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, received standing ovations and cheering on in African languages when he spoke. I remember his anecdote about middle and upper-class parents in Kenya calling their children to greet their guests, and pretending to look embarrassed that their children spoke only English. Meanwhile, they were secretly proud of that fact, as though it was a badge of honour, showing education and their class. It gave me food for thought about globalisation and the loss of indigenous culture through the loss of languages. What does it mean? Is it really true that in the age of technology, only English will get you to succeed, or shouldn't we be promoting many languages and getting technological apps to write and speak in these languages too? He, himself, practised what he preached when he gave up English in the 1970s and started writing in Kikuyu and kiSwahili. The legacy Ngũgĩ leaves for us and generations to follow Ngũgĩ was born in colonial Kenya in 1938 and died on Wednesday, 28 May 2025 at the age of 87. His daughter, Wanjiku Wa Ngũgĩ, announced his death on social media. She wrote, 'he lived a full life, fought a good fight'. Indeed, he fought a good fight – for justice, intellectual freedom and inquisition for Africa. Both my mother and I read his (English translated) works in our respective undergraduate years in our twenties. To this day, his discourse shapes our conversations, and I hope, one day, it will shape the conversations of my own children, whom I pray will be thinkers who will also hold reverence for the greatness of Ngũgĩ's works. Ngũgĩ's work, just as that of Cesaire and Fanon, holds legacy power. He stands as a revolutionary whose pen served as a weapon of resistance against injustice and illegitimate political power, a tool for decolonisation mobilisation, and a literary genius. Ngũgĩ's work redefined the boundaries of African languages and identities as limitless. He redefined the African 'post-colony' for all that it is and all that it has the potential to be. Ngũgĩ's work echoes the cries, the resilience, and the aspirations of a continent still healing from the scars of colonisation and empire. His call was never for Africans to claim victimhood and dwell therein, but to reclaim identity by decolonising our thinking, behaviours and daily practices. Secure the base, he said. Make Africa count. Through his novels, plays, essays and prison memoirs, Ngũgĩ's work challenges imperial power, questions inherited colonial structures and reimagines liberated, self-defining Africa. It embodies a radical vision for Africa defining itself on its own terms — politically, socially and linguistically. The chronology of his intellectual journey through his works stands as a larger political project aimed at dismantling colonial legacies and reimagining African identity from the inside out. That is, an Africa defined by its own people, not the superimposed Western narratives. Ngũgĩ's literary genius His debut novel, Weep Not, Child (1964), explores the Mau Mau uprising through the eyes of a young boy. This piece was the first novel in English written by a black East African. In Decolonising the Mind (1986), he poetically posits that 'the bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation' and develops this thought through his central argument that language is the carrier of culture, memory and identity. When a people lose their language, he argues, they risk losing their ability to define their own reality. In The River Between (1965), a poetic and tragic tale of cultural conflict between Christianity and traditional beliefs in a Gĩkũyũ village, he pens 'a people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass'. Various commentaries posit that in this metaphor, the wind represents the gale-like forces of colonialism and cultural imperialism, and buffalo grass, a plant that bends and yields to external pressure, represents a people without strong roots in their own history — easily swayed, easily displaced. Here, it stands to reason that Ngũgĩ's fundamental point is that people who do not know or affirm their history are at the mercy of external forces. Here, Ngũgĩ alerts us to the dangers of not being rooted in one's identity and being absorbed by the histories handed down about Africans, written by non-Africans. Of course, what he meant was we must write our own stories, in our own languages. His body of work collectively contemplates the ways by which history is not simply a record of the past — it is the foundation of a people's present dignity and future direction. Without an understanding of where one comes from, both individually and collectively, one becomes vulnerable to manipulation, alienation and erasure, he argued. In remembering Ngũgĩ and his legacy, it compels me to want to know more about my own history; to write down the stories, recipes and memories of my grandmothers and great aunts who are still alive (coming as they all do, and I do, from a diverse cultural and racial history of three continents: India, Africa, Europe).
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Tributes to acclaimed African literature giant Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who has died at 87
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — In a bookstore in Kenya's capital, the proprietor arranged a shelf exclusively carrying books by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who died Wednesday in the United States. Bennet Mbata, who has sold African literature at the Nuria Bookstore for more than 30 years in Nairobi, said he enjoyed reading Ngũgĩ's writing and is sad 'he'll never write again.' Following Ngũgĩ's death at 87 in Bedford, Georgia, Kenyans remember when his writing criticized an autocratic administration, which led to his arrest and imprisonment in the 1970s. Tributes came from across Africa, including contemporaries like the continent's first Nobel literature laureate, Wole Soyinka, who described Ngũgĩ's influence on African literature as 'unquestionably very massive.' Ngũgĩ commonly said Soyinka inspired him as a writer. Both also had similar experiences, living through colonialism and political imprisonments. Ngũgĩ would be remembered as a 'passionate believer of the central phrase of African languages in literature,' Soyinka told The Associated Press. 'He believed that the literature needs to be as much African as possible,' he added. He also lamented the political imprisonment Ngũgĩ endured as a result of his writing. 'He was one of the African writers who paid the most unnecessary price for the pursuit of the natural occupation (as a writer),' Soyinka said. 'True reflection of society' Kenya's President William Ruto on Thursday paid tribute to the man he called 'the towering giant of Kenyan letters,' saying Ngũgĩ's courage shaped thoughts around social justice and abuse of political power. 'His patriotism is undeniable, and even those who disagree with him will admit that Prof. Thiong'o's discourse always sprang forth from a deep and earnest quest for truth and understanding, devoid of malice, hatred or contempt,' Ruto wrote on X. Macharia Munene, a professor of history and international relations at the United States International University-Africa, in Nairobi, said Ngũgĩ's work was 'hard hitting' but also a 'true reflection of society.' Munene said he regrets Ngũgĩ didn't receive the Nobel Prize for Literature despite several nominations. Munene described the author as one of the few African writers whose writing was different. 'He wrote English like an African, another gift that very few people have,' Munene told The Associated Press, noting that Ngũgĩ later transitioned to only writing in his native Gikuyu language. Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga sent condolences to the author's family, saying 'a giant African has fallen.' The author's son and fellow writer, Mukoma Wa Ngũgĩ, posted a tribute on X: 'I am me because of him in so many ways, as his child, scholar and writer.' At Ngũgĩ's Kenyan home in Kamirithu, in Kiambu county, on the outskirts of Nairobi, workers were seen trimming fences and clearing bushes in preparation for mourners and visitors alike. Fellow Kenyan writer David Maillu, 85, told the AP that Ngũgĩ 'touched the hearts of the people' by writing about the 'cultural destruction' that took place during colonization. Indigenous language of literature Born in 1938, Ngũgĩ's first books told the story of British colonial rule and the uprising by Mau Mau freedom fighters. Since the 1970s, he mostly lived in exile overseas, emigrating to England and eventually settling in California, where he was a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Some literary critics have argued that Ngũgĩ's preference of his native Kikuyu language over foreign languages was as influential in his writing as it was in his honors. 'What separates Ngugi from his Nobel predecessor is his brave and polemical decision to write in his first language, Gikuyu,' British researcher Zoe Norridge wrote in 2010. Chika Unigwe, a Nigerian writer and an associate professor of writing at Georgia Collede and State University, Milledgeville, Georgia, recalled her interaction with Ngũgĩ about whether African writers should write in their indigenous language. 'While I agreed with him that linguistic imperialism is a serious issue — one we must confront as part of the broader decolonization of our literature — I disagreed with the idea that writing in indigenous languages is a practical solution for most of us,' Unigwe told the AP. 'He believed passionately in the power of writing to challenge oppression,' she recalled. Lasting influence Ngũgĩ's influence is far and wide across Africa. In Nigeria, Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera, an author and director of the local Umuofia Arts and Books Festival, recalled how the late author's work influenced him even as a science student nearly 10 years ago. He first read his book, 'A Grain of Wheat,' which explored colonialism and Kenya's struggle for independence from British colonial rule, and met him shortly after at a literary event, a photo of which he shared on Wednesday as he mourned Ngũgĩ. 'It was a book that took me back to what the colonial struggle was like (and) he was one of those writers that introduced me to the fundamental role language plays in literature,' he said. —-
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Five things you should know about Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, one of Africa's greatest writers of all time
One of Africa's most celebrated authors Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o has passed away. The Kenyan writer and academic was 87 years old. Having published his first novel – Weep Not Child – in 1964, Ngũgĩ pursued a rich and acclaimed career as a writer, teacher and decolonial thinker. His last creative effort was Kenda Muiyuru (The Perfect Nine), a Gikuyu epic that was longlisted for the 2021 International Man Booker Prize. Kenyan academic and writer Peter Kimani sets out five things you should know about a legendary African writer. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is regarded as one of Africa's greatest writers of all time. He grew up in what became known as Kenya's White Highlands at the height of British colonialism. Unsurprisingly, his writing examines the legacy of colonialism and the intricate relationships between locals seeking economic and cultural emancipation and the local elites serving as agents of neo-colonisers. The great expectations for the new country, as captured in his seminal play, The Black Hermit, anticipated the disillusionment that followed. His fiction, from the foundational trilogy of Weep Not, Child, The River Between and A Grain of Wheat, amplify those expectations, before the optimism gives way in Petals of Blood, and is replaced by disillusionment. African fiction is fairly young. Ngũgĩ stands in the continent's pantheon of writers who started writing when Africa's decolonisation gained momentum. In a certain sense, the writers were involved in constructing new narratives that would define their people. But Ngũgĩ's recognition goes beyond his pioneering role at home: his writing resonates with many across Africa. One could also recognise his consistency at churning out high-quality stories about Africa's contemporary society. This he always did in a way that illustrates his commitment to equality and social justice. He has done much more, through scholarship. His treatise, Decolonising the Mind, now a foundational text in post-colonial studies, illustrates his versatility. His ability to spin the yarns while commenting on the politics that goes into literary production of marginal literature is a very rare combination. Finally, one could talk about Ngũgĩ's cultural and political activism. This precipitated his yearlong detention without trial in 1977. He attributed his detention to his rejection of English and embracing his Gikuyu language as his vehicle of expression. It's hard to pick a favourite from Ngũgĩ's over two dozen texts. But there is concurrence among critics that A Grain of Wheat, which was voted among Africa's best 100 novels at the turn of the last century, stands out for its stylistic experimentation and complexity of characters. Others consider the novel as the last signpost before Ngũgĩ's work became overly political. For other critics, it's Wizard of the Crow – which came out in 2004, after nearly two decades of waiting – that encapsulates his creative finesse. It utilises many literary tropes, including magical realism, and addresses the politics of African development and the shenanigans by the political elite to maintain the status quo. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages around the world. Without a doubt, Africa would be poorer without the efforts of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and other pioneering writers to tell the African story. He was an important figure in post-colonial studies. His constant questioning of the privileging of the English language and culture in Kenya's national discourse saw him lead a movement that led to the scrapping of the Department of English at the University of Nairobi – replaced by a Department of Literature that placed African literature and its diasporas at the centre of scholarship. Ngũgĩ remained active in writing even in old age. Among his later offerings was the third instalment of his memoir, Birth of a Dreamweaver that looks back on his years at Makerere University in Uganda. This is the period when he published his novels, Weep Not, Child and The River Between, while still an undergraduate. Also at this time he wrote the play, The Black Hermit, which was performed as part of Uganda's independence celebrations in 1962. In later years he was busy restoring his early works into Gikuyu, from the English language, which he bid farewell to in 1977, opting rather to write in his indigenous tongue. Ngũgĩ appeared on the list of favourites to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for a number of years. Since the workings of the Nobel award committee remain secret – the list of the committee's deliberations are kept secret for 50 years – it will be decades before we know why he was overlooked when so many felt he richly deserved the prize. This is an updated version of the article first published in 2016. 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: Peter Kimani, Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC) Read more: How ongoing deforestation is rooted in colonialism and its management practices 10 years ago Kenya set out to fix gender gaps in education – what's working and what still needs to be done Is this bad for my health? Kenyan study tests three types of warning labels on food Peter Kimani 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.
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, 1938–2025: The writer who redefined African literature
The literary world mourns the loss of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, the Kenyan novelist, playwright, and essayist whose revolutionary vision reshaped African literature. He died on May 28, 2025, at the age of 87. Few writers have wielded the pen with such political urgency or linguistic daring. From his early, searing portraits of colonial Kenya to his later, sprawling satires of dictatorship, Ngũgĩ's work was a lifelong act of defiance—against empire, against oppression, and against the very language in which he first wrote. Born in 1938 in Limuru, Kenya, under British rule, Ngũgĩ came of age amid the Mau Mau rebellion, an experience that seared itself into his fiction. His debut, Weep Not, Child (1964)—written while he was a student at Makerere University—was a landmark, the first English-language novel published by an East African. Its lyrical yet unflinching depiction of a boy's shattered dreams in a war-torn land announced a major new voice. But by the 1970s, Ngũgĩ had begun to question the language in which that voice spoke. His 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), written in Gikuyu with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii, marked a turning point. A scathing critique of Kenya's neocolonial elite, it led to his imprisonment without trial. In detention, he composed Devil on the Cross (1980) on prison-issued toilet paper—an act of literary resistance that would become legend. Upon release, he fled Kenya, living in exile for over two decades. Yet his literary output never slowed. Works such as Matigari (1986) and Wizard of the Crow (2006)—a magisterial, genre-defying satire of dictatorship—proved that African-language literature could be as ambitious, as experimental, and as globally resonant as any written in English or French. His 1986 manifesto, Decolonising the Mind, remains essential reading in several countries, including India, is a blistering indictment of the 'cultural bomb' of colonialism and a rallying cry for linguistic sovereignty. 'Language,' he wrote, 'is the most important vehicle through which that power fascinates, holds, and blinds the African.' Though often tipped for the Nobel, he never received it—an omission that speaks less to his stature than to the biases of literary prestige. His influence, however, is immeasurable. Writers from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Binyavanga Wainaina have cited him as a beacon. Ngũgĩ's life was not without controversy—allegations of domestic strife shadowed his later years—but his literary legacy is unassailable. He was a writer who dared to imagine a world where African stories were told in African tongues, where the novel could be a weapon, and where art was inseparable from justice. In an era when African literature too often caters to Western expectations, Ngũgĩ's work reminds us that power can also lie in the untranslatable—the stories only he could tell, in the language only his people could claim. Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
