Ngugi wa Thiongo
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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (born 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gĩkũyũ. His books include novels, plays, short stories, essays and scholarship, criticism and children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. Ngugi has lived in a self-imposed exile since his release from a Kenyan prison in 1977; he taught at Yale University for some years, and since 1993 he has taught at New York University, where he is currently the Erich Remarque Professor of Languages, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies.
Ngũgĩ was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in the Kiambu district of Kenya, of Gĩkũyũ descent, and baptized James Ngugi. While attending mission school, he became a devout Christian. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, The Black Hermit, was produced in Kampala in 1962. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau rebellion; he lost his stepbrother, and his mother was tortured.
He published his first novel, Weep Not, Child, in 1964, which he wrote while attending Leeds University in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, The River Between (1965), had as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians.
His novel A Grain of Wheat marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gĩkũyũ and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) provoked President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamithi Maximum Security Prison, he wrote another English novel, Petals of Blood (1978).
After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. He left Kenya on June 5, 1982, to live in self-imposed exile in London.
In 1980 he published the first modern novel in Gĩkũyũ, Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ (Devil on the Cross). He argued that African writers should use their native languages when writing, rather than European languages, to build an authentic African literature.
Subsequent works include Detained, his prison diary (1981); Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native language; and Matigari (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gĩkũyũ folktale.
In 1992 he became a professor of comparative literature and performance studies at New York University, and held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently Director of Faculty and Staff Counselling Centre at the University of California, Irvine, and heads the International Centre for Writing and Translation.
On August 8, 2004, Ngũgĩ ended his exile to return to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they stole money and a computer, brutalised the professor, and raped his wife.
External links
- An Interview With Ngugi wa Thiong'o, May 2004 (http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_10996.shtml)
- Profile: Ngugi wa Thiong'o (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3559560.stm)
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - Books and Writers (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ngugiw.htm)
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - Emory University (http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Ngugi.html)
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - Overview (http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/poldiscourse/ngugiov.html)
- biography and booklist (http://bdagger.colorado.edu/~bhongale/ngugi.html)
- Contemporary Africa Database entry (http://people.africadatabase.org/en/person/3601.html)
- Biography of Ngugi from University of Florida Library (http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/cm/africana/thiongo.htm)
- Turning Toward the World: Ngugi's Petals of Blood (http://www.runmuki.com/paul/writing/ngugi.html)de:Ngugi wa Thiong'o