Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gĩkũyũ. His work includes 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 went into self-imposed exile following his release from a Kenyan prison in 1977; living in the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, where he was Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Languages, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine.

Biography

Ngũgĩ was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, of Kĩkũyũ descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau rebellion; he lost his stepbrother, and his mother was tortured. 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.

He published his first novel, Weep Not, Child, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, The River Between (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians.

His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) 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 then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gĩkũyũ, Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ (Devil on the Cross), on prison-issued toilet paper.

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.

His later 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 languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, 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, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine.

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. Since then, Ngũgĩ has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, Wizard of the Crow, translated to English from Gĩkũyũ by the author.

On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Prof. Thiong'o was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry which angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area , and prompted an apology by the hotel.

References

Bibliography

• The Black Hermit, 1963 (play)
• Weep Not, Child, 1964, Heinemann 1987, McMillan 2005, ISBN 1-4050-7331-4
• The River Between, Heinemann 1965, Heinemann 1989, ISBN 0-435-90548-1
• A Grain of Wheat, 1967 (1992) ISBN 0-14-118699-2
• This Time Tomorrow (three plays, including the title play, "The Reels," and "The Wound in the Heart"), c. 1970
• Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics, Heinemann 1972, ISBN 0-435-18580-2
• A Meeting in the Dark (1974)
• Secret Lives, and Other Stories, 1976, Heinemann 1992 ISBN 0-435-90975-4
• The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, 1976, ISBN 0-435-90191-5, African Publishing Group, ISBN 0-949932-45-0 (with Micere Githae Mugo)
• Ngaahika ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano (I Will Marry When I Want), 1977 (play; with Ngugi wa Mirii), Heinemann Educational Books (1980)
• Petals of Blood, (1977) Penguin 2002, ISBN 0-14-118702-6
• Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross), 1980
• Writers in Politics: Essays, 1981 ISBN 978-0-85255-541-5 (UK) Publisher's site ISBN 978-0-43508-985-6 (US)
• Education for a National Culture, 1981
• Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary, 1981
• Devil on the Cross (English translation of Caitaani mutharaba-Ini), Heinemann, 1982, ISBN 0-435-90200-8
• Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya, 1983
• Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, 1986 ISBN 978-0-85255-501-9 (UK) Publisher's site ISBN 978-0-435-08016-7 (US)
• Mother, Sing For Me, 1986
• Writing against Neo-Colonialism, 1986
• Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus (Njamba Nene na Mbaathi i Mathagu), 1986 (children's book)
• Matigari ma Njiruungi, 1986
• Njamba Nene and the Cruel Chief (Njamba Nene na Chibu King'ang'i), 1988 (children's book)
• Matigari, (translated into English by Wangui wa Goro), Heinemann 1989, Africa World Press 1994, ISBN 0-435-90546-5
• Njamba Nene's Pistol (Bathitoora ya Njamba Nene), (children's book), 1990, Africa World Press, ISBN 0-86543-081-0
• Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom, Heinemann, 1993, ISBN 978-0-435-08079-2 (US) ISBN 978-0-85255-530-9 (UK) Publisher's site
• Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa, (The Clarendon Lectures in English Literature 1996), Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-818390-9
• Mũrogi was Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow), 2004, East African Educational Publishers, ISBN 9966-25-162-6
• Wizard of the Crow, 2006, Secker, ISBN 1-84655-034-3

External links

• Official homepage
• Interview of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o by Leonard Lopate on WNYC, New York public radio, following publication of "WIzard of the Crow"
• Launch of "Wizard of the Crow" in London 10 August 2006
• An Interview With Ngugi wa Thiong'o, May 2004
• Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong'o following publication of "WIzard of the Crow", Socialist Worker, 4 November 2006
• Profile: Ngugi wa Thiong'o
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - Books and Writers
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - Emory University
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - Overview
• biography and booklist
• Biography of Ngugi from University of Florida Library
• Turning Toward the World: Ngugi's Petals of Blood
• International Center for Writing and Translation
• About "A Meeting in the Dark" Interpretations of and more background information on the short story.
• Famous People from Kenya: Ngugi wa Thiongo
• James Currey Publishers. (Publishers of 'Decolonising the Mind', 'Writers in Politics' and 'Moving the Centre').