Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: A Giant of African Writing

At the age of 24, Ngũgĩ burst onto the East Africa literary scene with the performance of his first major play, The Black Hermit, at the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962, as part of the celebration of Uganda’s Independence. 

Ngugi wa Thiong'o and pet dog at his home in Irvine, California, U.S.A, besides a juxtaposed Matigari book mock-up.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was a giant of African writing - alongside writers such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, he was part of a literary scene that flourished during the last years of colonialism in Africa, in the 1950s and 60s. His writing was militant, direct and cutting – he used books as a weapon – first against the colonial state, and later against corruption, and the failures of Kenya’s post-independence ruling elite.

He was a key part of a movement that remitted intellectual warfare against the state, publishing openly critical literature, and distributing anti-government leaflets across the country. 

In 1982, there was an attempted coup against the government - in the wake of the failed coup, members of the movement were arrested en masse, while others fled the country. At the time, Ngũgĩ was in London for the launch of Devil on the Cross. It was then that he was warned that he if he returned to Kenya, he would be killed; and so, for the next few years, London became his home.

He later moved to the US for a professorship at Yale University in 1989,  marking the start of a stay in American universities which eventually led to him to California, where he joined UC Irvine in 2002. That same year, Moi’s rule ended; two years later, in 2004 Ngũgĩ visited Kenya for the first time in 22 years, to launch his new novel Mũrogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow).

It was barely two weeks into his visit, when he and his wife were attacked by an armed gang, and his wife was raped. “It wasn’t a simple robbery,” Ngũgĩ narrated.

His Gikuyu novel, Matigari, published in 1986, during President Moi's dictatorship... led him (Moi) thinking that the novel’s main character was a real person. Moi issued a warrant for Ngũgĩ's arrest, only to later learn that the character was fictional; he then had the novel “arrested” instead. "Plain-clothes" policemen, (with Peugeot 504 Station Wagons - the equivalent of the Outback Subarus today) were sent to all bookshops in the country, plus the publisher's warehouse, and they took the novel off the shelves. Thus, Matigari could not be sold in Kenyan bookshops in the next 10 years, from 1986 to 1996. Moi's government also had all Ngũgĩ’s books removed from all schools, and educational institutions.

Matigari is about a man who emerges from the mountains, after surviving a war for independence - in search of his family, and rebuilding of his home, and the start of a new and peaceful future. But his search becomes a quest for truth and justice as he finds the people still dispossessed, and the land he loves ruled by corruption, fear, and misery. It's a memorable satire on the betrayal of true human ideals, and on the bitter experience of post-independence African society. 

I was 12 or 13 the first time I read wa Thiong’o's book - "The River Between" - which was trending :) alongside "The Promised Land",  a novel by Grace Ogot. We also studied his writings in high school, in a subject called 'English Literature'. 

I read most of his books fluently (like novels) as a teenager; and then we were made to read them as (set books - or text books) later in high school. Such "step-by-step", mass-reading however, didn't do much to satisfy the investment someone puts in the characters in a any scene in a story - reason for many not properly understanding set-book readings or writings. 

Ngũgĩ's writings somehow went off my radar when he famously ceased writing his novels in English, instead doing all his creative work in the language he grew up speaking - Gĩkũyũ. 

Ngũgĩ was born James Ngugi (or "JT Ngugi"), and he wrote primarily in English. In the early 1970s, he formally rejected his Christian name "James" as a symbol of decolonization and adopted his traditional Gikuyu name, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, which reflects his African identity.

He later rejected English as his primary literary language - influenced by his reading of  Karl Marx and Frantz Fanon... Petals of Blood, (published 1977), was the first of his works published as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and the last novel he wrote in English.

Ngũgĩ was the model Alliance student. The first piece of writing he ever published appeared in the school’s magazine in 1957. In the essay, JT Ngugi, Form 3A, praised British education and expressed his gratitude for Christianity, “the greatest civilizing influence”, which had led the Gĩkũyũ away from witchcraft. During school assemblies, he would sing "God Save the Queen", while his brother was in the forest fighting the terror unleashed by her soldiers.

It's through his writings that I learned the Land and Freedom Army was actually what they called themselves - the local name of the freedom fighters that waged a guerrilla war against the British. Mau Mau was actually a "British name". He was also at the center of the politics of English departments in Africa, championing the change of name, from English to simply Literature, to reflect world literature with African, and third world literatures at the center.

Among his writings that are worth exploring, or if you want to witness better literary craftsmanship - read A Grain of Wheat, or Petals of Blood.