African Literature...Says Who? The Last 50 Years with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

African Literature...Says Who? The Last 50 Years with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o from Warscapes on Vimeo.

Nadine Gordimer: Farewell to a great spirit

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, The Mail & Guardian

Nadine and Ngugi arrested in Amherst! No, no, it was not the case, but that’s how my wife, Njeeri, imagined the headlines in Kenya and South Africa in response to the picture of Gordimer and me entering a police car under the shadow of a heavily armed officer.

It was in 1991. Both of us were visiting the prestigious college in Massachusetts, United States, at the same time. The visits had been scheduled long before, but Gordimer’s presence coincided with the news of her winning the Nobel prize in literature. Now she was not just another visiting writer but a Nobel laureate. The crowds were curious. Amherst College arranged a police escort, more for her than me, but at joint events we travelled together.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Dreams in a Time of War

A Review by Maya Jaggi, The Guardian  

The early novels of Ngugi wa Thiong'o were revolutionary in depicting the terror of the 1950s state of emergency in colonial Kenya through the eyes of Kenyan civilians. A Grain of Wheat (1967) offered a subtler portrayal of Mau Mau than as mere exponents of senseless violence. This absorbing memoir recounts how Ngugi's boyhood was affected by mass expulsions, indiscriminate reprisals and internment camps, during what he has described elsewhere as Britain's "genocidal war". Yet, infused with a child's curiosity and wonder, this book is also deeply touching in its revelation of a whole community's stake in nurturing a writer.

Wizard of the Crow

by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Extract from "Wizard of the Crow", Open Democracy

There were many theories about the strange illness of the second Ruler of the Free Republic of Aburiria, but the most frequent on people's lips were five.
The illness, so claimed the first, was born of anger that once welled up inside him; and he was so conscious of the danger it posed to his well-being that he tried all he could to rid himself of it by belching after every meal, sometimes counting from one to ten, and other times chanting ka ke ki ko ku aloud.

Decolonizing the Mind

Ngugi wa Thiong’o
 
Excerpted from  Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey, Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1986. 

Introduction: Towards the Universal Struggle of Language

This book is a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism and in teaching literature. For those who have read my books Homecoming, Writers in Politics, Barrel of a Pen and even Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary there may be a feeling of déjà vu. Such a reaction will not be far from the truth. But the lectures on which this book is based have given me the chance to pull together in a connected and coherent form the main issues on the language question in literature which I have touched on here and there in my previous works and interviews. I hope though that the work has gained from the insights I have received from the reactions — friendly and hostile — of other people to the issues over the same years. This book is part of a continuing debate all over the continent about the destiny of Africa.