The celebrated Kenyan writer and decolonial scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o passed away on 28 May, aged 87. While many tributes and obituaries have appeared around the world, we wanted to learn more about the man himself and his thought processes. To find out more, we asked Charles Cantalupo, a leading scholar of his work.
Who was Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – and who was he to you?
When I heard that Ngũgĩ had died, one of my first thoughts was about how far he had come in his life. No other African writer has achieved as much as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in such a wide range of genres. His books include novels, plays, short stories, essays, scholarly works, criticism, poetry, memoirs, and children’s books.
His works of fiction, non-fiction and plays from his early career in the early 1960s until today are frequently reprinted. Furthermore, Ngũgĩ’s monumental body of work is written in two languages, English and Gĩkũyũ, and his works have been translated into many others.
Born into a large family in rural Kenya as the son of his father’s third wife, he was encouraged by his mother to pursue an education. This included attending a British high school in Kenya and Makerere University in Uganda.
When the brilliant young writer had his first big breakthrough at a 1962 meeting in Kampala, the Conference of African Writers of English Expression, he called himself “James Ngũgi”. This was also the name on the cover his first three novels. He had already achieved fame as an African writer, but as they say, the best was yet to come.
It was not until he co-wrote the play I Will Marry When I Want with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii that the name ‘Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’ appeared on the cover of his books, including the first modern novel written in Gikuyu, Devil on the Cross (Caitaani Mutharaba-inĩ).
I Will Marry When I Want was performed in 1977 in Gĩkũyũ in a local community centre. It was banned and Ngũgĩ was imprisoned for a year.
And there was still so much more to come: exile from Kenya, professorships in the UK and the US; book after book of fiction and nonfiction; invitations to speak at countless lectures and conferences all over the world, a stunning collection of literary awards — with the notable exception of the Nobel Prize for Literature — honorary degrees, and the most distinguished academic appointments in the US, from the east coast to the west.
Yet besides his mother’s influence and no doubt his own aptitude and determination, if one factor could be said to have fuelled his intellectual and literary evolution – from the red clay of Kenya into the firmament of world literary history – it was the language of his birth: Gĩkũyũ. From the stories his mother told him as a child to his own writing in Gĩkũyũ for a local, pan-African and international readership. In his books of criticism and theory, he provided every reason why he should choose this path.
Ngũgĩ was also my friend for over three decades, from his time as a professor in the US, to his work in Eritrea and South Africa, and finally his move to the US to live with his children. We maintained an ongoing conversation in person, during literary projects and over the phone and internet.
Our friendship began in 1993, when I first interviewed him. At the time, he was living in exile from Kenya in Orange, New Jersey — the place of my birth. We both felt at home at the start of our working together. This feeling continued throughout the conferences, books, translations, interviews and the many more literary projects that followed.
What are his most important works?
Ngũgĩ was such a prolific and diverse writer that he produced many important works in different genres. His earliest and historical novels like A Grain of Wheat and The River Between. His regime-shaking plays.
His critically acclaimed and controversial novels, such as Devil on the Cross and Petals of Blood. Not to mention his more experimental and absolutely modern novels, such as Matigari and Wizard of the Crow.
His epoch-making literary criticism, such as Decolonising the Mind. His informal and captivating three volumes of memoirs written later in life. And finally, his retelling of a Gikuyu epic in poetry, The Perfect Nine, his last great book. Readers of Ngũgĩ have many options.
My book, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Texts and Contexts, was based on the three-day conference of the same name that I organised in the US. At the time, it was the largest conference ever held on an African writer anywhere in the world.
What I learned back then applies now more than ever. There are no limits to the interest that Ngũgĩ’s work can generate anytime anywhere and in any form. I saw it happen in 1994 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and I see it now 30 years later in the outpouring of interest and recognition all over the world at Ngũgĩ’s death.
In 1993, he had published a book of essays titled Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms. Focusing on Ngũgĩ’s work, the conference and the book were “moving the centre” in Ngũgĩ’s words, “to real creative centres among the working people in conditions of gender, racial, and religious equality”.
What are your takeaways from your discussions with him?
Firstly, he believed that African languages are the key to African development, including African literature.Over the course of more than 40 years of teaching, lectures, interviews, conversations and his many books of literary criticism and theory, Ngũgĩ comprehensively explored and advocated this fundamental premise. He also epitomised this idea by writing his later novels in Gĩkũyũ, including his magnum opus, Wizard of the Crow.
Moreover, he codified his declaration of African language independence in co-writing The Asmara Declaration, which has been widely translated. It advocates for the importance and recognition of African languages and literatures.
Second, literature and writing are a world and not a country. Every single place and language can be omnicentric: translation can overcome any border, boundary, or geography and make understanding universal. Be it Shakespeare’s English, Dante’s Italian, Ngugi’s Gĩkũyũ, the Bible’s Hebrew and Aramaic, or anything else, big or small.
Third, on a more personal level, when I first met Ngũgĩ, I was a European American literary scholar and a poet with little knowledge of Africa and its literature and languages, much less of Ngũgĩ himself. He was its favourite son. But this didn’t stop him from giving me the idea and making me understand how African languages contained the seeds of an African Renaissance if only they were allowed to grow.
I knew that the historical European Renaissance rooted, grew, flourished and blossomed through its writers in European vernacular languages. English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and more took the place of Latin in expressing the best that was being thought and said in their countries. Yet translation between and among these languages as well as from classical Latin and Greek culture, plus biblical texts and cultures, made them ever more widely shared and understood.
From Ngũgĩ discussing African languages I took away a sense that African writers, storytellers, people, arts, and cultures could create a similar paradigm and overcome colonialism, colonial languages, neocolonialism and anything else that might prevent greatness.
Charles Cantalupo, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English, Comparative Literature, and African Studies, Penn State
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