NGũGĩ Wa Thiong’o – A giant of African literature

Ngũgĩ wa thiong’o, who died at the age of 87” was a titan of modern African literature – a storyteller who refused to be bound by prison, exile and illness.

His work included about six decades, mainly documenting the transformation of his country – Kenya – from a colonial subject to a democracy.

NGũGĩ was tipped to win the Nobel Prize for literature countless times, so that fans relieved every time the medal slid through his fingers.

He will not only be remembered as a noble -worthy writer, but also as a fierce supporter of literature written in indigenous African languages.

Ngũgĩ was born James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ in 1938, when Kenya was under the British colonial rule. He grew up in the city of Limuru among a large family of farmers with a low income.

His parents scrimed and saved to pay his tuition fees at Alliance, a boarding school of British missionaries.

In one interviewNGũGĩ remembered that he returned home from Alliance at the end of the course of the term to discover that his entire village had been destroyed by the colonial authorities.

His relatives belonged to the hundreds and thousands forced to live in detention camps during a performance against the Mau Mau, a movement of independence fighters.

UpgradeIt lasted from 1952 to 1960, hit the life of NGũGĩ in different, devastating ways.

In one of the most crushing, the brother of Ngũgĩ, Gitogo, was killed deadly in the back because he refused to comply with the command of a British soldier.

Gitogo had not heard the order because he was deaf.

In 1959, while the British had difficulty maintaining their hold on Kenya, NGũGĩ left to study in Uganda. He registered at Makerere University, which remains one of the most prestigious universities in Africa.

During a writers’ conference in Makerere, NGũGĩ shared the manuscript for his debut novel with respected Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.

Achebe sent the manuscript to his publisher in the UK and the book, called Weep Not, Child, was released in 1964 for criticism. It was the first major English-language novel written by an East African.

NGũGĩ quickly followed two more popular novels, a grain wheat and the river in between. In 1972, the VK Times -Krant said that NGũGĩ, then 33 years old, was “accepted as one of the excellent contemporary writers of Africa”.

Then came 1977 – a period that meant a huge change in life and career of NGũGĩ. To begin with, this was the year that he became ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and left his birth rate, James. NGũGĩ made the change because he wanted a name free of colonial influence.

He also dropped English as the primary language for his literature and only promised to write in his mother tongue, Kikuyu.

He published his last English language novel, Petals of Blood, in 1977.

The earlier books of NGũGĩ were critical of the colonial state, but blood leaves of blood attacked the new leaders of independent Kenya and portrayed them as an elite class that had betrayed ordinary Kenyans.

NGũGĩ did not stop there. In the same year he wrote with the piece of Ngaahika Ndeenda (I will get married whenever I want), which was a burning look at Kenya’s class struggle.

The Theater Run was closed by the government of the then President Jomo Kenyatta and NGũGĩ was locked up for a year without a process in a maximum safety prison.

However, it was a fertile 12 months – as NGũGĩ wrote his first Kikuyu novel, Devil on the Cross, in prison. It is said that he used toilet paper to write the entire book because he did not have access to a notebook.

NGũGĩ was released after Daniel Arap Moi had replaced Mr. Kenyatta as president.

NGũGĩ said four years later, while in London for a book launch, He heard that there was a conspiracy to kill him On his return to Kenya.

NGũGĩ started self -imposed exile in the UK and then the US. He did not return to Kenya for 22 years.

When he finally returned, he received the welcome from a hero – thousands of Kenyans turned out to greet him.

But the return was marred when attackers broke into the apartment of Ngũgĩ, the author brutally attacks and raped his wife.

Ngugi insisted that the attack was “political”.

He returned to the US, where he had kept professors at universities, including Yale, New York and California Irvine.

In the academic world and beyond, NGũGĩ was known as one of the most important proponents of literature in African languages.

During his career – and to this day – African literature was dominated by books written in English or French, official languages ​​in most countries on the continent.

“What is the difference between a politician who says that Africa cannot do without imperialism and the writer who says that Africa cannot do without European languages?” NGũGĩ asked in a groundbreaking, fiery essay collection, called Decolonising the Mind.

In one section, NGũGĩ Chinua Achebe – the author who helped launch his career – called for writing in English. Their friendship soured because of this.

Away from his literary career, NGũGĩ was married twice – and divorced -. He had nine children, of whom four are published authors.

“My own family has become one of my literary rivals,” Ngũgĩ joked in a 2020 La Times Interview.

His son, Mukoma wa Ngũgĩ, has claimed that his mother was physically abused by NGũGĩ Wa Thiong’o.

“Some of my earliest memories are that I will visit her with my grandmother, where she would seek refuge,” his son wrote in a social media post, to which NGũGĩ Wa Thiong’o did not respond.

Later in his life the health of NGũGĩ deteriorated. He became a triple bypass operation in 2019 and began to struggle with kidney failure. In 1995 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and received three months to live.

NGũGĩ, however, recovered and added cancer to the long list of struggles he had overcome.

But now one of the leading lights of African literature – as the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once called him – has disappeared, leaving the world of words a bit darker.