Influential Africans, part 6 | Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Author, playwright, mother tongue advocate, academic, decolonization activist and post-colonial theorist Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born James Ngugi in 1938 during a time when colonial rule was squeezing the last bit of life out of Kenya, a time of change. This background played a critical role in Ngugi's literature. His first recognizable work and debut novel, Whipknot Child, recognizes Nigerian author Chinua Achebe as advisory editor. This happened after Ngugi met Achebe at a writers' summit and subsequently asked the Nigerian writer to check his first scripts. During his time as an academic in his home country, Kenya, he was instrumental in changing the direction taken by tertiary institutions where they decided that African literature should be the center of focus in university literature departments instead of European literature. Later, he abandoned writing in English, deserted Christianity and changed his name to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, stressing the importance of preserving African languages and identity through literature among other things. He chose to write in his native Kikuyu, one of Kenya's indigenous languages. Since then, Ngugi has never looked back, cementing his stature as an academic, critic, philosopher and a thorn in the side of the Kenyan government of the 1970s, which ended up convicting the author in 1977 after his play, Ngahika de Enda, I Will Marry When I Want, disturbed the regime of the time. He was detained in a maximum security prison for over a year without trial. Being detained did not deter him from his passion. In fact, it spurred him to write the critically acclaimed novel, Devil on the Cross, which paints a picture of post-colonial Kenya and the desire for imperialism. Devil on the Cross was written on toilet paper during his time serving sentence at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison in Nairobi. After coming out of prison, he was forced into exile in 1982, only to return to Kenya in 2004. One of his well-received scholarly works is Decolonizing the Mind, The Politics of Language in African Literature, which is a collection of essays where he argues the role of language and its importance in history, culture, and identity. Among his accolades, the Lotus Prize for Literature, Park Kyung-ni Prize, 2019 Premie Internationale de Catalunya Award for his courageous work and advocacy for African languages, and a number of honorary doctorates. On a visit to the city currently known as East London in Eastern Cape, South Africa, he commented, You need to do something about the name of this city and its streets, you need to take all those names, put them in an envelope, and write, return to sender. In a recent interview, Ngugi reflects, The problem with Africa is that the entire intellectual community operates within European languages. The entire intellectual production of ideas is in foreign or European languages. Yet, the majority of working African people speak African languages. He has published over 30 books and continues to lecture at the University of California.