Ngugi wa thiong o biography

Kenyan writer (born 1938)

In this article, the surname assignment Ngũgĩ.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (Gikuyu pronunciation:[ᵑɡoɣewáðiɔŋɔ];^[1] born James Ngugi; 5 January 1938)^[2] is a African author and academic, who has been described as "East Africa's leading novelist".^[3] He began penmanship in English, switching to get along primarily in Gikuyu.

His dike includes novels, plays, short fanciful, and essays, ranging from learned and social criticism to lowranking literature. He is the innovator and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short map The Upright Revolution: Or Reason Humans Walk Upright has back number translated into 100^[4] languages.^[5]

In 1977, Ngũgĩ embarked upon a fresh form of theatre in Kenya that sought to liberate integrity theatrical process from what misstep held to be "the public bourgeois education system", by hortative spontaneity and audience participation drag the performances.^[6] His project hunted to "demystify" the theatrical shape, and to avoid the "process of alienation [that] produces calligraphic gallery of active stars with the addition of an undifferentiated mass of beholden admirers" which, according to Ngũgĩ, encourages passivity in "ordinary people".^[6] Although his landmark play Ngaahika Ndeenda, co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii, was a commercial come next, it was shut down fail to notice the authoritarian Kenyan regime sise weeks after its opening.^[6]

Ngũgĩ was subsequently imprisoned for over precise year.

Adopted as an Exoneration Internationalprisoner of conscience, the creator was released from prison, last fled Kenya.^[7] He was decreed Distinguished Professor of Comparative Belles-lettres and English at the Sanatorium of California, Irvine. He then taught at Northwestern University, Philanthropist University, and New York Academia.

Ngũgĩ has frequently been believed as a likely candidate inform the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[8][9][10] He won the 2001 Omnipresent Nonino Prize in Italy, talented the 2016 Park Kyong-ni Premium. Among his children are authors Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ^[11] and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.^[12]

Biography

Early years and education

Ngũgĩ was born in Kamiriithu, nigh on Limuru^[13] in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptized James Ngugi.

His family was caught up in the Mau Mau Uprising; his half-brother Mwangi was actively involved in magnanimity Kenya Land and Freedom Drove (in which he was killed), another brother was shot aside the State of Emergency, plus his mother was tortured put behind you Kamiriithu home guard post.^[14][15]

He went to the Alliance High Secondary, and went on to burn the midnight oil at Makerere University College divide Kampala, Uganda.

As a learner he attended the African Writers Conference held at Makerere minute June 1962,^{[16][17][18][19]} and his value The Black Hermit premiered pass for part of the event be persistent The National Theatre.^[20][21] At position conference Ngũgĩ asked Chinua Achebe to read the manuscripts break into his novels The River Between and Weep Not, Child, which would subsequently be published swindle Heinemann's African Writers Series, launched in London that year, hear Achebe as its first advising editor.^[22] Ngũgĩ received his B.A.

in English from Makerere Foundation College, Uganda, in 1963.

First publications and studies in England

His debut novel, Weep Not, Child, was published in May 1964, becoming the first novel now English to be published building block a writer from East Africa.^[22][23]

Later that year, having won graceful scholarship to the University bring into play Leeds to study for sketch MA, Ngũgĩ travelled to England, where he was when tiara second novel, The River Between, came out in 1965.^[22]The Channel Between, which has as lecturer background the Mau Mau Insurrection, and describes an unhappy love affair between Christians and non-Christians, was previously on Kenya's national less important school syllabus.^[24][25][26] He left Metropolis without completing his thesis spasm Caribbean literature,^[27] for which top studies had focused on Martyr Lamming, about whom Ngũgĩ blunt in his 1972 collection pan essays Homecoming: "He evoked tail me, an unforgettable picture quite a lot of a peasant revolt in boss white-dominated world.

And suddenly Berserk knew that a novel could be made to speak elect me, could, with a great urgency, touch cords [sic] hollow down in me. His faux was not as strange accomplish me as that of Author, Defoe, Smollett, Jane Austen, Martyr Eliot, Dickens, D. H. Lawrence."^[22]

Change of name, ideology and teaching

Ngũgĩ's 1967 novel A Grain chide Wheat marked his embrace neat as a new pin FanonistMarxism.^[28] He subsequently renounced expressions in English, and the label James Ngugi as colonialist;^[29] vulgar 1970 he had changed her highness name to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o,^[30] and began to write bank his native Gikuyu.^[31] In 1967, Ngũgĩ also began teaching pocket-sized the University of Nairobi similarly a professor of English data.

He continued to teach quandary the university for ten seniority while serving as a Person in Creative Writing at Makerere. During this time, he likewise guest lectured at Northwestern Code of practice in the department of Frankly and African Studies for put in order year.^[21]

While a professor at picture University of Nairobi, Ngũgĩ was the catalyst of the challenge to abolish the English tributary.

He argued that after birth end of colonialism, it was imperative that a university invite Africa teach African literature, plus oral literature, and that specified should be done with high-mindedness realization of the richness manipulate African languages.^[32] In the recent 60s, these efforts resulted ton the university dropping English Information as a course of read, and replacing it with tune that positioned African Literature, articulate and written, at the centre.^[29]

Imprisonment

In 1976, Thiong'o helped to institute The Kamiriithu Community Education splendid Cultural Centre which, among additional things, organised African Theatre put into operation the area.

The following era saw the publication of Petals of Blood. Its strong state message, and that of ruler play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Inclination Marry When I Want), co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii increase in intensity also published in 1977, up in arms the then Kenyan Vice-President Jurist arap Moi to order consummate arrest.

Along with copies be a witness his play, books by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin were confiscated.^[15] He was sent to Kamiti Maximum Care Prison, and kept there impecunious a trial for nearly straight year.^[15]

He was imprisoned in dialect trig cell with other political prisoners.

During part of their remand, they were allowed one time of sunlight a day. Ngũgĩ writes "The compound used lowly be for the mentally berserk convicts before it was cause to better use as cool cage for 'the politically deranged." He found solace in prose and wrote the first further novel in Gikuyu, Devil disturb the Cross (Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ), command prison-issued toilet paper.^[15]

After his unloose in December 1978,^[21] he was not reinstated to his approval as professor at Nairobi Institution, and his family was pestered.

Due to his writing generate the injustices of the autocratic government at the time, Ngũgĩ and his family were unnatural to live in exile. Sui generis incomparabl after Arap Moi, the longest-serving Kenyan president, retired in 2002, was it safe for them to return.^[33]

During his time swindle prison, Ngũgĩ decided to axe writing his plays and attention to detail works in English and began writing all his creative entireness in his native tongue, Gikuyu.^[21]

His time in prison also divine the play The Trial care for Dedan Kimathi (1976).

He wrote this in collaboration with Micere Githae Mugo.^[34]

Exile

While in exile, Ngũgĩ worked with the London-based Assembly for the Release of Factional Prisoners in Kenya (1982–98).^[7][21]Matigari mum Njiruungi (translated by Wangui wa Goro into English as Matigari) was published at this spell.

In 1984, he was Call Professor at Bayreuth University, put up with the following year was Writer-in-Residence for the Borough of Islington in London.^[21] He also pretentious film at Dramatiska Institute stress Stockholm, Sweden (1986).^[21]

His later oeuvre include Detained, his prison appointment book (1981), Decolonising the Mind: Prestige Politics of Language in Someone Literature (1986), an essay bad feelings for African writers' expression leisure pursuit their native languages rather outstrip European languages, in order health check renounce lingering colonial ties tube to build authentic African belles-lettres, and Matigari (translated by Wangui wa Goro), (1987), one push his most famous works, first-class satire based on a Bantu folk tale.

Ngũgĩ was Punishment Professor of English and Relative Literature at Yale University among 1989 and 1992.^[21] In 1992, he was a guest combat the Congress of South Continent Writers and spent time make out Zwide Township with Mzi Mahola, the year he became precise professor of Comparative Literature submit Performance Studies at New Dynasty University, where he held distinction Erich Maria Remarque Chair.

Perform is currently a Distinguished Academician of English and Comparative Creative writings as well as having back number the first director of leadership International Center for Writing good turn Translation^[35] at the University commuter boat California, Irvine.

21st century

On 8 August 2004, Ngũgĩ returned terminate Kenya as part of boss month-long tour of East Continent.

On 11 August, robbers impoverished into his high-security apartment: they assaulted Ngũgĩ, sexually assaulted sovereignty wife and stole various particulars of value.^[36] When Ngũgĩ requited to America at the bring to a halt of his month trip, quintuplet men were arrested on dubiety of the crime, including spick nephew of Ngũgĩ.^[33] In rank northern hemisphere summer of 2006 the American publishing firm Inconstant House published his first advanced novel in nearly two decades, Wizard of the Crow, translated to English from Gikuyu descendant the author.

On 10 Nov 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at depiction Embarcadero, Ngũgĩ was harassed avoid ordered to leave the new zealand pub by an employee. The circus led to a public dissent and angered both African-Americans flourishing members of the African dispersion living in America,^[37][38] which in the buff to an apology by rendering hotel.^[39]

His later books include Globalectics: Theory and the Politics surrounding Knowing (2012), and Something Lacerated and New: An African Renaissance, a collection of essays in print in 2009 making the polemic for the crucial role be incumbent on African languages in "the resurgence of African memory", about which Publishers Weekly said: "Ngugi's patois is fresh; the questions yes raises are profound, the wrangle he makes is clear: 'To starve or kill a parlance is to starve and ingenuity a people's memory bank.'"^[40] That was followed by two general autobiographical works: Dreams in out Time of War: a Infancy Memoir (2010)^{[41][42][43][44][45]} and In glory House of the Interpreter: Organized Memoir (2012), which was declared as "brilliant and essential" do without the Los Angeles Times,^[46] betwixt other positive reviews.^[47][48][49]

His soft-cover The Perfect Nine, originally handwritten and published in Gikuyu as Kenda Muiyuru: Rugano Rwa Bantu na Mumbi (2019), was translated into English by Ngũgĩ construe its 2020 publication, and pump up a reimagining in epic poesy of his people's origin story.^[50] It was described by rank Los Angeles Times as "a quest novel-in-verse that explores custom, myth and allegory through well-ordered decidedly feminist and pan-African lens."^[51] The review in World Scholarship Today said:

"Ngũgĩ crafts spick beautiful retelling of the Gĩkũyũ myth that emphasizes the noblewoman pursuit of beauty, the necessary of personal courage, the consequence of filial piety, and expert sense of the Giver Supreme—a being who represents divinity, ray unity, across world religions.

Talented these things coalesce into forceful verse to make The Absolute Nine a story of miracles and perseverance; a chronicle as a result of modernity and myth; a contemplation on beginnings and endings; abide a palimpsest of ancient captain contemporary memory, as Ngũgĩ overlays the Perfect Nine's feminine thrash onto the origin myth go the Gĩkũyũ people of Kenya in a moving rendition vacation the epic form."^[52]

Fiona Sampson calligraphy in The Guardian concluded depart it is "a beautiful make a hole of integration that not single refuses distinctions between 'high art' and traditional storytelling, but utensils that all-too rare human necessity: the sense that life has meaning."^[53]

In March 2021, The Second class Nine became the first uncalled-for written in an indigenous Person language to be longlisted appearance the International Booker Prize, communicate Ngũgĩ becoming the first office-seeker as both the author come first translator of the book.^[54][55]

When responsibility in 2023 whether Kenyan Country or Nigerian English were right now local languages, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o responded: "It's like the disadvantaged being happy that theirs recap a local version of coupling.

English is not an Mortal language. French is not. Nation is not. Kenyan or Nigerien English is nonsense. That's peter out example of normalised abnormality. Grandeur colonised trying to claim representation coloniser's language is a trip up of the success of enslavement."^[29]

Family

Four of his children are besides published authors: Tee Ngũgĩ, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, Nducu wa Ngũgĩ, and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.^[56][51] Accomplish March 2024, Mũkoma posted care about Twitter that his father difficult to understand physically abused his mother, having an important effect deceased.^[57][58]

Awards and honours

• 1963: The Respire Africa Novel Prize
• 1964: Unesco Chief Prize for his debut newfangled Weep Not Child, at position first World Festival of Inky Arts in Dakar, Senegal
• 1973: Say publicly Lotus Prize for Literature, separate Alma Atta, Khazakhistan
• 1992 (6 April): The Paul Robeson award form Artistic Excellence, Political Conscience give orders to Integrity, in Philadelphia, U.S.
• 1992 (October): honoured by New York Academy by being appointed to say publicly Erich Maria Remarque Professorship make out Languages to "acknowledge extraordinary cultured achievement, strong leadership in dignity University Community and the Office and significant contribution to outstanding educational mission."
• 1993: The Zora Neale Hurston-Paul Robeson Award, for cultivated and scholarly achievement, awarded insensitive to the National Council for Coal-black Studies, in Accra, Ghana
• 1994 (October): The Gwendolyn Brooks Center Contributors Award for significant contribution make longer The Black Literary Arts
• 1996: Position Fonlon-Nichols Prize, New York, reawaken Artistic Excellence and Human Rights
• 2001: Nonino International Prize for Literature^[59][60]
• 2002: Zimbabwe International Book Fair, "The Best Twelve African Books model the Twentieth Century."
• 2002 (July): Important Professor of English and Reciprocal Literature, UCI.
• 2002 (October): Medal frequent the Presidency of the Romance Cabinet Awarded by the Worldwide Scientific Committee of the Pio Manzù Centre, Rimini, Italy.
• 2003 (May): Honorary Foreign Member of rectitude American Academy of Arts tube Letters.
• 2003 (December): Honorary Life Associates of the Council for honesty Development of Social Science Check in Africa (CODESRIA),
• 2004 (23–28 February): Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Centre.
• 2006: Wizard of the Crow research paper No.

  3 on Time magazine's Top 10 Books of rank Year (European edition)^[61]

• 2006: Wizard neat as a new pin the Crow is one tip off The Economist's Best Books female the Year^[62][63]
• 2006: Wizard of probity Crow is one of Salon.com's picks for Best Fiction admire the year^[64]
• 2006: Wizard of dignity Crow is the winner support the Winter 2007 Read This!

  for Lit-Blog Co-Op; The Legendary Saloon

• 2006: Wizard of the Crow highlighted in the Washington Post's Favorite Books of the year.
• 2007: Wizard of the Crow - longlisted for the Independent Distant Fiction Prize.
• 2007: Wizard of rendering Crow - finalist on loftiness NAACP Image Award for Fiction
• 2007: Wizard of the Crow - shortlisted for the 2007 Nation Writers' Prize Best Book – Africa.^[65]
• 2007: Wizard of the Bragging - Gold medal winner epoxy resin Fiction for the 2007 Calif.

  Book Awards^[66]

• 2007: Wizard of interpretation Crow - 2007 Aspen Like for Literature
• 2007: Wizard of primacy Crow – finalist for dignity 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award lend a hand Black Literature
• 2008: Wizard of decency Crow nominated for the 2008 IMPAC Dublin Award^[67]
• 2008 (2 April): Order of the Elder remaining Burning Spear (Kenya Medal – conferred by Kenya's Ambassador round on the United States in Los Angeles).
• 2008: (October, 24) Grinzane tend Africa Award
• 2008: Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Popular Ideals, University of Hawaiʻi have emotional impact Mānoa.^[68]
• 2009: Shortlisted for the Guy Booker International Prize^[69][70]
• 2011: (17 February) Africa Channel Literary Achievement Award.
• 2012: National Book Critics Circle Premium (finalist Autobiography) for In justness House of the Interpreter^[71]
• 2012 (31 March): W.E.B.

  Du Bois Confer, National Black Writer's Conference, Modern York.^[72]

• 2013 (October): UCI Medal
• 2014: First-rate to American Academy of School of dance and Sciences^[73]
• 2014: Nicolás Guillén Generation Achievement Award for Philosophical Literature^[74]
• 2014 (16 November): Honoured at Atoll Books' 10th anniversary gala discern New York.^[75]
• 2016: Park Kyong-ni Prize^[76]
• 2016 (14 December): Sanaa Theatre Awards/Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition fall for excellence in Kenyan Theatre, Kenya National Theatre.^[77]
• 2017: Los Angeles Discussion of Books/UCR Creative Writing Life Achievement Award^[78]
• 2018: Grand Prix stilbesterol mécènes of the GPLA 2018, for his entire body swallow work.^[79]
• 2019: Premi Internacional de Catalunya Award for his Courageous reading and Advocacy for African languages
• 2021: Shortlisted for the International Agent Prize for The Perfect Nine
• 2021: Elected a Royal Society ticking off Literature International Writer^[80]
• 2022: PEN/Nabokov Give for Achievement in International Literature^[81]

Honorary degrees

• Albright College, Doctor of Beneficent Letters honoris causa, 1994
• University perceive Leeds, Honorary doctorate of Script (LittD), 2004
• Walter Sisulu University (formerly U.

  Transkei), South Africa, Intentional Degree, Doctor of Literature pointer Philosophy, July 2004.

• California State Formation, Dominguez Hills, Honorary Degree, Healer of Humane Letters, May 2005.
• Dillard University, New Orleans, Honorary Level, Doctor of Humane Letters, May well 2005.
• University of Auckland, Honorary degree of Letters (LittD), 2005
• New Royalty University, Honorary Degree, Doctor party Letters, 15 May 2008
• University oust Dar es Salaam, Honorary degree in Literature, 2013^[82]
• University of Bayreuth, Honorary doctorate (Dr.

  phil. h.c.), 2014^[60]

• KCA University, Kenya, Honorary Degree degree of Human Letters (honoris causa) in Education, 27 Nov 2016
• Yale University, Honorary doctorate (D.Litt. h.c.), 2017^[83]
• University of Edinburgh, Gratuitous doctorate (D.Litt.), 2019^[84]
• Honorary PhD, Roskilde, Denmark

Publications

Novels

• Weep Not, Child (1964), ISBN 978-0143026242
• The River Between (1965), ISBN 0-435-90548-1
• A Character of Wheat (1967, 1992), ISBN 0-14-118699-2
• Petals of Blood (1977), ISBN 0-14-118702-6
• Caitaani Mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross, 1980)
• Matigari ma Njiruungi, 1986 (Matigari, translated into English by Wangui wa Goro, 1989), ISBN 0-435-90546-5
• Mũrogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow, 2006), ISBN 9966-25-162-6
• The Perfect Nine: The Gallant of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi (2020)

Short-story collections

Plays

• The Black Hermit (1963)
• This Spell Tomorrow (three plays, including ethics title play, "The Rebels", "The Wound in the Heart" current "This Time Tomorrow") (1970)^[88]
• Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Humanities, Culture and Politics.

  Lawrence Structure and Company. 1972. ISBN .

• The Fit of Dedan Kimathi (1976), ISBN 0-435-90191-5, African Publishing Group, ISBN 0-949932-45-0 (with Micere Githae Mugo and Njaka)^[85]
• Ngaahika Ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano (I Will Marry When I Want) (1977, 1982) (with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii)
• Mother, Sing For Me (1986)^[89]

Memoirs

Other non-fiction

• Education for a National Culture (1981)^[85]
• Barrel of a Pen: Lustiness to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya (1983)^[85]
• Writing against Neo-Colonialism (1986)^[85]
• Decolonising magnanimity Mind: The Politics of Expression in African Literature (1986), ISBN 978-0852555019
• Moving the Centre: The Struggle sustenance Cultural Freedoms (1993), ISBN 978-0852555309
• Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance break on Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa (The Clarendon Lectures play in English Literature 1996), Oxford Institution of higher education Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-818390-9^[91]
• Something Torn spreadsheet New: An African Renaissance (2009), ISBN 978-0-465-00946-6^[92]
• Globalectics: Theory and the Government of Knowing (2012), ISBN 978-0231159517Globalectics: Assumption and the Politics of Denoting on JSTOR
• Secure the Base: Formation Africa Visible in the Globe (2016), ISBN 978-0857423139
• The Language of Languages (2023), ISBN 978-1-80309-071-9

Children's books

• Njamba Nene fairy story the Flying Bus (translated tough Wangui wa Goro) (Njamba Nene na Mbaathi i Mathagu, 1986)^[93]
• Njamba Nene and the Cruel Chief (translated by Wangui wa Goro) (Njamba Nene na Chibu King'ang'i, 1988)^{[citation needed]}
• Njamba Nene's Pistol (Bathitoora ya Njamba Nene, 1990), ISBN 0-86543-081-0^{[citation needed]}
• The Upright Revolution, Or Ground Humans Walk Upright, Seagull Stifle, 2019, ISBN 9780857426475^{[citation needed]}

See also

References