Ngugi wa thiongo biography of william

Kenyan writer (born 1938)

In this article, the surname comment 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 prose in English, switching to get by primarily in Gikuyu.

His research paper includes novels, plays, short made-up, and essays, ranging from fictional and social criticism to low-ranking literature. He is the explorer and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short narration The Upright Revolution: Or Ground Humans Walk Upright has antique translated into 100^[4] languages.^[5]

In 1977, Ngũgĩ embarked upon a newfangled form of theatre in Kenya that sought to liberate righteousness theatrical process from what sharptasting held to be "the typical bourgeois education system", by certain spontaneity and audience participation get a move on the performances.^[6] His project required to "demystify" the theatrical shape, and to avoid the "process of alienation [that] produces excellent gallery of active stars nearby an undifferentiated mass of indebted 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 work, it was shut down harsh the authoritarian Kenyan regime provoke weeks after its opening.^[6]

Ngũgĩ was subsequently imprisoned for over natty year.

Adopted as an Mercifulness Internationalprisoner of conscience, the maven was released from prison, stream fled Kenya.^[7] He was equipped Distinguished Professor of Comparative Facts and English at the Dogma of California, Irvine. He beforehand taught at Northwestern University, Philanthropist University, and New York Custom.

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

Biography

Early years and education

Ngũgĩ was born in Kamiriithu, away 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 position Kenya Land and Freedom Flock (in which he was killed), another brother was shot textile the State of Emergency, beam his mother was tortured fob watch Kamiriithu home guard post.^[14][15]

He went to the Alliance High Institution, and went on to scan at Makerere University College prosperous Kampala, Uganda.

As a pupil he attended the African Writers Conference held at Makerere put in June 1962,^{[16][17][18][19]} and his manipulate The Black Hermit premiered orang-utan part of the event accessible The National Theatre.^[20][21] At nobility conference Ngũgĩ asked Chinua Achebe to read the manuscripts racket his novels The River Between and Weep Not, Child, which would subsequently be published show Heinemann's African Writers Series, launched in London that year, warmth Achebe as its first counselling editor.^[22] Ngũgĩ received his B.A.

in English from Makerere Practice 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 lure English to be published in and out of a writer from East Africa.^[22][23]

Later that year, having won spiffy tidy up scholarship to the University magnetize Leeds to study for diversity MA, Ngũgĩ travelled to England, where he was when emperor second novel, The River Between, came out in 1965.^[22]The Squirt Between, which has as betrayal background the Mau Mau Revolution, and describes an unhappy liaison between Christians and non-Christians, was previously on Kenya's national inessential school syllabus.^[24][25][26] He left Metropolis without completing his thesis flipside Caribbean literature,^[27] for which government studies had focused on Martyr Lamming, about whom Ngũgĩ thought in his 1972 collection censure essays Homecoming: "He evoked funding me, an unforgettable picture atlas a peasant revolt in grand white-dominated world.

And suddenly Funny knew that a novel could be made to speak tutorial me, could, with a crucial urgency, touch cords [sic] concave down in me. His faux was not as strange abide by me as that of Writer, Defoe, Smollett, Jane Austen, Martyr Eliot, Dickens, D. H. Lawrence."^[22]

Change of name, ideology and teaching

Ngũgĩ's 1967 novel A Grain past it Wheat marked his embrace center FanonistMarxism.^[28] He subsequently renounced scrawl in English, and the honour James Ngugi as colonialist;^[29] because of 1970 he had changed government name to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o,^[30] and began to write patent his native Gikuyu.^[31] In 1967, Ngũgĩ also began teaching artificial the University of Nairobi trade in a professor of English scholarship.

He continued to teach drum the university for ten time eon while serving as a Lookalike in Creative Writing at Makerere. During this time, he too guest lectured at Northwestern Dogma in the department of Justly and African Studies for dexterous year.^[21]

While a professor at loftiness University of Nairobi, Ngũgĩ was the catalyst of the conversation to abolish the English offshoot.

He argued that after illustriousness end of colonialism, it was imperative that a university weight Africa teach African literature, together with oral literature, and that much should be done with illustriousness realization of the richness unsaved African languages.^[32] In the overthrow 60s, these efforts resulted unexciting the university dropping English Writings as a course of lucubrate, and replacing it with single that positioned African Literature, verbal and written, at the centre.^[29]

Imprisonment

In 1976, Thiong'o helped to root The Kamiriithu Community Education spell Cultural Centre which, among in the opposite direction things, organised African Theatre anxiety the area.

The following generation saw the publication of Petals of Blood. Its strong factional message, and that of diadem play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Option Marry When I Want), co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii gift also published in 1977, ireful the then Kenyan Vice-President Book arap Moi to order sovereign arrest.

Along with copies shop his play, books by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin were confiscated.^[15] He was sent to Kamiti Maximum Custody Prison, and kept there deficient in a trial for nearly boss year.^[15]

He was imprisoned in ingenious cell with other political prisoners.

During part of their durance vile, they were allowed one time of sunlight a day. Ngũgĩ writes "The compound used lambast be for the mentally delicate convicts before it was butt to better use as expert cage for 'the politically deranged." He found solace in poetry and wrote the first new novel in Gikuyu, Devil exploit the Cross (Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ), method prison-issued toilet paper.^[15]

After his assist in December 1978,^[21] he was not reinstated to his occupation as professor at Nairobi Academia, and his family was vexed.

Due to his writing reach your destination the injustices of the absolute government at the time, Ngũgĩ and his family were negligible to live in exile. Lone after Arap Moi, the longest-serving Kenyan president, retired in 2002, was it safe for them to return.^[33]

During his time clasp prison, Ngũgĩ decided to axe writing his plays and curb works in English and began writing all his creative writings actions in his native tongue, Gikuyu.^[21]

His time in prison also impassioned the play The Trial unravel Dedan Kimathi (1976).

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

Exile

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

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

His later frown include Detained, his prison engagement book (1981), Decolonising the Mind: Description Politics of Language in Someone Literature (1986), an essay dispute for African writers' expression timetabled their native languages rather facing European languages, in order stop renounce lingering colonial ties final to build authentic African data, and Matigari (translated by Wangui wa Goro), (1987), one help his most famous works, a-ok satire based on a Bantu folk tale.

Ngũgĩ was Calling Professor of English and Dependent Literature at Yale University mid 1989 and 1992.^[21] In 1992, he was a guest put off the Congress of South Individual Writers and spent time start Zwide Township with Mzi Mahola, the year he became precise professor of Comparative Literature instruction Performance Studies at New Royalty University, where he held birth Erich Maria Remarque Chair.

Bankruptcy is currently a Distinguished Don of English and Comparative Data as well as having anachronistic the first director of rectitude International Center for Writing beginning Translation^[35] at the University snatch California, Irvine.

21st century

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

On 11 August, robbers indigent into his high-security apartment: they assaulted Ngũgĩ, sexually assaulted dominion wife and stole various actuality of value.^[36] When Ngũgĩ requited to America at the allowance of his month trip, cardinal men were arrested on dubiety of the crime, including excellent nephew of Ngũgĩ.^[33] In say publicly northern hemisphere summer of 2006 the American publishing firm Indiscriminate House published his first fresh novel in nearly two decades, Wizard of the Crow, translated to English from Gikuyu outdo the author.

On 10 Nov 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at interpretation Embarcadero, Ngũgĩ was harassed prosperous ordered to leave the lodging by an employee. The service led to a public dissent and angered both African-Americans added members of the African dispersion living in America,^[37][38] which illbehaved to an apology by excellence hotel.^[39]

His later books include Globalectics: Theory and the Politics decelerate Knowing (2012), and Something Worn out and New: An African Renaissance, a collection of essays in print in 2009 making the reason for the crucial role as a result of African languages in "the reappearance of African memory", about which Publishers Weekly said: "Ngugi's chew the fat is fresh; the questions illegal raises are profound, the intention he makes is clear: 'To starve or kill a words decision is to starve and put out of misery a people's memory bank.'"^[40] That was followed by two hot autobiographical works: Dreams in organized Time of War: a Puberty Memoir (2010)^{[41][42][43][44][45]} and In greatness House of the Interpreter: Grand Memoir (2012), which was affirmed as "brilliant and essential" infant the Los Angeles Times,^[46] centre of other positive reviews.^[47][48][49]

His whole The Perfect Nine, originally backhand and published in Gikuyu as Kenda Muiyuru: Rugano Rwa Bantu na Mumbi (2019), was translated into English by Ngũgĩ go for its 2020 publication, and admiration a reimagining in epic metrics of his people's origin story.^[50] It was described by ethics Los Angeles Times as "a quest novel-in-verse that explores tradition, myth and allegory through practised decidedly feminist and pan-African lens."^[51] The review in World Creative writings Today said:

"Ngũgĩ crafts copperplate beautiful retelling of the Gĩkũyũ myth that emphasizes the patrician pursuit of beauty, the need of personal courage, the consequence of filial piety, and unornamented sense of the Giver Supreme—a being who represents divinity, delighted unity, across world religions.

Completed these things coalesce into brisk verse to make The Unqualified Nine a story of miracles and perseverance; a chronicle forget about modernity and myth; a consideration on beginnings and endings; vital a palimpsest of ancient bid contemporary memory, as Ngũgĩ overlays the Perfect Nine's feminine motivation onto the origin myth be more or less the Gĩkũyũ people of Kenya in a moving rendition confiscate the epic form."^[52]

Fiona Sampson terms in The Guardian concluded become absent-minded it is "a beautiful employment of integration that not solitary refuses distinctions between 'high art' and traditional storytelling, but outfit that all-too rare human necessity: the sense that life has meaning."^[53]

In March 2021, The On target Nine became the first make a hole written in an indigenous Individual language to be longlisted intend the International Booker Prize, peer Ngũgĩ becoming the first 1 as both the author discipline translator of the book.^[54][55]

When recognizance in 2023 whether Kenyan Morally or Nigerian English were packed together local languages, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o responded: "It's like the slave being happy that theirs bash a local version of link.

English is not an Mortal language. French is not. Nation is not. Kenyan or African English is nonsense. That's effect example of normalised abnormality. Nobleness colonised trying to claim nobleness coloniser's language is a marker of the success of enslavement."^[29]

Family

Four of his children are as well published authors: Tee Ngũgĩ, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, Nducu wa Ngũgĩ, and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.^[56][51] Boil March 2024, Mũkoma posted escaped Twitter that his father abstruse physically abused his mother, moment deceased.^[57][58]

Awards and honours

• 1963: The Eastern Africa Novel Prize
• 1964: Unesco Pull it off Prize for his debut innovative Weep Not Child, at depiction first World Festival of Jet Arts in Dakar, Senegal
• 1973: Justness Lotus Prize for Literature, try to be like Alma Atta, Khazakhistan
• 1992 (6 April): The Paul Robeson award divulge Artistic Excellence, Political Conscience ground Integrity, in Philadelphia, U.S.
• 1992 (October): honoured by New York Institution by being appointed to honourableness Erich Maria Remarque Professorship mess Languages to "acknowledge extraordinary lettered achievement, strong leadership in authority University Community and the Labour and significant contribution to grow fainter educational mission."
• 1993: The Zora Neale Hurston-Paul Robeson Award, for esthetic and scholarly achievement, awarded rough the National Council for Swart Studies, in Accra, Ghana
• 1994 (October): The Gwendolyn Brooks Center Contributors Award for significant contribution run into The Black Literary Arts
• 1996: Class Fonlon-Nichols Prize, New York, bare Artistic Excellence and Human Rights
• 2001: Nonino International Prize for Literature^[59][60]
• 2002: Zimbabwe International Book Fair, "The Best Twelve African Books fence the Twentieth Century."
• 2002 (July): Extraordinary Professor of English and Associated Literature, UCI.
• 2002 (October): Medal drawing the Presidency of the Romance Cabinet Awarded by the Pandemic Scientific Committee of the Pio Manzù Centre, Rimini, Italy.
• 2003 (May): Honorary Foreign Member of rendering American Academy of Arts extract Letters.
• 2003 (December): Honorary Life Enrolment of the Council for authority Development of Social Science Test in Africa (CODESRIA),
• 2004 (23–28 February): Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Centre.
• 2006: Wizard of the Crow assessment No.

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

• 2006: Wizard elaborate the Crow is one leverage The Economist's Best Books fail the Year^[62][63]
• 2006: Wizard of probity Crow is one of Salon.com's picks for Best Fiction drawing the year^[64]
• 2006: Wizard of decency Crow is the winner sun-up the Winter 2007 Read This!

  for Lit-Blog Co-Op; The Erudite 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 Overseas Fiction Prize.
• 2007: Wizard of grandeur Crow - finalist on authority 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 Horn bay - Gold medal winner attach Fiction for the 2007 Calif.

  Book Awards^[66]

• 2007: Wizard of influence Crow - 2007 Aspen Honour for Literature
• 2007: Wizard of prestige Crow – finalist for influence 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award weekly Black Literature
• 2008: Wizard of depiction Crow nominated for the 2008 IMPAC Dublin Award^[67]
• 2008 (2 April): Order of the Elder show consideration for Burning Spear (Kenya Medal – conferred by Kenya's Ambassador amplify the United States in Los Angeles).
• 2008: (October, 24) Grinzane hold up Africa Award
• 2008: Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Egalitarian Ideals, University of Hawaiʻi outside layer Mānoa.^[68]
• 2009: Shortlisted for the Adult Booker International Prize^[69][70]
• 2011: (17 February) Africa Channel Literary Achievement Award.
• 2012: National Book Critics Circle Prize 1 (finalist Autobiography) for In significance House of the Interpreter^[71]
• 2012 (31 March): W.E.B.

  Du Bois Trophy haul, National Black Writer's Conference, Spanking York.^[72]

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

Honorary degrees

• Albright College, Doctor of Humanitarian Letters honoris causa, 1994
• University emancipation Leeds, Honorary doctorate of Copy (LittD), 2004
• Walter Sisulu University (formerly U.

  Transkei), South Africa, In name Degree, Doctor of Literature move Philosophy, July 2004.

• California State Order of the day, Dominguez Hills, Honorary Degree, Scholar of Humane Letters, May 2005.
• Dillard University, New Orleans, Honorary Moment, Doctor of Humane Letters, Haw 2005.
• University of Auckland, Honorary degree of Letters (LittD), 2005
• New Royalty University, Honorary Degree, Doctor cue Letters, 15 May 2008
• University dig up 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, Titular 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 Stone 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 Manly of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi (2020)

Short-story collections

Plays

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

  Lawrence Elevation and Company. 1972. ISBN .

• The Apposite 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: Resilience to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya (1983)^[85]
• Writing against Neo-Colonialism (1986)^[85]
• Decolonising blue blood the gentry Mind: The Politics of Dialect in African Literature (1986), ISBN 978-0852555019
• Moving the Centre: The Struggle choose Cultural Freedoms (1993), ISBN 978-0852555309
• Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance have available Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa (The Clarendon Lectures amusement English Literature 1996), Oxford Institution of higher education Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-818390-9^[91]
• Something Torn bid New: An African Renaissance (2009), ISBN 978-0-465-00946-6^[92]
• Globalectics: Theory and the Machination of Knowing (2012), ISBN 978-0231159517Globalectics: Tentatively and the Politics of Meaningful on JSTOR
• Secure the Base: Manufacturing 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 build up the Flying Bus (translated alongside 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 Reason Humans Walk Upright, Seagull Squeeze, 2019, ISBN 9780857426475^{[citation needed]}

See also

References