Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o was born and baptized James Ngugi in British-controlled Kenya in 1938. Ngũgĩ and his family were members of the Gikuyu (or Kikuyu; or Agikuyu), the largest ethnic group in Kenya. Even from his early childhood, Ngũgĩ’s life was framed by the Kenyan struggle against the British. His family was heavily involved in the Mau Mau freedom fighting movement—one of his brothers was a freedom fighter, the homeguard tortured his mother, and Ngũgĩ’s deaf brother was shot in the back by a British soldier. Ngũgĩ began writing very early and at the age of 24 premiered a play he had written for the African Writers Conference. His first novel, Weep Not, Child, was published in 1964, the first English-language novel to be published by an East African writer. After completing a B.A. in English at Makerere University around the same time, Ngũgĩ traveled to England to work on an M.A. at Leeds, but he did not complete his studies since his energy was instead devoted to the writing of A Grain of Wheat, which was published in 1967. A Grain of Wheat marked a turning point for Ngũgĩ, after which he became a Fanonist Marxist, rejected Christianity, began writing only in Gikuyu (and then translating his stories into English), and legally changed his name to Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, rejecting James Ngugi as a “missionary construction.” Ngũgĩ abandoned his M.A. and returned to Kenya, taking a position as a literature professor at the University of Nairobi. During this time, Ngũgĩ’s writing became more brazenly political, criticizing Kenya’s newly independent government and earning the ire of Jomo Kenyatta, a man whom Ngũgĩ had praised in A Grain of Wheat. In 1977, Ngũgĩ was imprisoned by Jomo Kenyatta’s successor. In prison, Ngũgĩ wrote his first entirely Gikuyu novel, The Devil on the Cross (translation), on prison toilet paper. Following his release, Ngũgĩ and his family were exiled from Kenya. He continued to write—publishing books and essays as late as 2012—and teach as a visiting professor at several universities around Europe and America, including Yale, Bayreuth University in Germany, and New York University. Ngũgĩ revisited East Africa in 2004, but never moved back to his home country.