Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o – A giant of African literature

Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, who died at the age of 87and Titan was a modern African literature – the narrator of the stories who refused to abide by imprisonment, exile and disease.

His work extended for nearly six decades, and the documentation in the first place turned his country – Kenya – from the colonialism to democracy.

NGũGĩ has been distinguished to win the Nobel Prize for Literature countless times, leaving the fans feeling panic every time the medal retreated through his fingers.

It will be remembered not only as a writer worth Nobel, but also as a fierce bond for original African languages.

NGũGĩ James Gameg’o NgũGĩ was born in 1938, when Kenya was under British colonial rule. He grew up in the town of Limuro between a large family of low -income agricultural workers.

His parents collected and kept to pay the price of the tuition fees in an alliance, an internal school run by British missionaries.

in interviewNGũGĩ recalled the homeland from the alliance at the end of the semester to find its entire village by the colonial authorities.

His family members were among the hundreds and thousands who were forced to live in detention camps during a campaign against Mao Mao, a movement of independence fighters.

EmotionWhich lasted from 1952 to 1960, touched the life of NGũGĩ in many clear ways.

In one of the most crushed mistakes, NGũGĩ, Gitogo’s brother, was shot, at the back for refusing to comply with the leadership of the British soldier.

Getogo did not hear it because he was deaf.

In 1959, while the British struggled to keep their grip on Kenya, Ngajj left to study in Uganda. He joined the University of Makerrere, which is still one of the prestigious African universities.

During a book of book at Makerrere, NGũGĩ shared his first novel with the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.

Achebe referred the manuscript to its publisher in the United Kingdom, and the book, called Weep Not, Child, was released to the construction of critics in 1964. It was the first main novel in English written by an East Africa.

Follow NGũGĩ quickly with two other novels, a grain of wheat and river between. In 1972, the Times in the United Kingdom said that 33 -year -old NGũGĩ was “accepted as one of the prominent contemporary writers in Africa.”

Then it came in 1977 – a period characterized by a major change in the life of NGũGĩ. For beginners, this was the year in which NGũGĩ Wa Thiong’o became the name of his birth, James. NGũGĩ changed because he wanted a name free of colonial influence.

He also dropped the English language as a basic language for his literature and pledged to write only in his mother tongue, Kikoyo.

He published his last novel in the English language, blood petals, in 1977.

The previous NGũGE books criticized the colonial state, but the blood petals attacked the new leaders in the independent Kenya, and visualized it as the group of the elite that betrayed the ordinary Kenyans.

NGũGĩ did not stop there. In the same year, he participated in writing the play Ngaahika Ndenda (I will marry when I want), which was a incendiary look at Kenya’s class struggle.

The theatrical operation was suspended by the then government of President Jumo Kenyatta and NGũGĩ that was imprisoned in the Aqsa Security Prison for a year without trial.

It was 12 months fruitful, however – as NGũGĩ wrote his first novel Kikuyu, Devil on the Cross, while he was in prison. It is said that he uses toilet paper to write the entire book, because he was unable to reach a notebook.

NGũGĩ was released after the replacement of Daniel Moy, Moy El -Sayed Kenyatta as president.

NGũGĩ said that after four years, while in London to launch a book, Know that there is a conspiracy to kill him Upon returning to Kenya.

NGũGĩ Self -exile began in the UK and the United States. He did not return to Kenya for 22 years.

When he finally returned, he received a hero – thousands of Kenyans turned to salute him.

But returning to the homeland is a young man when the attackers stormed the NGũGĩ apartment, and attacked the author brutally and raped his wife.

Naguji He insisted that the attack was “political”.

He returned to the United States, where he had occupied university professors including Yale, New York and California Erfin.

In academic circles outside, NGũGĩ became known as one of the most prominent defenders of literature written in African languages.

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

“What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism and the writer who says that Africa cannot dispense with European languages?” He asked NGũGĩ in a loudly essay collection, called Decoloning The Mind.

In one section, NGũGĩ Chinua Achebe – the author who helped launch his career – called for writing in English. Their friendship was strained as a result.

Outside of his literary career, he married NGũGĩ – and his divorced twice. He had nine children, four of whom were published.

“My family became one of my literary competitors,” jokingly in 2020 Los Angeles Times interview.

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

His son wrote in a post on social media, who did not respond to him: “Some of my first memories are to visit them in my grandmother where she would have resorted to.”

Later in his life, NGũGĩ has deteriorated. He underwent triple -heart surgery in 2019 and began to conflict with kidney failure. In 1995, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and was given three months to live.

But NGũGĩ recovered, with the addition of cancer to a long list of conflicts overlooking it.

But now one of the guidelines of African literature – as Nigerian writer Chimamanda Nguzi Adishi has once disappeared, leaving the world of words a little darker.