Page 8 - BPW BERKELEY BULLETIN - Edition 22 - February 2024 - with attachments

4. Ngugi wa Thiong’o
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C5%A9g%C4%A9_

wa_Thiong%27o

Ngugi wa Thiongʼo is a Kenyan author whose works are written in English and the Kikuyu
language. He’s currently professor and director of the International Center for Writing and
Translation at the University of California.

Ngugi is a prominent intellectual figure in East Africa. At the center of his work, you will find
denunciations of colonialism, tensions between Black and white people, and communities torn
between European and African cultural influence. From his very first novel, Weep Not, Child,
Ngugi touches on these topics through the eyes of the insurgent Kikuyu rebelling against English
authorities. But it’s A Grain of Wheat, published in 1967, that gained him international renown.

After decades writing novels in English, Ngugi’s 1986 essay Decolonising the Mind is a farewell
to the language: “How was it possible that we, African writers, exercised such weakness in
defending our own languages and such greed in claiming foreign languages, starting with those
of our colonizers?” Now, Ngugi wa Thiong’o writes only in his native language, Kikuyu, to
reach the audience he wants to address first and foremost.