Intersections: Personal Reflections on Ngugi wa’ Thiongo, a Giant of African Literature

As a young African American woman, I first stepped foot on the African continent in 1977. Indeed, I met Ngugi wa’ Thiongo while I was an undergraduate student enrolled in the American Institute for Foreign Study (AIFS) program at the University of Nairobi. There were about 11 American students and once again, I found myself the only Black person within the cohort. Kenya, however, taught me that race is a social construct used in the United States to convey or withhold privilege. Through simple observation, I learned, for example, that if a mzungu[1] appeared it was no big deal. Life goes on. And I began to de-emphasize race as a variable in my way of thinking. Thank you Africa for this important and insightful gift.

Flawed and insular though it was, the AIFS program provided the vehicle that would get me to Africa with the requisite college credits that satisfied the system and covered the cost of my adventure.  I’ll never forget how, shortly upon arriving, folks began asking me about my tribe.  My initial reaction was, I don’t have a tribe.  Of course, folks would give me a look like “girlfriend, get a grip you know you got a tribe.” A quick learner, by the third day in country, my response to the question, what is your ethnic group was Ah-Ah, which in my mind meant African American. For me, the beauty of if was that no one ever challenged my assertion. A journal entry from those days recalls how astonished I was that, in 1977, Kenyans still referred to us as Negroes. I recall sharing this observation while in graduate school and my professor, the late Dr. Samuel Proctor, telling me “Atim I’m so old, I’ve been called everything but a child of God.”

But I digress. In 1977, Ngugi was the Chair of the Faculty of Literature at the University of Nairobi. During his tenure as Chair, I also met Okot p’Bitek and Peter Rubadiri and discussed their characters with them. I remember being impressed by p’Bitek’s protagonist in Song of Lawino.  I wondered how he could empathize with the plight of the Black woman and he confided that was his Mother’s story. Frustrated with Rubadiri’s No Bride Price, I chided the author for his failure to give his female protagonist her own voice.  He pleaded with me to forget the book as he already had.

Under Ngugi’s leadership, the Faculty of Literature was an exciting place to teach and learn. A friend who worked at the University of Nairobi Library ensured I read other African authors such as Ruth First. But it was Ngugi’s work such as Weep Not Child, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood that helped me to understand and appreciate Kenya’s ethnic complexity as well as the longterm damage wrought by British colonial rule and the advent of neocolonial rule. He encouraged African authors to write in indigenous languages and he was committed to taking theatre upcountry to ensure rural communities could scrutinize the creations of their ‘educated’ or just as likely ‘miseducated’ brethren. Ngugi was, after all, targeted by the Kenyan government for publishing in his mother tongue.

As we put this great man to rest, let us remember his commitment to the creation of a just society dedicated to the interests of the most vulnerable among us. Rest in Peace and Power.

[1] Mzungu is the Kiswahili word for European, stranger or white person.