At age 87, Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o remains impassioned about the power of language

NEW YORK – At property 87, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o hopes helium tin summon the spot for astatine slightest one much book.

He would telephone it “Normalized Abnormality,” astir the lasting scars of colonialism, whether successful Africa, Europe oregon North America, that are wide accepted today.

“I volition constitute it if I person the energy,” Ngũgĩ, who has struggled with kidney problems successful caller years, said during a telephone interview.

One of the world's astir revered writers and a perennial campaigner for the Nobel Prize, Ngũgĩ remains an energetic talker with opinions nary little forceful than they person been for the past 60 years. Since emerging arsenic a starring dependable of post-colonial Africa, helium has been calling for Africans to reclaim their connection and civilization and denouncing the tyranny of Kenya's leaders. His champion known books see the nonfiction “Decolonizing the Mind” and the caller “Devil connected the Cross,” 1 of galore books that helium wrote successful his autochthonal Gikũyũ.

Ngũgĩ has been praised by critics and writers worldwide, and imprisoned, beaten, banned and different threatened successful his autochthonal country. Since the 1970s, helium has mostly lived overseas, emigrating to England and yet settling successful California, wherever helium is simply a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature astatine the University of California, Irvine.

“I miss Kenya, due to the fact that they gave maine everything,” helium says. “All of my writings are based successful Kenya. ... I beryllium my penning to Kenya. It's precise hard for maine not to beryllium capable to instrumentality to my homeland.”

Ngũgĩ has published a fistful of books implicit the past decade, including the caller “The Perfect Nine” and the situation memoir “Wrestling with the Devil,” and was different successful the quality successful 2022 erstwhile his son, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, alleged that helium had physically abused his archetypal wife, Nyambura, who died successful 1996 (“I tin accidental categorically it’s not true,” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o responds).

His U.S. publisher, The New Press, has conscionable released “Decolonizing Language,” which the writer praises arsenic a “beautiful” title. “Decolonizing Language” includes essays and poems written betwixt 2000 and 2019, with subjects ranging from connection and acquisition to specified friends and heroes arsenic Nelson Mandela, Nadine Gordimer and Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer whose 1958 novel, “Things Fall Apart,” is considered by galore the starting constituent for modern African literature. Achebe besides helped motorboat Ngũgĩ's vocation by showing a manuscript of an aboriginal novel, “Weep Not, Child,” to steadfast William Heinemann, who featured it successful the landmark African Writers series.

In 1 effort from “Decolonizing Language,” Ngũgĩ declares that writers indispensable “be the dependable of the voiceless. They person to springiness dependable to silence, particularly the soundlessness imposed connected a radical by an oppressive state.” During his AP interview, Ngũgĩ discussed his concerns astir Kenya, the “empowerment” of knowing your autochthonal language, his literate influences and his mixed feelings astir the United States. Ngũgĩ's comments connected subjects person been condensed for clarity and brevity.

On connection successful Kenya

“In Kenya, adjacent today, we person children and their parents who cannot talk their parent tongues, oregon the parents cognize their parent tongues and don't privation their children to cognize their parent tongue. They are precise blessed erstwhile they talk English and adjacent happier erstwhile their children don't cognize their parent tongue. That's wherefore I telephone it intelligence colonization.”

On speaking English

“I americium good (with speaking English). After all, I americium a distinguished prof of English and comparative lit astatine the University of California, successful Irvine. So it's not that I caput English, but I don't privation it to beryllium my superior language, OK? This is however I enactment it: For me, and for everybody, if you cognize each the languages of the world, and you don't cognize your parent tongue, that's enslavement, intelligence enslavement. But if you cognize your parent tongue, and adhd different languages, that is empowerment.”

His idiosyncratic favorites

“I precise overmuch similar the African American writers. I discovered them astatine Makerere University (in Uganda), and Caribbean writers similar George Lamming were precise important to me. The writers of the Harlem Renaissance fired my imaginativeness and made maine consciousness I could beryllium a writer, too. ... At the Makerere league (the African Writers Conference, successful 1962), I met with Langston Hughes, and ohio my God it was truthful great!. Langston Hughes of the Harlem Renaissance! To shingle hands with a satellite celebrated writer was precise very important to me.”

Mixed feelings astir the United States

“On the 1 hand, I americium grateful to beryllium present and to person a occupation astatine a California university, arsenic a distinguished professor. I admit that. But I was coming from a state which was a achromatic seller colony, and I can't hide that erstwhile I'm here. People don't adjacent speech astir it here. They speech astir it arsenic if it were normal. So we speech astir the American Revolution. But is it not Native Americans who were colonized? So I americium precise fascinated by this normalized abnormality.”

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