NEW YORK (AP) — At age 87, Kenyan creator Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o hopes he can summon the energy for at the very least yet another e book.
He would name it “Normalized Abnormality,” in regards to the lasting scars of colonialism, whether or not in Africa, Europe or North America, which are extensively accepted in the present day.
“I will write it if I have the energy,” Ngũgĩ, who has struggled with kidney issues in recent times, stated throughout a phone interview.
One of many world’s most revered writers and a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize, Ngũgĩ stays an lively speaker with opinions no much less forceful than they’ve been for the previous 60 years. Since rising as a number one voice of post-colonial Africa, he has been calling for Africans to reclaim their language and tradition and denouncing the tyranny of Kenya’s leaders. His finest identified books embrace the nonfiction “Decolonizing the Mind” and the novel “Devil on the Cross,” certainly one of many books that he wrote in his native Gikũyũ.
Ngũgĩ has been praised by critics and writers worldwide, and imprisoned, overwhelmed, banned and in any other case threatened in his native nation. For the reason that Nineteen Seventies, he has principally lived abroad, emigrating to England and finally settling in California, the place he’s a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature on the College of California, Irvine.
“I miss Kenya, because they gave me everything,” he says. “All of my writings are based in Kenya. … I owe my writing to Kenya. It’s very hard for me not to be able to return to my homeland.”
Ngũgĩ has printed a handful of books over the previous decade, together with the novel “The Perfect Nine” and the jail memoir “Wrestling with the Devil,” and was in any other case within the information in 2022 when his son, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, alleged that he had bodily abused his first spouse, Nyambura, who died in 1996 (“I can say categorically it’s not true,” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o responds).
His U.S. writer, The New Press, has simply launched “Decolonizing Language,” which the creator praises as a “beautiful” title. “Decolonizing Language” consists of essays and poems written between 2000 and 2019, with topics starting from language and training to such associates and heroes as Nelson Mandela, Nadine Gordimer and Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian creator whose 1958 novel, “Things Fall Apart,” is taken into account by many the start line for contemporary African literature. Achebe additionally helped launch Ngũgĩ’s profession by exhibiting a manuscript of an early novel, “Weep Not, Child,” to writer William Heinemann, who featured it within the landmark African Writers collection.
In a single essay from “Decolonizing Language,” Ngũgĩ declares that writers should “be the voice of the voiceless. They have to give voice to silence, especially the silence imposed on a people by an oppressive state.” Throughout his AP interview, Ngũgĩ mentioned his considerations about Kenya, the “empowerment” of figuring out your native language, his literary influences and his combined emotions about the USA. Ngũgĩ’s feedback on topics have been condensed for readability and brevity.
On language in Kenya
“In Kenya, even today, we have children and their parents who cannot speak their mother tongues, or the parents know their mother tongues and don’t want their children to know their mother tongue. They are very happy when they speak English and even happier when their children don’t know their mother tongue. That’s why I call it mental colonization.”
On talking English
“I am fine (with speaking English). After all, I am a distinguished professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, in Irvine. So it’s not that I mind English, but I don’t want it to be my primary language, OK? This is how I put it: For me, and for everybody, if you know all the languages of the world, and you don’t know your mother tongue, that’s enslavement, mental enslavement. But if you know your mother tongue, and add other languages, that is empowerment.”
His private favorites
“I very much like the African American writers. I discovered them at Makerere University (in Uganda), and Caribbean writers like George Lamming were very important to me. The writers of the Harlem Renaissance fired my imagination and made me feel I could be a writer, too. … At the Makerere conference (the African Writers Conference, in 1962), I met with Langston Hughes, and oh my God it was so great!. Langston Hughes of the Harlem Renaissance! To shake hands with a world famous writer was very very important to me.”
Blended emotions about the USA
“On the one hand, I am grateful to be here and to have a job at a California university, as a distinguished professor. I appreciate that. But I was coming from a country which was a white seller colony, and I can’t forget that when I’m here. People don’t even talk about it here. They talk about it as if it were normal. So we talk about the American Revolution. But is it not Native Americans who were colonized? So I am very fascinated by this normalized abnormality.”
