Wa Thiong Research Articles

Decolonizing Gender Dynamics: Reclaiming Lawino’s Voice in Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino

Using Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s decolonization theory, this article argues that Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino reclaims African cultural voice and identity. Even though it is available in English, Song of Lawino is a kind of narrative poetry borrowed from the traditional Acholi song. This study uses contextual and stylistic analysis to show how p’Bitek’s poetry acts as a force for decolonization, advocates for cultural preservation, and addresses collective issues. Findings show that by satirizing African middle-class elites who adhere to Western values, the two chapters from Song of Lawino studied “The Woman with Whom I Share My Husband” and “Let Them Prepare the Malakwang Dish” highlight the clash between European and African cultures. In these poems, Lawino challenges gender dynamics and defends traditional practices, as well as criticizes the shallowness of Westernized lifestyles adopted by her husband Ocol. Through this strong-willed woman’s criticism, Okot p’Bitek’s poetry reveals the negative impacts of credulous cultural assimilation and underlines the import

Ngugi Wa Thiang’o’s Early Studentship: The Role of Education in the Making of a Great African Literary Writer

Do you know that most prolific or acclaimed writers the world celebrates have detected their talent since their prime? Do you also know that some renowned writers taught themselves or were taught by their masters at home prior to when they began to write? Do you know that some of them have not acquired profound formal education up to the university? Yet, it should be known that there are innumerable others, who greatly vary, for they have deeply studied instead. Writing is a natural prodigy; hence it requires no profound literacy to blossom. Take some immediate common instances in mind: Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Sembene Ousmene, Wole Soyinka, Aye Kwei Armah, Naguib Mahfouz, Ngugi wa Thiong’o to name just but a few. At any rate, education is the fulcrum and the nucleus to writing no matter how little it is acquired. This is the focus of which this paper is concerned about. Its prime goal is to unveil how Ngugi’s early educational sojourn from the primary school through to the university has rolled out the writing carpet for him to step on as a novice writer, and to keep striding on it with varying degrees of artistic, strength and vigour, which subsequently cleared the challenging path for him to emerge as a legendary and dynamic African writer.

African Literary Future/isms: Collective and Speculative Approaches

This article assesses how the ‘collective’ and the ‘speculative’ emerge as intertwined conceptual models for imagining and concretising notions of the ‘future’ in contemporary African literatures. We argue that contemporary literary production from the continent is engaged in acts of conceptual and linguistic-decentring, or what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has developed as a theory of ‘globalectics’ (2012). Beginning with Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s channelling of a Pan-African collective consciousness in her keynote address to the European Conference on African Studies (2023), we move on to explore three aspects of African literary futures/isms: first, the idea of historical repair and the notion that the speculative mode often hinges on multidirectional community-making by reconfiguring the past; second, the way speculative ventures establish new material networks and readerships through South–South translation projects that themselves project speculative cartographies of connection and the revival of historical ties; third, how continental African speculative fiction disrupts the binaries between the local and the global by creating new spatial imaginaries invested in cosmological and philosophical materialities. We conclude that such a diverse focus allows us to open out the terms of our discussion to the wider implications of decolonial future-making from the perspective of a de-hierarchical, globalectically oriented view of contemporary African writing. As such, we imagine this article as an act of collaborative co-creation which is in conversation with two contemporary African writers – Novuyo Rosa Tshuma and Wole Talabi – whose works are among those discussed in the piece. Their interviews form the ‘Appendix’ to this article, and offer new directions for creative and critical re-negotiations of African literary futures.

Sound Presentation of the Silent History: Orature in Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins

Abstract: In her novel The Stone Virgins , Zimbabwean author Yvonne Vera provides a model of orature writing by using sound in the interaction between literature and history as well as literature and politics. This essay will principally draw on the ideas of Kenyan author Ngugi Wa Thiong’o as well as Roland Barthes’ ideas about listening to analyze this effect. As a medium of oral tradition that carries traditional aesthetic and cultural values throughout the text, sound and its spatiotemporal framework establish an interpretative community among the author, the character, and the reader. In this community, silence—an extreme state of sound—and distorted sound highlight the individual memories of the suppressed people and form a contrast with the collective national memory that is put under the framework of the history of patriotism by official nationalist discourse. To reconstruct the suppressed history of the common people, Vera adopts the performance mechanism of orature by sound and thereby presents the inner monologue of the characters, which helps restore the subjectivity of the oppressed and sends out a call to the reader to participate in the reconstruction of a new history with the people as subjects. Vera’s sound presentation of the silenced Zimbabwean history is an important example of orature writing, showcasing a strong sense of historical responsibility among Zimbabwean writers and contributing to the formation of originality of African Europhone literature.

UGALI AND UBUNTU: A CULINARY JOURNEY THROUGH BELONGING IN THE SELECT WORKS OF NGUGI WA THIONGO

Ubuntu emphasises the value of interpersonal relationships, group accountability, and interdependence. Ubuntu essentially represents the ideas that a person's identity is shaped by their relationships with other people and that a community's health is a prerequisite for a person's personal health. It is a tenet that fosters compassion, empathy, and teamwork in order to advance social cohesiveness and peace. Ubuntu is a prominent African philosophical idea that has received international popularity, especially in relation to debates over social fairness, leadership, and how to resolve conflicts. Ngugi wa Thiong'o explores deep themes of identity, community, and belonging in her chosen works by deftly combining the ideas of Ugali and Ubuntu. A common dish in many African cultures, ugali signifies more than just sustenance, it is a symbol of community, nourishment, and the shared experiences of meals spent together. The African ideology of Ubuntu, which states, "I am because we are," emphasises the interconnectedness and shared humanity of communities. This culinary tradition symbolises this principle. In the context of Kenya's sociopolitical environment, Ngugi's stories explore the lives of people who struggle with colonial tyranny, cultural upheaval, and the desire for autonomy. Ngugi highlights the value of community values and solidarity as crucial for overcoming adversity and restoring cultural identity through his moving stories.

Intertextual Borrowings in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood

In every writing, literary and non-literary, no text exists as a complete isolate and complete authorial innovation. It manifests and results from multiple borrowings, conscious and otherwise, from other texts. Following Kristeva (1986), Genette (1997) and William (2010), this study analysed Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel, Petals of Blood, to uncover differing extents of textual borrowing in the form of reference, quotation, parody, borrowing, allusion and translation. The study used document review and textual analysis to generate the data that were then subjected to content analysis register occurrences of different forms of intertextuality. Data analysis and interpretation entailed placing these occurrences into themes, establishing frequencies, and computing percentages. The resultant data were summarised and presented in tables and figures, coupled with evidential excerpts gleaned from the text. Borrowing emerged to be the most predominant intertextual element accounting as it does for more than one-third of all intertextualities in Ngugi’s novel. In second came parody and allusion in that order. The other three forms of intertextuality—quotation, reference and translation—are comparably less pronounced in the novel. Conclusively, Ngugi's intertextuality subscribes to the spirit of Africanizing the English as a literary medium in the mould of what terms decolonising the mind of an African writer.

Issues of Ethic-identity Crisis in Ngugi’s Matigari and Mda’s The Heart of Redness in the post-colonial era

Postcolonial identity takes on various guises in the newly independent African states after the demise of colonialism. In considering these guises, this article examines the various manifestations of post-colonial identity crisis in a comparative study of Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1998) and The Heart of Redness by Zakes Mda (2000). The characters in both novels depict two groups in African society during the post-colonial era; namely those who aspire to western values, culture, and beliefs and those who aim to revive their traditional African beliefs and culture. This identity crisis is furthermore exacerbated in terms of those who are aligned to the new nation state, since they feel privileged and connected, and those who feel marginalised and disconnected from the nation state as they are forced to live on the periphery of society. In discussing post-colonial identity crisis in the two novels, common themes such as the influence of western values and culture on African society, conflicts between past, present and future, the petit bourgeoisie, the alienated and the outsider protagonists will be examined comparatively as they are depicted in the novels. The themes shed light on how ethnic-identity crisis is manifested in post-colonial society and how this has an impact on the success of the nation state.

Where is the Seeker Who Searches for Another? Decolonial Approaches to Digital Public History

Abstract This article delves into the role of public history within the context of suppressed and erased colonial pasts, underscoring the importance of individuals in actively shaping, uncovering, documenting and disseminating history. The period from the late 1940s–1960s marked a pivotal transition for the British Empire, as numerous colonies gained independence. This shift in sovereignty from colonial rule to sovereign nations unveiled deep apprehensions regarding the potential use of Britain’s historical actions and documents by newly independent governments. Operation Legacy was a clandestine initiative by British colonial authorities to destroy or hide records that could tarnish the British government’s image or compromise secret intelligence. The ethical ramifications of this operation, and its impact on the construction of memory and knowledge, remain a contentious issue for many in former colonies who are still striving to piece together their colonial history and seek justice for past wrongs. By highlighting the experience, methodologies and challenges of the Museum of British Colonialism collective, the article explores what a framework for decolonial public history may look like in a digital age. Decolonial public history requires negotiations that are continuously shaped by interrogating multiple sources, employing multiple mediums, engaging diverse audiences, and constantly reflecting and refining one’s own process and methodology. Inspired by Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s influential work Devil on the Cross, which portrays resistance to colonialism as a communal and interconnected endeavor, the article reflects on the character Wariinga’s query: “Where is the seeker who searches for another?” It concludes with thoughts on how digital public history can achieve decolonial significance and effectiveness, not merely through technological means, but by centering human connections and extensively building communities of practice across multiple frontiers.

Pre-Independence Kenya in Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o’s Trilogy: A Postcolonial Reading of Weep Not, Child, The River Between and A Grain of Wheat

Colonization is one of the most topical issues in the African Literature of the sixties. Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o like many other African intellectuals, restores and exalts the African past not only for the enlightenment of the Africans’ detractors (the settlers) but, above all, for the education of his own people (the Kikuyu). His trilogy made of Weep not, Child, The River Between and A Grain of Wheat is surely appropriate space in which pre-independence Kenya are depicted. As a hierophant of his times, Ngũgĩ shows, how the Kikuyu community, taken as the microcosm of any other people under a colonial power, collapsed with its exposure to the West and cracked with the pressure of an alien force embodied by the British settlers. They lost the precious values that held them together: family life, human dignity but above all, their ancestral land. Ngũgĩ, as a writer in a new nation, appeals this dehumanized people to an awareness in order to understand the real meaning of ‘uhuru’ (independence) and the sacrifices made to achieve it. Yet, he suggests them some necessary strategies for reaching this goal.

"The Language of the Eye Is Not the Language of the Ear": English, Translationality, and (Dis)Similarities between Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross

ABSTRACT: Against the backdrop of the 60th anniversary of the African Writers Conference and the perennial question of English as an "African language," this article investigates the ways in which English has been used within the literary writings of Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. An overview of the (seemingly) divergent views on English articulated by Achebe and Ngũgĩ is presented, and two of their novels, namely Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Ngũgĩ's Devil on the Cross , are then situated within the frame of translationality. Extracts from the two novels are comparatively analyzed and discussed with reference to translation theory, specifically "thick translation," " omdigting ," and "foreignization," in relation to their lexical and ideological treatment of English. The article concludes that despite the differences in attitude toward English expressed in their polemical and philosophical writings, their literary treatment of English points to a number of similarities.

A Feminist Critique of Women Portrayal in NGUGI WA THIONGO’S Devil on the Cross

African American Literature demonstrates that the Black Women's Feminism Caucus acknowledged that black women faced a dual patriarchal oppression from within their own community and from white society. This paper examines how Devil on the Cross portrays a Kikuyu woman striving for liberation and transformative change in Kenyan society. Employing a feminist perspective, the researcher contends that Ngugi Wa Thiong'o illustrates the plight of women in Kenyan society, interpreting feminism within its cultural framework. Building on this foundation, the study advocates for the designation of essential services such as police protection, justice, shelters, helplines, and community support services, ensuring they receive adequate support and resources to operate during pandemics and other public emergencies affecting women and girls. It emphasizes the necessity of involving women and women's civil society organizations in policy formulation, development, and implementation to integrate their knowledge, experiences, and needs into response strategies. Furthermore, it stresses the importance of prioritizing prevention and protection against gender-based and domestic violence in national responses by collecting detailed data on the prevalence of such violence and identifying which demographics of women and girls are most vulnerable. Keywords: Domestic violence, Feminist critique, Fiction, Women emancipation, Women portrayal

Nigerian Dramatists and the Postcolonial Dreams: Poetics of Ethnic Unity in Diversity

This study examines the ideological persuasions of the pioneer Nigerian dramatists given their penchant to edifying the former British colony. Drawing on primary and secondary data, the study contends that contemporary Nigerian playwrights are steep in their ‘social commitments’ to aspire for a better and unified nation, in the face of ethnic diversities. It critically analyses, John Iwuh’s Birthright and Barclays Ayakoroma’s Castle in the Air, using Ngugi wa Thiong’O’s conceptualization of Liberation and Abiola Irele’s Alienation as a conceptual footing to demonstrate the exceptional social visions in the selected plays. In doing this, the study unpacks the boundary crossing between aesthetic, social-political and cultural realities to reconfigure the fractious environment for the holistic integrated and a better postcolonial Nigeria.

Explication of Ogba Proverbs as a Tool for Conflict Resolution

Proverbs originated orally based on the oral literature history of storytelling passed down from generation to generation through stories and sayings. However, some believed that they originated from written scripts. Proverbs are words of wisdom used to impart knowledge to people. In Ogba, proverbs are used predominantly by the elders to warn, advice, instruct and educate on issues of paramount importance to the society. Proverbs elu are epigrammatic in nature and usually misunderstood as idiom olu-eknurnu. Proverbs elu often use figures of speech, such as metaphors, similes or allusions to make a point. In the literary parlance, renowned African writers like Chinua Achebe, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi and others adopt the use of proverbs in their works. This paper analyses the Ogba proverbs as a tool for conflict resolution in Ogba land of Rivers State, Nigeria. It is discovered that proverbs are used in major types of discourse involving the elders as evidenced in their use in palaces of chiefs to settle issues of marriage, land, chieftaincy, accusations of witchcraft and wizardry and other cases that are settled locally according to Ogba tradition and custom. This paper adopts the qualitative approach propounded by Isidore Okpewho. It concludes that proverbs are a veritable tool used by the elders to settle disputes in their homes, families and kindred.

World War 1 and Colonialism in Kenya: Perspectives through Historiography and Literary Imaginaries

ABSTRACT During World War I, what is today Kenya was part of the British East African Protectorate. Direct fighting took place within the region as the neighbouring Tanzania was a German colony. The cultural and economic repercussions of the war transformed the social landscape and colonial approach to the administration of the region. Historically, the war period between 1914 and 1918 coincided with the acceleration of British colonial intrusion into Kenya and a close control of the different aspects of the local communities’ political, social, and economic day-to-day operations. It was also marked by the transformation of large parts of present-day Kenya into white settlements. Moreover, during the war, mostly male members of the various Kenyan communities were conscripted into military service and forcefully pressed into the British war service. The war memories in works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, M. G. Vassanji and Margaret Ogola revolve around the sense of being caught in unknown crossfire, the inhumanity of conscription, causalities and other horrors of the war, and the irreplaceable loss of the most productive community members in the war.

New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims

Beydoun, K. A. (2023). The new crusades: Islamophobia and the global war on Muslims.University of California Press. "How could Europe lord it over a continent ten times its size?” wonders a voice in Wizard of the Crow, a novel by the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (2006, p. 681). One answer to this rhetorical question is addressed by the Palestinian-American intellectual and activist Edward Said’s (2003) statement: “Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate” (as cited in Beydoun, 2023, p. 68). Much of the colonial telling happens in the realm of education, whose institutionalized tools of textbooks and policies have been responsible for reproducing the fake history of the imperial narrative, one that silences the oppressed and lets the oppressors shine with nobility. Said’s statement not only answers the above question but also points to the empire’s hegemonic aspirations of constituting the identity of the Other since the Other in colonial discourse is framed as the uneducated who needs to be educated, necessarily, in the logics of the empire. Instilling racism as a major colonial project against the Muslim Other has been the case with the United States of America’s foreign policy in the aftermath of 9/11, a renewed imperialism in the name of fighting “terror.” Therefore, educating the U.S. Muslim youths about themselves as being anti-Western barbaric terrorists is as colonially imperative as educating white American generations about the latter being defenders of White “democratic” civilization against the “barbarity” of the former. Challenging the dominant stories of the empire demands devising tools that shake the grand narrative from within by making the missing narratives visible and heard

Power, discourse, and student agency in colonial education

This paper aims to glean valuable insights from critical pedagogy in order to apply them to the field of African literary studies. Specifically, I am interested in how approaches inspired by culturally responsive education can help us revisit the important but under-researched topic of student agency as it features in fictional works that deal with colonial education in Africa. Although colonial education in literature has been the subject of intense focus in postcolonial theory, such theorizations largely examine how colonial education reproduces colonial rule through the dissemination of colonial discourse/ideology. When student agency in the colonial education systems is addressed, conventional postcolonial theory sees it as being overwhelmed or assimilated by colonial discourse and power. Ideas emanating from critical pedagogy and culturally responsive education are of value here in that they can elucidate how students interact with and even resist the pedagogical and political power of the colonial education system. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s novel Weep Not, Child is an illustrative example of how such a critical-pedagogy-inspired approach can help us reorient literary studies of colonial education systems.

Domesticating the English Language in Niyi Osundare’s The Word Is an Egg

Niyi Osundare’s revolutionary poetics is rooted in his distinctive ability to maximise his bilingual linguistic repertoire to express Yoruba thoughts in English words. In this article, I analyse the creative and stylistic strategies that Osundare deploys to domesticate the English language using poems from his collection The Word Is an Egg (2000). I argue that Osundare uses his autonomy and agency as an African writer to present an alternative perspective on the politics of language in African literature while also meeting the decolonisation imperative of his day. He domesticates the English language by peppering it with Yoruba to create an “African English” or “Yoruba English” in his poetic composition. The article is in five parts. Initially, I situate Osundare as a poet within the Nigerian literary landscape and highlight the critical reception his radical development of Nigerian poetry in English received. A literature review focuses on the contentious language debate in African literature. The third part presents decolonisation theory as the theoretical framework, specifically highlighting language as an African resource for challenging the Western grip on poetry and the hegemony of the English language in African literature. In the fourth part, the domestication of the English language by Osundare, I discuss how he uses English and Yoruba to co-create an African English or Yoruba English in his poetic composition. I conclude by asserting that Osundare’s alternative perspective weakens Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s absolute perspective on language usage in African literature by highlighting the omission and inherent problems in the absolutisation of colonialism in decolonial discourse.

Revolutionist’s View of African Fiction as a Protest Literature: Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat

Protest in African literature developed out of the misrule, marginalisation, exploitation, deprivation, forced labour, slavery, and subjugation perpetrated by inept, colonialist and neo-colonialist governments in Africa. In South Africa, it is a protest against apartheid;in East Africa, it is a protest against colonial domination of the land; and in West Africa, the protest is centred on the marginalisation and subjugation of the natives by the British colonialists. Aside from these, there is a general protest that spreads the entire continent against blacks’ inhumanity to fellow blacks at the corridor of power – the neocolonialist forces. Hence, there is the African struggle for decolonisation in African novels as evidenced in A Grain of Wheat. Therefore, this paper explores the elements that constitute protest in the novel. In its findings, it is discovered that characteristics such as environment, socio-political, religious and cultural situations prevalent in Africa are the factors that necessitated protest in the novel and African literature generally. This paper concludes that the protest in A Grain of Wheat is a struggle for decolonisation of an African Nation – Kenya and by extension the African continent. The paper recommends the sustenance of the commitment (which has made African fiction a protest literature) of African writers towards liberating African nations from the shackles of neo-colonialism in the 21st century.

The representation of women in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's The River Between and AGrain ofWheat: An ideological approach

This study examines how women are portrayed from an ideological perspective in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's The River Between and A Grain of Wheat. Ideology refers to a set of beliefs or principles that shape a person or group of people's understanding of the world and their place in it. Literary representation refers to the way in which ideas, characters and events are portrayed in literature. The relationship between ideology and literary representation is complex, but in general, literature can reflect and shape the ideology of an individual or group. The study critically interprets the novels using concepts such as dominant, authorial, esthetic, patriarchal and gendered ideologies and conducts a qualitative analysis of the data. The results show that powerful ideologies constrain women. Ngũgĩ's authorial ideology emphasizes the various roles that women fulfill in society. The study shows how the portrayal of women in the two novels reflects the social reality of the times in which the women lived. They are portrayed as the main custodians of their traditions and culture. The novels portray women as central figures who have played and continue to play an important role in shaping the Kenyan nation. Overall, the study contributes to the scholarly discourse on the representation of women in post-colonial African literature.

The Language of Languages by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o (review)

The Language of Languages by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o (review)