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Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Context offers a compelling and comprehensive reading of the various contexts pivotal to Ngugi wa Thiong'o's practice as a writer. Ngugi drew a complex link between his role as a writer and the contexts within which his works are produced. The desire to come to terms with the past and the shifting historical process in his country is evident throughout his work. The volume shows that, for a writer whose work is steeped in biographical life experiences and historical events, context is even more special. It must be recovered through imagination and re-imagined as part of Ngugi's self-writing. One of the aims of this volume is to displace the notion of context as a reified site of retrieval and self-evident knowledge, and also to see how this sense of context offers readers of his vital writings new and disruptive ways of re-reading Ngugi's texts.
List of contents
List of contributors; Introduction: Ngugi in context: writer, activist and academic James Ogude; Part I. Early Childhood: 1. Ngugi's peasant roots Gichingiri Ndigirigi; 2. Christianity and mission education Susan Kiguli; 3. Mau Mau war: emergency period and the rise of Kenyan nationalism Kimani Njogu; Part II. Colonialism: 4. Gikuyu culture and British Colonialism Ndirangu Wachanga; 5. The writer and his past/history Rangariraye Mapensure; 6. Theatre of Independence Ronit Frenkel; Part III. Independence and its Fissures: 7. Nation formation and its challenges Tirtop Simatei; 8. Postcolonial Edifice: Neo-Colonialism Grace Musila; 9. Revolutionizing the literature curriculum at the university of East Africa: literature and the soul of the nation Carol Sicherman; Part IV. Intellectual Traditions: 10. Makerere university: liberal Englishness and the great tradition Okello Ogwang; 11. Heineman African writers series James Currey; 12. Leeds: encounter with 'Fanon' and 'Marx' James Ogude; Part V. Writers in Politics: 13. Ngugi's women: nationalism and gender politics in Ngugi Brandon Nicholls; 14. Kamiriithu theatre Ndigiringi Gichingiri; 15. Detention Isaac Ndlovu; 16. Ng¿g¿'s language politics and their impact on South Africa's transition Siphiwo Mahala; Part VI. Black Diaspora - the Ties that Bind Us: 17. Legacy of Pan-Africanism Garnette Oluoch-Olunya; 18. The place of Caribbean literature Godwin Siundu; Part VII. Literary Influences: 19. D. H. Lawrence and Joseph Conrad Tom Mboya; 20. Brathwaite Kamau and George Lamming Emilia Ilieva; 21. John Bunyan James Ogude; 22. Agikuyu oral traditions: Gakaara wa Wanjau Maina wa Mutonya; 23. Ngugi's writing and its oral home Peter Amuka; Part VIII. Ngugi and Translation: 24. Ngugi and his critics Olivier Lovessey; 25. Ngugi and translation Timothy Reiss; Part IX. Globalectics: 26. Ngugi in the USA Timothy Reiss; 27. Ngugi in the 21st century Sam Senayon Olaoluwa; Part X. Tributes: 28. 'I'm tired, mother. I have come a long way and I want to sleep': Ng¿g¿ wa Thiong'o (5 January 1938-28 May 2025) Ato Quayson; 29. Ng¿gi wa Thiong'o and the African literary revolution Simon Gikandi.
About the author
Professor James Ogude is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria and is the author of Ngugi's Novels and African History. He has edited nine books and his most recent edited volumes include, Ubuntu and the Reconstitution of Community (2019) and Environmental Humanities of Extraction in Africa: Poetics and politics of Extraction (2023).
