The Intergenerational Influence of Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o

Across the continent, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was respected by peers and readers alike, alongside Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, forming Africa’s successful first generation of modern Literature. A frequent Nobel candidate, Ngũgĩ’s peculiar genius lay in the closely textured models of Kenyan life he created, drawing on his native origins, where oppressive regimes, such as the Mau Mau, shaped his early years and those of millions across the country, influencing several — if not every — aspect of everyday life.

However, Ngũgĩ’s work wasn’t to be defined purely by its masterful translation of sociopolitical material. As his great works demonstrated, he rendered the panoramic with impressive intimacy, even in the details, the delicate matter of sentences, the wise man’s hand showed, flavored with far-reaching influences. Consider this excerpt from his 1964-published debut novel, Weep, Not Child: “They moved together, so as not to be caught by the darkness. A bird cried. And then another. And these two, a boy and a girl, went forward, each lost in his world, for a time oblivious of the bigger darkness over the whole land.”

Ngũgĩ’s private life was mired in controversy, as his son Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩonce shared that he used to “physically abuse” his mother, Nyambura. “Some of my earliest memories are of me going to visit her at my grandmother’s, where she would seek refuge.” The subject of an excellent essay on Brittle Paper, the report garnered considerable attention, and it remained a significant weight on the writer, as he never denied the claims until his death.

“To many, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o means many things,” Nairobi-based poet and culture journalist Frank Njugi tells OkayAfrica. “But to me, a Kikuyu kid whose English barely stretched beyond simple words when I first opened Weep Not, Child, his work was a revelation. It bridged the gap between the stories my Guka (grandfather) wept through in a village in Nyandarau (during his eight years in colonial prison) and my understanding. It was like turning inherited pain into clarity. And when I saw the protagonist named ‘Njoroge,’ my family name, it felt like literature had finally come home to me.”

Ngũgĩ’s work would reveal what Njugi called the “fragile architecture of identity” and provide conceptual background to his own interest as a writer, with over five decades shared between their era, which is as far-reaching an influence as any creative could hope for. “By the time I recognized this as my vocation,” Njugi says, “I had already absorbed the conviction that the most honest use of this craft is to write from the well of lived experience, both personal and inherited, to give form to the history inscribed on the skin — the history carried in your skin, your body, and the long journey etched into every scar and blemish on it.”

For writer and critic Chiedoziem Chukwudera, the towering influence of Ngũgĩ’s work was “the advocacy for a better society,” he tells OkayAfrica. “He showed the ability to truly educate the African reader of who they are and their place in history. His early books, especially Weep Not, Child, and [Buchi Emecheta’s] Second Class Citizen, encouraged me as a writer to start writing with what I had. It was such a powerful story, even though it did not have the most profound structure. The book that had the better structure was A Grain of Wheat.” Chukwudera, the director of theUmuofia Arts and Books Festival, held annually in eastern Nigeria, finds in that taut narrative the achievement of reflecting dramatic tenderness that seemed to go beyond the page. Ngũgĩ, he says, “was one of the male writers of his generation who wrote female characters the best, and he was able to handle tenderness in a character.”

It speaks to the multidimensional greatness of Ngũgĩ that every reader will almost certainly have different books of his as their favorite. Personally, I became most interested in his writing after reading Wizard of the Crow, a fantasy-blended narrative that revealed the farce inherent in African societies and political systems. A thrilling tour-de-force, writers such asNnedi Okoraforand Aminatta Forna have mentioned it as a sterling offering, a late-career gift from one of Africa’s greatest wordsmiths.

And so Ngugi goes home at the ripe age of 87. But his words and ideas will live on. The man behind the words has done so much living himself, and we’re the better for it.