Kenya in Translation: An Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Kenya's recent political upheaval and news of brutal ethnic clashes need to be understood in terms of the country's political and cultural history. At a reading at the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco, author and activist Ngugi wa Thiong'o, one of the country's most important chroniclers of this history, discussed the relationship between language and oppression.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born in Kenya in 1934 into a Gikuyu farming family. The Mau Mau uprising against the British in the 1950s left a deep impression on him, and much of his writing deals with government corruption, oppression and inequality in society. In 1977, then vice-president Daniel arap Moi ordered Ngugi -- who was teaching at Nairobi University at the time -- arrested and imprisoned for his play I Will Marry When I Want, which he wrote in his native language of Gikuyu -- and which was sharply critical of neo-colonial Kenya. While in prison, Ngugi decided to forsake writing in English and write only in Gikuyu in an effort to revitalize indigenous languages. He wrote the first ever novel in Gikuyu, Devil on the Cross, on prison-issued toilet paper, the only paper available to him.

In 1978, following a campaign by Amnesty International, Ngugi was released from prison. Following his release, he was unable to regain his position at Nairobi University; with Moi elected president, he left Kenya in 1982, going into self-imposed exile in Britain and, later, the United States.

Ngugi argues that literature written by Africans in English is not African literature, and he has encouraged other African authors to write in their own languages to emphasize a non-colonial cultural expression. He describes his most recent novel, Wizard of the Crow, which he translated into English, as a "global epic from Africa." A satire set in the imaginary African nation of Aburiria, the novel is about a dictator -- known only as "the Ruler" -- who plans to build the tallest building in the world so he can live in the same neighborhood as God. Critics have compared its scope and quality to the work of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.

Following his appearance in San Francisco, AlterNet caught up with Ngugi, currently a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine and the head of its International Center for Writing and Translation.

Emily Wilson: Why were you put in prison? What did you do that was so threatening to the government?

Ngugi wa Thiong'o: The community discovered its own voice; how to talk about themselves, what they had done in history, the confidence they were getting about themselves. It awakened their consciousness. I don't think the government was so afraid of the language -- because if the language were praising what the government had done they would have been quite happy about it. They would not have felt the need to arrest me. But I think a repressive regime always fears people who are awakened -- particularly ordinary people. If they are awakened, I think governments all over the world feel uncomfortable about that; they want to be in control. (Laughs) They want to be the ones telling people: "This is what we have done in history" but when people begin to say, "No this is what we have done in history" it's a different thing.

EW: Why did you make the decision to write in your native language?

Ngugi wa Thiong'o: It was an act of resistance. In 1977 and the whole of '78 I was in a maximum-security prison. Why? Because I had combined with other people to work in a community theater in a language understood by the peasantry. We put on a play called I Will Marry When I Want and this was stopped by the government and I was arrested and put in prison. When I was there I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power. And that's when I made the decision not to write in English; "I'll be writing in Gikuyu." It was a way of saying "I'm going to write in the very language which had been the basis of my incarceration." It was a way of resisting that incarceration. But of course, what I did not realize was that my resistance had larger implications.