VSU Welcomes Ngugi Wa Thiong’o To Campus Feb. 26-27

Source: University of California, Irvine

VALDOSTA — Ngugi Wa Thiong’o will conduct a reading and booking signing from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 26, at the Valdosta State University Jennett Lecture Hall. Faculty, staff, students, and the general public are invited to attend and learn more about this novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, editor, academic, intellectual, and social activist.

A distinguished professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o was born in Kenya to a large peasant family in 1938. He was barely a teenager when the Mau Mau Uprising, a nearly decade-long revolt against colonial rule in his native land, began.  

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o studied at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. He holds 10 honorary doctorates from institutions of higher education in the United States, Denmark, the United Kingdom, South Africa, New Zealand, Tanzania, and Germany and is an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His first major play, “The Black Hermit,” was performed in 1962 at the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda, as part of the country’s celebration of independence. Within the next five years he wrote eight short stories, two one-act plays, a regular column for the Sunday, and three novels, Weep Not, Child (1964), the first novel in English to be published by a writer from East Africa; The River Between (1965); and A Grain of Wheat (1967).

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Over the course of 22 years in exile, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o worked to secure the release of political prisoners in Kenya; taught students at Bayreuth University in Germany, Yale University in New Haven, Conn., Five Colleges Inc. in Amherst, Mass., and New York University; served as a writer in residence for the Borough of Islington, London; and studied film at the Dramatiska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. He returned to Kenya in 2004 to promote one his books, Murogi wa Kagogo, the story of an imaginary free republic autocratically ruled by one man, and was reportedly attacked by hired gunmen.

In the last decade since that assassination attempt, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o has continued to write, teach, inspire, and share his story around the world. He continues to be a voice for the people of Kenya — of all of Africa really — and a firm believer in his native land’s democratic chances.     

“Ngugi's visit to Valdosta is unbelievably significant,” shared Dr. Theresa M. Thompson, a professor in VSU’s Department of English. “His landmark theoretical work Decolonising the Mind directly addresses issues that affect diaspora Africans and their American descendants; his most recent theoretical work, Globalectics, speaks to the heart of VSU's commitment to meeting the needs of our students as they prepare for the global economy of the workplace; and his creative fictional works provide incredible insights into human character. That he has come here, willing to share his insights with us at no charge to students or the public, speaks volumes about his desire to facilitate global understanding.”

In addition to his public reading and book signing, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o will visit with an African American studies class and conduct a Creative Writing and Contemporary Literature Craft Workshop with ENGL 3300: Special Studies in Literature students and an Incorporating African Oral Literature into the World Literature Courses Faculty Workshop. VSU’s Department of English and African American Studies Program made his visit possible.

On the Web:

/colleges/arts-sciences/english/

/colleges/arts-sciences/african-american-studies/

http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com

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