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From: Tsegai Emmanuel (emmanuelt40@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 11 2010 - 08:58:52 EDT
Why Ngugi wa Thiong'o should have won the Nobel prize for literature
On top of his achievement as an imaginative artist, the Kenyan writer's
decision to write in Gikuyu is a truly brave move deserving high reward
Yesterday Ngugi wa
Thiong'o<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/ngugi-wa-thiong-o>didn't win
the Nobel prize. A few days earlier he'd
become the bookies'
favourite<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/05/kenyan-nobel-prize-literature>when
the odds on his being awarded literature's highest accolade fell from
75-1 to 3-1. But at midday on 7 October, Mario Vargas Llosa was announced as
this year's laureate<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/07/mario-vargas-llosa-nobel-prize-literature>for
"his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of
the
individual's resistance, revolt and defeat".
It's easy to see how the confusion might have arisen. Ngugi has dedicated
his life to describing, satirising and destabilising the corridors of power.
As I sat mentally congratulating the Peruvian novelist I began to wonder
what it would have meant for those of us working in the field of African
literature if yesterday's announcement had taken a different turn ...
In 1962 a group of writers who were to shape the future of African
literature gathered at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Those present
included Wole Soyinka <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2004/lecturer.shtml>,
Lewis Nkosi<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/22/lewis-nkosi-obituary-south-africa>,
Kofi Awoonor<http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/verba-africana/ewe/c-interview-kofi-awoonor.htm>,
and from across the Atlantic, Langston
Hughes<http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html>.
One evening, an undergraduate approached a conference participant with
drafts of his writing. The student was a young Ngugi, the participant Chinua
Achebe, and the manuscript, Weep Not Child, was published two years later as
the first new novel in the paperback African Writers Series.
Soyinka was the first black writer to win the Nobel prize for
literature<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/nobel-prize-literature>in
1986. Achebe has notoriously never been granted the Nobel – and Ngugi
may
join him on the list of those that got away. But 50 years after that
momentous conference, the reasons for inviting the Kenyan author to
accompany at least one of his Nigerian colleagues into the Nobel hall of
fame are compelling.
Soyinka and Ngugi both lived through colonialism as children, were shaped by
the promise of decolonisation, protested their subsequent political
disillusionment and paid dearly for their writing in prison. Both were
deeply committed to public engagement through performances of their plays;
both have written movingly about the consequences of their beliefs. But what
separates Ngugi from his Nobel predecessor is his brave and polemical
decision to write in his first language, Gikuyu.
Ngugi renounced writing in English in July 1977 at the Nairobi launch of
Petals of Blood, saying that he wished to express himself in a language that
his mother and ordinary people could understand. The announcement didn't
come out of the blue. He had previously campaigned to change the name of his
academic home at the University of Nairobi from the "department of English"
to the "department of literature" – a deeply political move still relevant,
inspiring and indeed uncomfortable for literature scholars around the world
today.
But the decision to write primarily in Gikuyu was both groundbreaking and
ridiculously brave. As James Currey points
out<http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/publish/awseries.htm>in his
memoir, Africa Writes Back, Ngugi was one of the first African
writers to attempt to make a living from his words. To limit your immediate
audience to Gikuyu speakers must have looked like commercial suicide.
Contemporary writers such as Helon Habila, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
Binyavanga Wainaina and Brian Chikwava, often cite the desire to reach wider
audiences as the reason for writing their (albeit linguistically innovative)
texts in English. This veteran, 30-odd years ago, flying in the face of
political and financial reason, proved an alternative might be possible.
Ngugi dedicated his 1987 novel Matigari to "all those who love a good
story". It was the infectiousness of his stories, their accessibility in
Gikuyu and swift absorption into popular culture that frightened the
authorities. When then-president Daniel arap Moi heard that a man called
Matigari was wondering around Kenya asking difficult questions, he gave
orders for his arrest. On the realisation the man was in fact one of Ngugi's
fictional characters, copies of the book were seized and destroyed. As Ngugi
explains in Moving the Centre this formed "the first case in our history of
a fictional character being forced into exile to join its creator".
Still living in exile and writing primarily in Gikuyu, Ngugi continues to
spin captivating tales. Anyone unfamiliar with his work might do well to
start by dipping into his long-awaited and much-acclaimed 2006 novel Wizard
of the Crow<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/sep/09/featuresreviews.guardianreview21>.
Don't be intimidated by its 700-odd pages. It's opening – an exploration of
the five possible reasons for the illness of the second Ruler of the Free
Republic of Aburria (a fictional country) – is hilarious and utterly
absorbing. At the launch reading in London the (largely student) audience
cried with laughter.
And yet behind this all is a serious point. Ngugi begins his most recent
publication Dreams in a Time of
War<http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/dreams-in-a-time-of-war-by-ngugi-wa-thiongo-1927475.html>with
a childhood memory. Dawdling along the six-mile walk home from school
one day, the narrator comes across a crowd of people near the Bata Shoe
factory, animatedly discussing the daring escape of a young man from a
police truck on the road. Fascinated by the story and excited by events so
close by, Ngugi returns home for dinner, eager to pass on the news. The
family are strangely quiet. His mother explains that afternoon that their
elder brother had "narrowly escaped death" and joined the anti-colonial
struggle in the mountains. The story moves from being entertaining to
deeply, horrifyingly personal.
In a 1963 edition of Transition, the Nigerian scholar Obiajunwa Wali
remarked that the key realisation of the Makerere conference was that
"African literature as now defined and understood, leads nowhere". Claiming
it was overly dependent on European models, he asserted that it lacked "any
blood and stamina" and had "no means of self-enrichment". Fifty years on,
Ngugi has shown just how enriching the turn away from Eurocentrism could be.
Ironically, of course, I'm lamenting the lack of recognition by a Swedish
prize.
At a recent African Studies Association conference in Oxford (yes: Europe
again) a panel of publishers gathered to discuss the (in)visibility of
African cultures. Walter Bgoya from Mkuki na Nyota Publishers in Tanzania
and Solani Ngobeni from the Africa Institute in Pretoria both expressed
their concern that African-language publishing is facing difficult times.
Its market share remains in the educational sector, where there is extreme
competition from multinationals publishing discounted texts in English.
There appears to be limited space for the publication of innovative
fiction<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fiction>in African languages,
but pioneering firms do persist: Ngugi published
Murogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow) with Henry Chakava's East African
Educational Publishers.
Of course there is only one Ngugi, and other African writers with such
political and commercial traction are few and far between. But if the Nobel
committee had chosen to honour him this year it would have renewed the
African literary community's belief in the possibility, and indeed
necessity, of change. Naguib Mafouz won the Nobel for his work in Arabic in
1988. If Ngugi had won he would have been the first author writing primarily
in an indigenous sub-Saharan African language to win the prize. It would
have been a reminder to us all of his resistance to the hegemony of European
languages. "English" departments across the world might have sat up to take
note
