Ngugi’s work criticized both the British colonialism in Kenya and the Postcolonial Kenya Association.
Famous Kenyan author Ngugi Wa Thiong’o passed away at the age of 87, his family announced.
“It’s heartfelt to announce the death of his father, ngugi wa thiong’o,” his daughter, Wangjik wa Ngugi, wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
“He spent his life and had a good fight,” she said.
At the time of his death, Ngugi reportedly had undergone kidney dialysis treatment, but the immediate cause of his death is still unknown.
Born in Kenya in 1938, Ngugi is remembered as one of Africa’s most important postcolonial writers. Formative events in Ngugi’s early life included the brutal Mau Mau war that swept over British-controlled Kenya in the 1950s.
Ngugi’s work was equally critical of the British colonial period and postcolonial society following Kenya’s independence in 1963. Other topics in his work covered the intersection of language, culture, history and identity.
Ngugi made a mark for himself in the 1970s when he decided to switch from writing in English to the Kikuyu and Swahili languages.
“We all thought he was mad… and he’s brave at the same time,” Kenyan author David Mile told AFP News.
“We asked who would buy the book.”
One of his most famous works, “Decolonization of the Mind,” was published in 1986 while living abroad. The book argues that “it is impossible to release oneself while using the language of the oppressor,” AFP reports.
In addition to retaining the acclaimed writer’s status, Nugi was a prisoner of conscience. In 1977 he was imprisoned in Kenya for performing a play that was considered critical of modern society.
He once described the country’s new elite class as “death of hope, death of dream, death of beauty.”
In 1982, Ngugi went voluntarily exile in the UK following a ban on performances in theatre groups and in his home country. He later moved to the United States, where he worked as a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine. He also continued to write a variety of works, including essays, memoirs and novels on Kenya.
Following news of Ngugi’s death, praise for his life and work quickly came online.
“My pathetic dol, the family, friend and son of Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, the honorable literary giant and scholar, and the great patriot whose footprints remain undisappeared, wrote about X.
“Thank you Mwalimu [teacher] For your freedom writing,” writes the Kenya branch of Amnesty International in X.
Margaretta Wa Gacheru, a sociologist and former student, said the author is a national symbol.
“To me, he is like Tolstoy in Kenya in the sense that he is a storyteller, in the sense that he is a love of language and a panoramic view of society, a landscape of social relations, an explanation of class and class struggle,” she said.
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