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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'oA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is a Kenyan author and essayist who writes frequently about the people of Africa and their oppression under colonialism and neocolonialism after their freedom from European control. As a firm believer in the advancement of Kenyan culture, Petals of Blood was his last novel written in English, and he chose instead to write future novels in his native Gikuyu. He published his play Ngaahika Ndeenda in 1977 and was subsequently imprisoned for a year due to its critique of the Kenyan government. After this, he fled Kenya for the United States. He currently teaches comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine.
Ngũgĩ is one of the leading theorists in the field of postcolonial studies, particularly in the field of language. His nonfiction text, Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), explores the idea of language as a weapon, both for the colonizer who imposes its own language on its subjects and for the colonized as a way to subvert the colonizer’s control. The problem of writing in postcolonial nations is complicated; writing in one’s native tongue subverts colonial control and encourages the use and development of their native language, but it is difficult to gain popularity and recognition—and thus readership—if one does not write in a globally accessible language.
By Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
A Grain of Wheat
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
A Meeting In The Dark
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Devil on the Cross
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Dreams in a Time of War
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
I Will Marry When I Want
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Matigari
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The River Between
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Weep Not, Child
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Wizard of the Crow
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
African American Literature
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African Literature
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Challenging Authority
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Class
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Class
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Colonialism & Postcolonialism
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Colonialism Unit
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Education
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Nation & Nationalism
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Power
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