Decolonising minds, reimagining literature

Every year, a ritual precedes the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

- Kunal Ray

Every year, a ritual precedes the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Several names of possible winners dominate discussions on the web. Ngugi wa Thiong'o invariably featured in these conversations, but never won. Let us not equate awards with literary greatness, though. At the same time, it must also be acknowledged that the lack of the award did not prevent us from reading Thiong'o. We gravitated to the author and his ideas for his radical politics and theorisation on the use of language especially in post-colonial nations such as his own Kenya and India in our case.

Ideas can travel without the patronage and fanfare of big awards. Thiong'o and the enduring popularity of his seminal text, Decolonising the Mind, is a case in point.

Thiong'o spoke about decolonisation before it became a symposia favourite across university departments. He was a torchbearer in every sense. Much like Frantz Fanon, his intellectual mentor in some ways. Thiong'o was a lifelong advocate for an exploration of our own languages, stories, writers and a steadfast critic of Eurocentrism and linguistic imperialism.

For those who may not know, he even shed his birth name James and chose Ngugi in his native Gikuyu—Ngugi wa Thiong'o meaning Ngugi, son of Thiong'o. He has written extensively and expansively about the country of his birth and the birth of a writer in his memoir series—Dreams in a Time of War, In the House of the Interpreter