"No African writer has as many major, lasting creative achievements in such a wide range of genre as Ngugi wa Thiong'o. His books include novels, plays, short stories, essays and scholarship, criticism and children's literature."
Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams by Charles Cantalupo: His fiction, non fiction and drama, from the early 1960's to the present are frequently reprinted. He is the founder and editor of the groundbreaking, Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. Political exile from Kenya, Ngugi - as he is known worldwide - is currently the Erich Remarque Professor of Languages at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies.
Baudelaire writes, "De la vaporisation et de la concentration du moi. Tout est la." ("The dispersion and the reconstitution of the self. That's the whole story.") It's not. This is a primary message of African literature and art today. Ngugi wa Thiong'o is one of its primary exemplars.
This interview focuses on Ngugi wa Thiong'o's book of essays, Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1998). Based on the four lectures he was invited to give at Oxford University in 1996, as a part of the Clarendon Lectures in English Literature series, and subtitled "Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa," the book moves freely and universally, from Plato to Okot p'Bitek, pre-ancient Egypt to postmodern New York; the Macaulay, colonial minute to Marx to Mau Mau: from the war between art and the state to "the beautyful ones...not yet born."
Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams by Charles Cantalupo: His fiction, non fiction and drama, from the early 1960's to the present are frequently reprinted. He is the founder and editor of the groundbreaking, Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. Political exile from Kenya, Ngugi - as he is known worldwide - is currently the Erich Remarque Professor of Languages at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies.
Baudelaire writes, "De la vaporisation et de la concentration du moi. Tout est la." ("The dispersion and the reconstitution of the self. That's the whole story.") It's not. This is a primary message of African literature and art today. Ngugi wa Thiong'o is one of its primary exemplars.
This interview focuses on Ngugi wa Thiong'o's book of essays, Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1998). Based on the four lectures he was invited to give at Oxford University in 1996, as a part of the Clarendon Lectures in English Literature series, and subtitled "Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa," the book moves freely and universally, from Plato to Okot p'Bitek, pre-ancient Egypt to postmodern New York; the Macaulay, colonial minute to Marx to Mau Mau: from the war between art and the state to "the beautyful ones...not yet born."
-
- groups:
- News, Africa News
-
-
-
-
- goldenways
- added this
-
Sorry, I can only comment on West Africa. However, many issues in the Continent are shared throughout the many countries.
-
Thanks for posting this! I think Ngugi's work is amazing.
Actually, he is at the University of California, Irvine! He is a professor in Humanities as well as the Director for the International Center for Writing and Translation.
