Ngugi wa Thiong'o to Speak at the 2014 SNS Conference

Ngugi wa Thiong'o to Speak at the 2014 SNS Conference

We are happy to announce that Ngugi wa Thiong'o is a plenary speaker at the 2014 SNS conference titled Land and the Novel. 

Ngugi wa Thiong'o is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Born in Kenya in 1938 into a large peasant family, he is recipient of seven Honorary Doctorates and is also Honorary Member of the American Academy of Letters. He lived through the Mau Mau War of Independence (1952-1962), and burst onto the literary scene in East Africa with the performance of his first major play, The Black Hermit, in 1962, as part of the celebration of Uganda’s Independence.

With Taban Lo Liyong and Awuor Anyumba, Ngugi authored the polemical declaration, “On the Abolition of the English Department,” setting in motion a global debate. This text was followed by other volumes including: Writers in Politics (1981 and 1997); Decolonising the Mind (1986); Moving the Center (1994); and Penpoints Gunpoints and Dreams (1998). Ngugi was imprisoned without charge at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison at the end 1977. It was at Kamiti Prison that Ngugi made the decision to abandon English as his primary language of creative writing; he committed himself to writing in Gikuyu, his mother tongue.

In prison, and following that decision, he wrote, on toilet paper, the novel Caitani Mutharabaini (1981), translated into English as Devil on the Cross (1982). After Amnesty International named him a Prisoner of Conscience, an international campaign secured his release in December 1978. He remained in exile for the duration of the Moi Dictatorship 1982-2002.

When he and his wife, Njeeri, returned to Kenya in 2004 after twenty-two years in exile, they were attacked by hired gunmen and narrowly escaped. Ngugi’s books have been translated into more than thirty languages and they continue to be the subject of books, critical monographs, and dissertations.

For the conference call for paper and information about registration, click HERE.