African Literature...Says Who? The Last 50 Years with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

On 24th April, 2015, we held the second event of the Warscapes Public Lecture Series in collaboration with the Humanities Action Lab of The New School. 

African Literature...Says Who? The Last 50 Years with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Kenyan born and internationally acclaimed, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is the author of more major works of fiction, nonfiction, and drama than any African writer. His groundbreaking first novel Weep Not, Child recently celebrated fifty years, and he has since published over thirty works in English and his native language, Gikuyu. Undaunted for half a century, he has incisively and eloquently challenged an African status quo of political misrule and has been imprisoned for criticizing an authoritarian Kenyan regime. A peer of Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, Ngugi was among the first to provocatively ask what constitutes an African literature, a question that haunts literary landscapes today. Harkening back to the epic dawn of African independence, the voice of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has been a constant African presence.

Introductions by Kevin Ewing of the Humanities Action Lab and Bhakti Shringarpure of Warscapes magazine. 

Special thanks to Claire Potter, Suchitra Vijayan, Michael Bronner, Michael Busch and Abdi Latif Ega. 

Event poster design by Arkadiusz Banasik of Methods Unlimited. 

Filming by Melissa Bunny Elian of the Bronx Documentary Center. 

 

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