May 28, 2025 | ATLANTA (CHATNEWSTV) — Kenyan literary icon Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a fierce critic of colonialism and a lifelong advocate for African languages, has died at 87, his family announced Wednesday.
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our dad, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, this Wednesday morning,” his daughter, Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ, wrote on Facebook. “He lived a full life, fought a good fight.”
Ngũgĩ died in Atlanta. Further details were not immediately released.
His son, Mukoma wa Ngũgĩ, said on X: “I am me because of him in so many ways, as his child, scholar and writer. I love him — I am not sure what tomorrow will bring without him here.”
Ngũgĩ was one of Africa’s most revered authors, known for novels, essays and plays that dissected colonial legacies and championed indigenous cultures. A longtime contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he remained a singular voice in global letters, writing in his native Gikuyu even after exile and censorship.
Born in 1938 under British colonial rule, Ngũgĩ was one of 28 children in a polygamous family. His early life was shaped by the Mau Mau uprising, during which two of his brothers were killed and his father displaced from their land.
His 1964 debut novel, Weep Not, Child, published just after Kenya’s independence, told the story of a young boy’s educational hopes dashed by political turmoil — a theme that echoed throughout his work.
In the 1970s, while teaching literature at the University of Nairobi, Ngũgĩ pushed for a curriculum shift toward African-centered thought. “Why can’t African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it?” he asked in a widely read paper.
That philosophy became action in 1977 when Ngũgĩ co-wrote I Will Marry When I Want, a play performed in Gikuyu. It led to his arrest and detention in a maximum-security prison. “Why was I not detained before, when I wrote in English?” he reflected years later. From then on, he resolved to write exclusively in Gikuyu.
After his release, Ngũgĩ went into exile in 1982, fearing for his life. He lived in the UK before settling in the United States, where he taught at the University of California, Irvine, and directed its International Center for Writing and Translation.
Even in exile, Ngũgĩ faced threats. On a return visit to Kenya in 2004, his wife Njeeri was raped and he was beaten during a violent home invasion. “I don’t think we were meant to come out alive,” he told the Guardian.
His later works, including Wizard of the Crow (2006) and The Perfect Nine (2021), tackled African kleptocracy and feminist folklore. The latter earned him a nomination for the International Booker Prize — the first for a writer in an indigenous African language.
Ngũgĩ was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1995 and underwent triple heart bypass surgery in 2019. He is survived by nine children, including four authors: Tee, Mukoma, Nducu, and Wanjiku.
“Resistance is the best way of keeping alive,” he told the Guardian in 2018. “If you really think you’re right, you stick to your beliefs, and they help you to survive.”
