2025-06-11
59 分钟This is The Guardian. The Guardian Archive Long Read.
Hi, my name is Keri Baraka.
I'm the author of an essay called Ngugi wa Thiong'o,
Three Days a Giant of African Literature,
which was published in The Guardian Longweed in 2023.
I first started writing or thinking about writing this essay when the editor of The Longweed asked me
if there was something I'd ever want to write about Ngugi.
And I think like the elemental thing about Ngugi is that as an African writer,
but particularly as a Kenyan writer,
your entire makeup as a writer is defined either from him or in opposition to him.
So if you think of writing as like a house and there's like a foundation,
the foundation of every Kenyan writer is like the idea of Mubiwa Theomo.
Whether you love him or hate him,
whether you want to write like him or not write like him,
whether you agree with his views of language or don't agree with his views of language,
he's at the center of Kenyan writing.
And so it's that thing about what would it look like to write an essay about a person who has been very important to how I think of myself as a writer.
In the times I wrote this article, two things have changed.
The first is that at some point last year,
maybe eight months after the article was published,