Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
- Editor: Oliver Lovesey
- Pages: ix & 265 pp.
- Published: 2012
- ISBN: 9781603291125 (Hardcover)
“Lovesey’s collection of essays is exemplary. It covers the full range of Ngũgĩ’s output both as a creative writer and as a critic, and it focuses on texts that are widely used in classrooms throughout the world.”
—Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas, Austin
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is one of the most important and celebrated authors of postindependence Africa as well as a groundbreaking postcolonial theorist. His work, written first in English, then in Gĩkũyũ, engages with the transformations of his native Kenya after what is often termed the Mau Mau rebellion. It also gives voice to the struggles of all Africans against economic injustice and political oppression. His writing and activism have continued despite imprisonment, the threat of assassination, and exile.
Part 1 of this volume, “Materials,” provides resources and background for the teaching of Ngũgĩ’s novels, plays, memoirs, and criticism. The essays of part 2, “Approaches,” consider the influence of Frantz Fanon, Karl Marx, and Joseph Conrad on Ngũgĩ; how the role of women in his fiction is inflected by feminism; his interpretation and political use of African history; his experimentation with orality and allegory in narrative; and the different challenges of teaching Ngũgĩ in classrooms in the United States, Europe, and Africa.
Pius Adesanmi
Michael Andindilile
F. Odun Balogun
Steve Gronert Ellerhoff
Ali Erritouni
Uzoma Esonwanne
Simon Gikandi
Michael Harris
Emilia Ilieva
W. O. Maloba
Kate McInturff
Evan Mwangi
Peter Nazareth
Gĩchingiri Ndĩgĩrĩgĩ
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Brendon Nicholls
James Ogude
Bonnie Roos
Peter Simatei
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Patrick Williams
Preliminaries
Preface (ix)
Orature in Education (1)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: In Praise of a Friend (5)
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Introduction (11)
Editions (12)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: A Brief Biography (13)
Historical and Political Contexts (16)
The Instructor’s Library (18)
Criticism (18)
Reference Works (21)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction (31)
Cultural, Political, and Historical Contexts
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Writer and Critic (40)
Gender and the Political in Ngũgĩ’s Fiction (48)
Ngũgĩ and the Postcolonial (53)
Ngũgĩ and Kenya’s History (60)
Ngũgĩ and Sembène: Teaching the Text of History (76)
Language, Translation, Style
African Anglophonism, Translation, and the Teaching of Ngũgĩ’s Works (86)
Contextualizing Untranslated Moments in Ngũgĩ’s Prose and Drama (93)
From Imitation to Avant-Garde: Ngũgĩ’s Stylistic Evolution as a Novelist (114)
Classroom Settings
Location and History: Salient Issues in Teaching Ngũgĩ to Black South African Students (121)
Reading Ngũgĩ on Four Continents: Relational Aesthetics and the Global Multicultural Classroom (129)
Teaching Petals of Blood in a Kenyan Classroom (136)
Teaching Ngũgĩ’s Drama in the American Academy (147)
Teaching Ngũgĩ’s Works Written in English
A Terrible Beauty Is Born: A Grain of Wheat and Weep Not, Child (157)
Teaching A Grain of Wheat as a Dialogue with Conrad (165)
Text-Context: A Grain of Wheat as Testimony (171)
Degendering the Mind: On Teaching Petals of Blood (181)
Ngũgĩ, Petals of Blood, and World Bank Literature (189)
Detained and African Prison Diaries (195)
Teaching Ngũgĩ’s Gĩkũyũ Novels in Translation
Texts and Contexts: Teaching A Grain of Wheat and Matigari in Kenya (206)
The Historical Context of Matigari (212)
Feminist Nationalism in Wizard of the Crow (222)
Transformation through Make-Believe in Wizard of the Crow (232)
Notes on Contributors (239)
Contributors and Survey Participants (241)
Works Cited (243)
Index (261)
