Renowned Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o has died at age 87, his family members have announced “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our dad, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, this Wednesday morning,” wrote his daughter Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ on Facebook. “He lived a full life, fought a good fight. As a voracious reader, I understand writers through their literary works,I came to know about Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in Senior Three by reading, Weep, not Child. It is a powerful novel that explores the impact of colonialism and the Mau Mau uprising on a Kenyan family. Published in 1964, it was the first novel in English by James Ngugi The story follows Njoroge, a young boy who dreams of education as a path to a better future, while his family struggles with the harsh realities of British rule and the violent resistance movement.I was awed by the story telling. My next book was,A River between(this was written earlier but the manuscript had been submitted for a competition) but I dare say/write that A grain of Wheat stands out for me. A Mercedes funeral is also a piece of work that should be read by everyone especially for its thematic takeaway being in Africa.
During the academic burst up of the great Dons at UON and Professor Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo we the mortal souls just read on and began nodding in ignorance and amusement,I came to learn that there were two opposing schools of thought, one lead by Chinua Achebe who seemed apologetic to the colonialist and he does that in, There was a Country where he wishes that the colonialists came back and on the other side,there was Ngugi Wa Thiong’o who was a rebel and defiant towards Anything colonial, it’s the reason perhaps why he never got the Noble prize because he was a rebel and non conformist. Legends like Ngugi dont die, their works are alive and we can only celebrate them by reading their works. I belong to a very wonderful Whatsapp group known as Sui Generis a platform that was founded by Mr Lubogo Isaac to aid law students and legal After the passing of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Mr.Lubogo penned a wonderful Eulogy for the Titan and I felt it should be shared as widely as it could so that the readers can understand who the giant was and I reached out to him and he was positive about the Eulogy being shared on this blog and here we go,
Eulogy for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
By Isaac Christopher Lubogo
“A writer’s duty is to help people see the world as it is—and to imagine it otherwise.”
—Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Today, we gather not only to mourn the passing of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, but to reckon with the silence left behind by one of the greatest minds ever born on African soil—a silence so profound, it echoes louder than drums of revolution, deeper than the wounds of colonialism, and more eternal than ink on paper.
Ngũgĩ was not just a writer. He was a prophet in exile, a warrior of words, a rebel scholar whose quill pierced through the hypocrisy of empires and the silence of a betrayed continent. He did not write to entertain. He wrote to awaken. Every sentence he ever crafted was a wound opened for healing, a rebellion summoned through ink, a prayer for Africa spoken in her mother tongues.
Born in a land still scarred by colonial violence, Ngũgĩ rejected the convenient comfort of imperial languages and chose instead to confront us with our own. In a world that begged for assimilation, he chose authenticity. In a literary landscape awash with colonial mimicry, he dared to dream in Gikuyu.
“The choice of language and the use to which language is put is central to a people’s definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment, indeed in relation to the entire universe.”
He reminded us that the colonization of the mind is more enduring than the occupation of the land—and that no people can truly be free until their tongues can name their truths without translation.
His seminal works—Weep Not, Child, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, and Decolonising the Mind—were more than literature. They were manifestos of liberation, psychological maps for the unshackling of a people, blueprints for decolonization that challenged not only systems, but the very souls entrapped within them. His writing was sharp enough to disturb the powerful and honest enough to dignify the poor.
When they imprisoned him in 1977 for writing a play (Ngaahika Ndeenda – I Will Marry When I Want) in his native language that exposed class exploitation, Ngũgĩ responded by composing a full novel, Devil on the Cross, on toilet paper from his cell in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. Who does that? Only a mind afire with purpose. Only a man so possessed by truth that even chains could not restrain his thoughts.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o died as he lived—resolute, radical, and deeply African.
But what does his death mean to us?
It means the passing of a generation that still believed Africa could write herself free.
It means we must now look inward, speak louder, write deeper, and unlearn faster.
It means the torch has fallen—not extinguished—but passed to those brave enough to carry it.
Ngũgĩ taught us that language is memory. That to speak in Gikuyu, Luganda, Yoruba, or Kiswahili is not parochialism—it is resistance. It is dignity. It is resurrection.
He taught us that exile is not absence. That home is not a place—but a truth one refuses to betray.
He taught us that the battle for Africa’s soul is not fought in parliaments or palaces—but in books, in classrooms, in songs, in dreams.
And now, in death, he asks us only this: What will you do with the truth I died for?
Let us not mourn Ngũgĩ by lowering our heads. Let us mourn him by raising our voices. Let us not remember him only with flowers at his grave—but by planting forests of thought in the minds of our children.
The colonizers once tried to bury him in silence. They failed. Today, we bury him in reverence—knowing fully well that legends never truly die. They are reborn in every mind they have liberated.
Farewell, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
You wrote Africa into herself.
You decolonized the mind.
And now, through our lives and pens—we shall decolonize the future.
Signed:
Isaac Christopher Lubogo
NOVELS
1. Weep Not, Child (1964)
2. The River Between (1965)
3. A Grain of Wheat (1967, 1992)
4. Petals of Blood (1977)
5. Caitaani Mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross)(1980)
6. Matigari ma Njiruungi (Matigari) (1986; translated by Wangui wa Goro, 1989)
7. Mũrogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow) (2006)
8. The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi (2020)
SHORT-STORY COLLECTIONS
1. A Meeting in the Dark (1974)
2. Secret Lives, and Other Stories (1976, 1992)
3. Minutes of Glory and Other Stories (2019)
PLAYS
1. The Black Hermit (1963)
2. This Time Tomorrow (includes: “The Rebels”, “The Wound in the Heart”, “This Time Tomorrow”) (1970)
3. The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976) – with Micere Githae Mugo and Njaka
4. Ngaahika Ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano (I Will Marry When I Want) (1977, 1982) – with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii
5. Mother, Sing For Me (1986)
MEMOIRS
1. Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary (1981)
2. Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir (2010)
3. In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir (2012)
4. Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer’s Awakening (2016)
5. Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir (2018)
OTHER NON-FICTION
1. Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics(1972)
2. Education for a National Culture (1981)
3. Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya (1983)
4. Writing against Neo-Colonialism (1986)
5. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986)
6. Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms (1993)
7. Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa (1998)
8. Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance (2009)
9. Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing (2012)
10. Secure the Base: Making Africa Visible in the Globe (2016)
11. The Language of Languages (2023)
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
1. Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus (translated by Wangui wa Goro) (Njamba Nene na Mbaathi i Mathagu, 1986)
2. Njamba Nene and the Cruel Chief (translated by Wangui wa Goro) (Njamba Nene na Chibu King’ang’i, 1988)
3. Njamba Nene’s Pistol (Bathitoora ya Njamba Nene, 1990)
4. The Upright Revolution, Or Why Humans Walk Upright (Seagull Press, 2019
Mwene 