David Lloyd speaks with the world-renowned Kenyan novelist, playwright and poet, critic and widely influential postcolonial theorist, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. They explore the problem of colonization of languages, his commitment to writing in his native language, and his incarceration and exile for political dissidence. And with the panel they discuss a new book of essays on his work, Ngũgĩ in the American Imperium. [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Timothy J. Reiss is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at New York University and recently a visiting scholar at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. His many books include Against Autonomy: Global Dialectics of Cultural Exchange. He is the editor of Ngũgĩ in the American Imperium.

* Noenoe K. Silva is Kanaka Hawai’i from Kailua, O’ahu, and professor of Hawai’ian and Indogenous Politics in the Department of Politics and Cooperating faculty Kawaihuelani Center for Hawai’ian Language at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. She is the author of Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawai’ian Resistance to American Colonialism and The Power of the Steel-Tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawai’ian Intellectual History. She is a contributor to Ngũgĩ in the American Imperium.

* Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine. Among his many writings are Decolonising the Mind, Globalectics and his memoir Detained recently recast as Wrestling with the Devil. His most recent novel is Murogi wa Kagogo, published in English as Wizard of the Crow. His rendering of the Gikuyu epic, The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi, appeared in 2019. He has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes.

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, David Lloyd, and Sudd Dongre.