Skip to content

Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ Quotes

born 1971 Kenya

Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ (born 1971) is a Kenyan American poet, author, and academic. He is associate professor of literatures in English at Cornell University and co-founder of the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Writing.

Kenya
Essayists
Novelists
Poets

Random Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ quote

33 quotes

There are various levels of home and what it means

I am always careful that my home does not become my prison

I do not think I can be a poet who sings (and singing contains wailing) for Africa without having faith that Africa can one day do right by its citizens.

In Kenya, if someone with enough credibility told you that he or she was going to send you to Ngong, you had better back down unless you could get them there first.

Black Star Nairobi (2013)

Our intellectuals should not have to publish in Western publications before we take them seriously

Growing up in Kenya has shaped a lot of my political thinking; it has certainly colored the ink in my pen

I am not afraid to air my dirty linen in public, for how else shall I get it clean

Our generation of writers should, as far as we can, professionalize writing

Kenya is my starting point but not necessarily my end point

Whoever killed him took the casing.

Black Star Nairobi (2013)

So to now be able to go back as writers – we are not going back because of anything negative, we are going back to celebrate writing and to celebrate each other’s writing

One of the mistakes constantly made by previous generations was to understand as one kind of freedom being more important than another

a course in contemporary American literature should carry literatures by immigrants as well.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.