Ngugi wa Thiong'o Speaks: interviews with the Kenyan writer (review)

A substantial collection of interviews spanning the famous Kenyan author/activist's career, Ngugi wa Thiong'o Speaks is, without a doubt, one of the most important resources to emerge for Ngugi scholarship. The cover, modelled after Ngugi's previous James Currey publications – Writers in Politics, Decolonising the Mind and Moving the Centre – serves as a familiar marker, signalling an addition to Ngugi's work. In fact, at a glance, one might mistake the book for one of Ngugi's publications. And, as the title attests, Ngugi's voice is front and centre in this collection.

The editors, Reinhard Sander and Bernth Lindfors (with the assistance of Lynette Cintrón), reinforce this focus, strengthening Ngugi's voice with their impeccable research and reader-friendly style and presentation. The chronological list of Ngugi's publications that prefaces the collection, and the 'Chronology' that follows it, make it easy for readers to contextualise each interview in relation to Ngugi's life and publishing history. The 'Chronology', along with detailed footnotes and the closing 'Bibliography' and 'Index', all reflect Lindfors's detail-oriented work. Moreover, traditionally marginalized or hard-to-access information is placed at the reader's fingertips, bridging gaps in information technology and institutional accessibility, a gesture that complements Ngugi's politics. All this makes the book an invaluable research instrument for scholars.

The trajectory of Ngugi's politics, or 'his intellectual engagement with his times' (p. xii), is central to this book. Among the most interesting development paths is Ngugi's journey towards his stance on the African language question – to write or not to write in colonial languages (English, French, Portuguese, and so on). Ultimately deciding to write in one of Kenya's national languages, Gikuyu, Ngugi discovers his niche and, with a strong dose of polemics, proclaims his rationale again and again, in interview after interview. Ngugi explains how writing in Gikuyu is his gesture towards redistributing power and subverting neo-colonialism. However, while Ngugi's fight continues from 1977 onwards, in his 2003 interview with Harish Trivedi, he states, 'It is clear that it won't change the world . . . ' (p. 412). Yet if there is one thing that this collection does demonstrate, it is how Ngugi's work has changed, and continues to change the world.

While some interviews seem to be bogged down in relative ignorance of Ngugi and his work – an ignorance reflected in repetitive, banal, and at times, insipid interview questions (Trayo A. Ali's 1995 interview, 'The strength of our people is my inspiration', for example) – other interviews clearly reflect the ways in which Ngugi's audiences, and specifically his readers in the so-called 'Third World', have been changed by his work. For instance, during a 1991 interview with Ngugi, Reed Dasenbrock states, 'The West Indian writer Roy Heath was saying that your work was a real inspiration to him, in choosing to write more in Creole or nation language . . . ' (p. 307). Ngugi's 1988 interview with South African writer, Wally Serote, reverberates with an overwhelming sense of mutual respect for each author's contributions to the struggles against colonialism, neo-colonialism and Apartheid. The 1996 interview in India with D. Venkat Rao reflects a genuine and detailed interest in Ngugi's work in Gikuyu, especially as it relates to translation between marginalized languages. Ngugi wa Thiong'o Speaks clearly depicts the breadth of Ngugi's work, but also the depth of the author's humour, patience and generosity.

The editors choose a variety of interviews that provide striking insights into Ngugi's personality. Particularly memorable is 'Ngugi by telephone', a 1993 interview with an earnest Stuyvesant High School student, Tami Alpert. After several failed attempts to contact Ngugi in Kenya and England, Alpert discovers that the African writer is teaching at New York University. The humour this piece adds to the collection strongly complements the humour in many of Ngugi's novels and...